Lower Township businessman Joe Salerno has won the Democratic nomination in the 2nd Congressional District and will challenge U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd, in November.
“I’m proud of our team, I’m grateful to the voters of South Jersey, and I’m ready to carry the fight forward for them,” Salerno said in a statement late Wednesday night.
The 2nd District includes all of Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Salem counties, and parts of Gloucester and Ocean counties.
Salerno defeated Tim Alexander, a civil rights attorney from Galloway Township, with 13,925 votes to Alexander’s 13,500. Sea Isle City engineer Carolyn Rush was third with 7,758 votes, followed by Rodney Dean Sr. with 1,219 votes, according to tallies Thursday.
Before entering politics, Salerno wrote software for private markets and sold his business to S&P Global, he said.
“The more people I met, the more we got our message out, the more we could feel our support and momentum growing,” Salerno said. “I knew we were winning people over, it was just a question of whether we could connect with enough of them before primary day.”
Alexander said Salerno jumped the gun with the announcement as more votes still needed to be counted, notably in Cumberland County, where the remaining ballots will be tallied Saturday.
“I do believe Mr. Salerno was a little premature,” Alexander said Thursday. “We need to allow for every vote to be counted, and I won’t concede until that’s done. I know we have a slim chance of pulling this out, but I’m not going to back down until it’s over. It’s way too early to call this race.”
Depending on how close the race ends up being once all the votes are calculated, Alexander said he may ask for a recount.
“We haven’t made that decision right now, but if it’s close enough for a recount, stay strapped in,” Alexander said. “Things will definitely get interesting.”
