Numbers don’t lie and the numbers coming out of Passaic County told the story.

Paul DeGroot received 2,494 votes.

Tayfun Selen got 149.

Talk about a staggering gap.

And that gap is why DeGroot, a former prosecutor in Passaic County and now a resident of Montville, stands poised to be the Republicans’ congressional nominee in District 11. DeGroot was leading Selen by about 1,300 votes shortly after midnight.

DeGroot’s roots are in Passaic, so you expected him to do well there. But probably not as well as he did.
DeGroot’s smashing win in the district’s four Passaic towns – Little Falls, Totowa, Woodland Park and part of Wayne – easily offset Selen’s roughly 1,000 vote win in his home county of Morris.

“I put in three days of solid work in Passaic County,” DeGroot said. “I took nothing for granted.”

He added, “I didn’t see one Tayfun sign.”

The numbers proved that.

Selen had the “line” in Morris, but received less than 50 percent of the vote in what was a five-person field.

And in a more bitter pill for county GOP leaders to swallow, it looks as if incumbent Tom Mastrangelo will prevail over Sarah Neibart in a nasty fight for the nomination for county commissioner. Mastrangelo was leading by nearly 1,000 votes the last time the figures were updated.

Not only was Mastrangelo not endorsed by the Morris GOP Committee, some of his board colleagues campaigned against him.