the first lady wasn't the only US Senate candidate to drop out of the primary GOP Contender and former news12 New Jersey reporter Alex zadan also announced today he's dropping his bid that leaves Republican entrepreneur Curtis Bashaw and Menda mayor Christine Serrano Glassner left to fight for that nomination anyone else looking to get on the June primary ballot had until 400 p.m today to file showing they have the required signatures to secure a spot that applies to Senate and Congressional hope Falls all the way down to the local level for more on where things stand I'm joined by senior writer Colleen O'Dea, Colleen what a day uh truly remarkable in the political landscape uh so far from everything we know about the filing any surprises that we weren't expecting in terms of candidates well other than this Senate surprise um not not really you know we a lot of these races have been building up um and they haven't gotten an awful lot of attention just because of all the attention that was paid to the senate race and you know in particular on the Democratic side but we're still going to have a senate race in both the Democratic and Republican primaries yeah we've been talking a lot of course about the Front Runners in the US Senate uh primary were there any names added to that list that haven't been uh in the mix up until this point yes so we've there is a a republican who we have haven't heard about before Peter valer Roi he's from Sussex County from Newton and he is running as a Conservative Republican um you know what kind of chances he has without having any kind of party backing you know as we know all about the party line um you know that's really unclear but um so he would be the third Republican in the race so this is obviously procedural you have to get the filing in you have to show that you had the signatures but what happens next because we have seen races fall apart in years past um when other candidates and people outside of uh the candidacy have filed challenges to those petitions right so that's going to be happening over the next week um for the Senate you need a thousand signatures uh for the house you really only need 200 signatures which is not a hugely High bar but there are some candidates who came in with just a little more than 200 and yes we have seen in the past and certainly I I would expect it will happen this year that some folks um may have signatures that wind up being uh unvalidated and so then those folks uh by April 3D will know who winds up not making it onto the ballot yeah what's the next big date we need to be looking at obviously the April 3D date um but we're just two months out from the June primary what's next on your calendar that you're keeping tabs of yeah it's really not that far away um we at the end of the month uh candidates have to file their next reports with the FEC quarterly reports so those come out usually by mid April those would be public um so we'll certainly be looking and seeing how the the money races is shaking out you know we had seen some surprises in the eighth District where Rob Menendez the Senator's son is the incumbent and is facing a challenge from the Hoboken mayor Robbie Bala who had raised more money than him he was raised almost a million dollars um you know money can really matter in these races so um you know money could be important also in a race like in the 9th where you have Bill pascrell one of the oldest members of Congress and a long serving Congressman a Democrat facing a challenge from the mayor of Prospect Park he filed a petition with more than a thousand signatures which is a healthy number so I would think he's going to stay on the ballot yeah you know we're also still waiting for this decision from a John about abolishing the county party line on the ballot how much could that affect uh these races going forward and the fact that you know Andy Kim the presumptive Democratic nominee at this point um has accepted the line now from the party chairs who previously didn't endorse him when Tammy Murphy was in the race you know that that's it's really such a a hard thing to to talk about in that respect because Kim obviously knows that the party line is very um influential it really can help him he's of course been arguing against it so now we're hearing that the counties that endorsed Tammy Murphy are just going to give the line to Kim that certainly seems like an undemocratic process but overall I would think that you know particularly in some of the house races the line is abolished and no one has the line that could possibly change the face of some races Colleen O'Dea for us Colleen thanks so much thank you, Bri