Marlboro GOP welcomes new chair, fends off perennial loser

Renzo Kolenovic, the former Marlboro GOP chair and antagonizer of the Monmouth GOP, loses yet another battle.

MARLBORO — Joseph Pernice was elected chairman of the Marlboro Township Republican Committee at the party’s June 17 reorganization meeting, handing the local organization to allies of the township’s governing Republicans and away from the faction aligned with outgoing chairman Renzo Kolenovic.

Michael Milman, the Marlboro Township Council President, presided over the meeting and certified Pernice the winner over Daniel Matarese, 30 votes to 28, after members present voted to permit proxy ballots for the organizational election. In a letter to Monmouth County Republican Chairman Shaun Golden and New Jersey Republican State Chairwoman Christine Giordano Hanlon, Milman wrote that the committee — which keeps no local bylaws — conducted the meeting under New Jersey law and Robert’s Rules of Order, with the proxy motion made, seconded, and adopted by the membership before balloting began.

“Based upon the vote of the committee and the procedures approved by the membership, Joseph Pernice was duly elected,” Milman wrote.

Kolenovic tells a different story. In a competing letter to Golden and Hanlon, the outgoing chairman reported a 29-to-28 result for Matarese with the proxies excluded and argued the votes were improperly admitted. Among his objections, Kolenovic invoked Monmouth County Republican bylaws restricting proxies to cases of religious observance — but those county bylaws do not govern the internal proceedings of a municipal committee, which under New Jersey law adopts its own rules.

The dispute is the latest chapter in a long-running feud. Kolenovic, a persistent critic of the Monmouth County Republican Committee who challenged Golden’s leadership, became a prominent backer and fundraiser for gubernatorial candidate Bill Spadea, endorsing him in December 2024. CJN previously reported that Kolenovic donated $1,000 to disgraced former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez — now serving an 11-year federal sentence — and $1,500 to far-left Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern in 2021, contributions that drew sharp condemnation from Marlboro Republicans. Milman, joined by council member Antoinette DiNuzzo and former councilman Juned Qazi, had publicly called for Kolenovic’s resignation as GOP chair.

With Spadea’s gubernatorial bid failing miserably and Kolenovic increasingly isolated due to his own antics, the June 17 result reads less as an upset than as a reckoning. Recognition of the new chairman now rests with Golden and Hanlon — the same county and state leaders Kolenovic spent the past few years antagonizing.

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