DeForest Soaries, American minister and politician, 30th Secretary of State of New Jersey
Reverend DeForest Blake "Buster" Soaries, Jr. (born August 20, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York) is an African-American Baptist minister, author and public advocate, from Montclair, New Jersey. He is the former Secretary of State of New Jersey and former chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission. He was the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey, a position he had held since November 1990 until his retirement from the church in June 2021.