HOWELL — Republican Township Councilman Peter Tobasco has added his name to the list of candidates who are running in the June primary for the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders.

The seats presently held by Republican freeholders Amy Handlin and Edward Stominski will be up for grabs in the November general election.

The top two vote-getters in the June GOP primary will earn the right to run in the November general election. Seeking the Republican nominations are Tobasco, Handlin, Stominski, Matawan Mayor Robert Clifton and Spring Lake Councilman Gary J. Rich Sr.

With the idea of a candidacy only emerging over the weekend of April 10-11, Tobasco, who needed 130 signatures on an election petition that had to be filed by 4 p.m. April 12, was able to get 137 signatures. He said his abrupt decision to run for the county seat followed a meeting that was held in Keyport on April 10.

He said the meeting was attended by about 80 key Republicans, including some from Howell and the Bayshore area of the county who have found themselves more and more unhappy with the current Republican leadership. Those feelings came to the forefront last week after published reports detailed a split between Stominski and Monmouth County Republican leader William Dowd.

Tobasco said the displeasure came to a head following the disclosure that Dowd and a few key shore area Republicans had decided not to back Stominski’s re-election bid without getting input from the rest of the county’s Republican leaders.

He said the GOP representatives who were present at the April 10 meeting were not only upset over the recent de­velopments, but were feeling increasingly disrespected and disenfranchised from the political process at the county level and have been for some time.

Tobasco said he left the meeting in Keyport encouraged by many of those who were present to make his bid for freeholder. He said he immediately began seeking signatures on his election peti­tion.

Referring to towns like Howell, Matawan and Holmdel, Tobasco said, "There are a lot of towns that feel disre­spected and under-represented" at the county level. He also observed that for many years there has not been an oppor­tunity for anyone to put up a candidate for county office since the incumbents controlled the nominating process.

Tobasco said Dowd’s meeting a week earlier with only a handful of prominent Republicans when deciding the party’s di­rection in the county — and making the decision not to back Stominski — was in­dicative of the ongoing disrespectful atti­tude by the party’s entrenched elite for the northwestern part of the county.

Tobasco, a resident of the county for more than 20 years who is married to a lifelong resident of the county, said he knows and loves the county well.

He noted that Howell, at 62 square miles, is the second largest municipality in Monmouth County and has a little of everything and is emblematic of what makes up the rest of the county. He said he has sailed, sledded, kayaked, hiked and biked all over the county in the course of his personal pursuits as well as in the performance of his civic duties and his many years as a player and coach for several sports leagues and organizations.

Tobasco said his knowledge of the county would serve him well as a free­holder and his goal would be an inclu­sionary board that would work to advance the needs of the entire county.