Election Day is Tuesday April 1, 2014.
PARTY PRIMARIES: The nominating primary is Tuesday March 4, 2014, but only one candidate from each party is on the ballot.

The District is only the City of Westfield. (via Google Maps)

The special election to replace Rep. Don Humason includes the city of Westfield.  Read more on the race.

*NOTE: Not sure if this the election you are looking for? Enter your address on the Secretary of State’s website and find out where your polling place is.  After primary, defeated candidates’ names will be stricken out.  Parties and candidates arranged alphabetically.

Democrats

John Velis (via Facebook/Velis campaign)

John Velis

Offices Held: none, Army Reserve, JAG unit.
Profession: Attorney
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On the candidate (briefly): A first time candidate for public office, Attorney John Velis is probably the Democrats’ best chance in moons to wrest control of the notoriously Republican seat based in the Whip City, which voted for President Obama and elects Dems to local (non-partisan) offices. Indeed, by some accounts, the Republican who began the string of wins by the party was none other than Velis’ uncle, Peter, a retired superior court judge (Judge Velis is crossing party lines to support his nephew).  Velis and his uncle have a small practice in downtown Westfield. With deep name recognition, recently minted veteran status after a stint in Afghanistan and a stated desire to apply the skills gleaned over there (rather than merely note them), Velis has been amassing an army of supporters.  As a JAG, he visited locales in the Afghan countryside, on a law & order mission to places that had little in the way of either.  Self-identifying as a conservative Dems, he has been pitching himself as an advocate for Westfield and looking for consensus rather than ideological rigidity.  Still, winning Westfield, a city (in)famously resistant to change, could be Velis’ steepest challenge yet.

Republicans

Daniel Allie (via Facebook/Allie campaign)

Daniel Allie

Offices Held: Westfield City Council at-large (since 2014)
Profession: Printing/publishing
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On the candidate (briefly): While Daniel Allie has been active in Republican politics for some time, he is to many a blank slate, but for advocacy against raising the gas tax to fund the state’s transportation deficit.  Admittedly, as media attention has only begun to center on the race (including us), a full picture of Allie is not yet available.  Allie ran for and won an at-large seat on the Westfield City Council in 2013 in an election that felled a few Whip City incumbents.  While his likely opponent John Velis declared early, even before Don Humason won a special election for State Senate, Allie, also a vet, joined the race well after Humason’s victory.  Chatter (or trash talk coming from Team Blue), suggest the late entry of Allie was a sign Team Red was having trouble fielding candidates. No one from the Knapik Republican organization materialized before the late January filing date.  Whether Allie’s seeking a rep seat during the infancy of his Council tenure will prove a liability is impossible to know now, but he has said he’ll keep both seats. Around the time of the uncontested primary, Allie was discovered to have paid out campaign funds for a chiropractor, which is not allowed under state law.  He claimed to rectify the error, but the old report does not show that, although the next still could.