Jason Blazakis, a former U.S. Department of State official who briefly ran for Congress in 2024, will seek the Democratic nomination for Hunterdon County Commissioner.
He wants to oppose Republican Shaun Van Doren, the incumbent since 2017.
A counterterrorism and economic sanctions expert who grew up in Warren County and now lives in Lambertville, Blazakis joined the race to take on Rep. Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) in New Jersey’s 7th district in June 2023; he withdrew from the race in February 2024, just before the start of county convention seasons.
Former Flemington Councilwoman Caitlin Giles-McCormick will take on veteran County Clerk Mary Melfi.
Democrats haven’t won a countywide election in Hunterdon since 1979, when Benjamin Kirkland was re-elected to a third term.
Republicans have a registration edge of just under 14,000 in Hunterdon County: 44,183 Democrats, 20,959 Democrats, and 44,183 unaffiliated voters. That’s not hugely different from the GOP registration advantage of about 17,000 ten years ago.
But elections in Hunterdon, once a Republican stronghold, Democrat Mikie Sherrill came within five points of Republican Jack Ciattarelli in last year’s governor’s race, and Donald Trump won Hunterdon by six points in 2024. Kean won Hunterdon by ten points that year.
Still, Republicans have fared better in countywide contests: Sheriff Fred Brown was re-elected by fourteen points in 2025, and Republican incumbent county commissioners won by fourteen points in 2024.
Blazakis joined the State Department in 2004 as an Afghanistan program officer assigned to the Embassy in Kabul. He had previously spent more than three years as a legislative assistant to Rep. Jim Saxton (R-Mount Holly), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and worked as a Domestic Intelligence analyst at the Congressional Research Service.
Since leaving the State Department in 2018, Blazakis had been a professor at Middlebury College’s Institute of International Studies, where he runs the Center of Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism. He also operates a geopolitical risk consultancy group and is a senior advisor at The Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security firm. He was among the 500 Americans sanctioned by the Russian Federation in 2022.
Blazakis’ late father spent 37 years as a decorated U.S. Army National Guard veteran, and his grandparents owned The Esquire Luncheonette in Princeton. He graduated from the University of Mississippi and received graduate degrees from Columbia and Johns Hopkins.
Giles-McCormick, a former non-profit executive, has worked at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority since 2024.
Melfi was elected County Clerk in 2001 and has been easily re-elected since then; Democrats did not put up an opponent against her in 2021. She was a Flemington councilwoman from 1994 to 2006.
