A long-simmering fight over New Jersey’s unique primary ballot design reached a federal courtroom Monday in a case that has the potential to upend not only the state’s tense U.S. Senate race but Garden State politics in general.
A judge in U.S. District Court in Trenton heard more than eight hours of oral arguments in a federal lawsuit U.S. Rep. Andy Kim filed seeking to abolish the state’s “county line” system, in which candidates endorsed by county Democratic and Republican parties — often under the influence of party bosses — are bracketed together on primary ballots, with opponents listed to the side.
Julia Sass Rubin, an associate dean at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Policy at Rutgers, found that being on the county line gave congressional candidates an advantage of 38 percentage points.