A Democrat is making an uphill bid to win one of two seats open on the Board of County Commissioners, vying against the two Republican incumbents for a spot.
Eric Morey, a newcomer to local politics and a relative of current county Commissioner Will Morey, a Republican, is competing against Bobby Barr and Andrew Bulakowski for a post.
Morey spoke with the Herald about the county issues he feels are important; Bulakowski and Barr declined interviews.
A Democrat has not won county office since Jeff Van Drew vacated his position as commissioner in 2002 for a seat in the state Assembly.
In a phone interview, Morey said that issues of transparency, year-round employment and open communication with constituents are the most important to his campaign. He said he hopes that voters will see the current board’s resistance to greater transparency as a sign of the need for change.
Morey grew up in Cape May County and graduated from Rowan University with a degree in finance and economics. His professional background is diverse: He was once a waiter and bartender, later worked as a manufacturing manager at Cellular Tracking Technologies, a tech company at the county airport, and also worked in corporate credit risk management for a Fortune 100 company. He lives in Wildwood Crest and now works full time as a caregiver for his father, who is unable to move the left side of his body and requires 24/7 care.
“The little things you do every day, he needed assistance with. There’s a lot of work involved with that … dealing with insurance companies, denials, going through the appeal process to get the care and services needed; it’s pretty all-encompassing,” Morey said.
His campaign had unlikely origins. His name did not appear on the ballot in the June primary, which decides eligibility for the Nov. 4 election. He ran a word-of-mouth write-in campaign and earned the 300 votes necessary to appear on the November ballot. When he ran in June, he did not have the financial backing of the local Democratic party, and still today, he said that the vast majority of his funding comes from individual donors.
“I’m really stepping in from the outside,” Morey said.
Morey said the current board has poorly communicated its goals and actions to the public. He cited several examples: The commissioners do not provide video access to their meetings, and their meeting minutes, either from their regular commission meetings or associated caucuses, are insufficiently detailed to help readers understand what happened.
He used the Cape May County Airport as a recent example of poor leadership from the county. Last year the commissioners made a last-minute decision not to renew the lease with the Delaware River and Bay Authority to operate the airport site.
The decision puts Cape May County on the hook for tens of millions of dollars that must be repaid to the authority for its investments in the property. Morey said that the reasons for the severed relationship were not clear, and that justifications for the decision trickled in over time only after the decision was made.
The commissioners recently said the plan is to have mixed-income housing built at the airport, but they were light on details and gave no timeline. Morey questioned why the county waited for more than a year to announce plans for housing there.
“There was confusion about what that plan is, and if it’s even possible,” he said. “That’s the kind of discussion that should be open, rather than just declaring it so and not inviting a lot of feedback.”
Morey said that his experience in finance will help him on the commission. He said that there is a lot of “low-hanging fruit” that could bolster year-round employment. He said that many nonprofits could use small grants from the county to great benefit. “Nonprofits with small budgets tend to be very efficient; they know exactly what a little bit of money could do for them,” he said.
He said that solar panels on county land could bring in additional revenue. He said that the county should help residents connect their own solar panels to the electricity grid, in conjunction with state programs that lower solar energy’s cost of entry, to help ease the ever-increasing cost of electricity.
“That’s not on the radar of the current commissioners,” he said.
Morey also said that the county needs to work to encourage more year-round industry in the county. “I was fortunate enough to find a job here in Cape May County at Cellular Tracking Technologies,” he said. Cellular Tracking Technologies has a long-term lease at the airport’s Tech Village.
The Tech Village exists because the county saw a need for year-round employment and carved a section of the aiport out for businesses that could bring year-round technology jobs. But today, Morey said, an insurance agency is going into the Village and is receiving a discounted lease despite not fitting into the original plan for the space. He used this as another example of poor communication and leadership from the county.
“It doesn’t bother me that it’s a company that doesn’t manufacture something, but its hard to find out from the county what the process was that led to this result,” he said. “It’s a pattern we see with this current group of commissioners. They make decisions that are hard to follow, how they got there, what they are looking forward to.
“People who are asking questions of them are not getting clear answers, and sometimes not getting answers at all. That’s the antithesis of how people want their communities to run.”
Barr was first sworn into office in 2022 and is the director of health, planning, sheriff’s and veterans affairs and economic development for Cape May County. He is a lifelong resident of Ocean City, where he previously served as council president and Fourth Ward councilman.
His biography on the county website says that, during his time as a member of the Ocean City Council, he helped the development “of a new American Legion Post 524 building, the remodeling of 52nd Street playground, and various drainage improvements to relieve flood-prone areas of routine tidal flooding.”
In a 2024 interview with the Ocean City Sentinel, Barr said that he hopes to bring year-round jobs to the county at Tech Village.
He is also a legislative aide to Van Drew.
He told The Press of Atlantic City in an interview that he is running again to “finish the job,” especially regarding economic development at the airport.
Barr also said that he is working to get more money from Trenton. “We’re working with our legislators to make sure Trenton is accountable. We sent a lot of money to Trenton and get back pennies,” he told The Press.
Bulakowski, who is vice director of the Board of Commissioners and a commissioner since 2022, is the county’s director of transportation, facilities, services and the county’s zoo and park system.
He has dedicated much of his life to charity and volunteerism. He has logged more than 4,000 volunteer hours, for which he was awarded the U.S. Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award.
He is a licensed 100-ton master captain, studied labor law and construction management at Rutgers and at Gloucester Community College, and currently lives in Lower Township.
Bulakowski, who also spok,e with The Press, spent much of his interview talking about the county’s decision to privatize the Crest Haven Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Allaire Health Services began operating the nursing center in January 2024 following criticism from members of the public and unionized workers at the center at commission meetings.
“It was a tough decision, probably the hardest I’ve had to make as a county commissioner,” Bulakowski told The Press. “It was the right thing to do for the taxpayers.”
Contact the reporter, Collin Hall, at 609-886-8600, ext. 156, or by email at chall@cmcherald.com.
