Candidates line up for county executive races
Eleana Little, a long-shot candidate in the Democratic Party’s primary for county executive in Hudson County, knows she has to answer two big questions — one, who are you, and two, what’s a county executive? The five largest counties in New Jersey — Atlantic, Bergen, Essex, Hudson and Mercer — have a county executive, who is the chief officer of the county’s executive branch of government.
“If you stop someone in a coffee shop or on the train and ask them who’s your county commissioner, who’s your county executive, nine out of ten people aren’t going to be able to tell you,” Little said.
For Dan Benson, an Assemblyman in Mercer County since 2011, the prospect of moving from the legislative branch to the executive branch in the county where he once served as a freeholder — now called county commissioner — was a natural progression.
“You really have an opportunity to get a hands-on ability to make a really big difference in our communities. Mercer County is about 375,000 people and it’s just an amazing place and we have this opportunity to do some real good and that’s why we got involved,” said Benson.
With longtime county executives in Hudson and Mercer counties retiring, the race for their successors is on.
