The primary election last week did more than winnow the field of candidates for governor.
It signaled, for many, the demise of politics as usual in New Jersey, where for generations county political party bosses have wielded nearly absolute control over candidates and ballots in order to win elections, maintain power and enjoy the spoils.
“I see a lot of indications that it’s a new era,” said Julia Sass Rubin, a professor at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers. “We’ve lifted this artificial bias that the (county) line imposed.”
Unlike other states, New Jersey historically constructed ballots with columns, or lines, of candidates grouped by who has endorsed them — including county party organizations — rather than the offices they sought. This gave a tremendous advantage to candidates who appeared in the first column on the ballot.
U.S. Sen. Andy Kim challenged the ballot construction last year in his successful campaign to replace disgraced U.S. Sen. Robert Menedez and a federal court ordered that candidates be listed by office block rather than endorsement lines. Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, in March signed legislation for a ballot redesign, minus the line.
The primary on Tuesday, June 10, was the first full, regular ballot to be constructed after the court and legislative changes.
“The loss of the line is a blow to party organizations who had come to rely on it, and perhaps excessively so in recent years,” said Ben Dworkin, founding director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.
The primary election offered clear evidence of a blow to some of the most powerful county party organizations across the state.
“We’re in a transition,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for Politics at Rider University. “We’re definitely in a transitional period.”
On the Democratic side, voters went against county organization endorsements in six of the 21 counties, including strongholds Essex and Union, where Newark Mayor Ras Baraka defeated Rep. Mikie Sherrill, and in Camden, where voters picked Sherrill over former Senate President Steve Sweeney. In Hudson, in a down-ballot race, Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla and Katie Brennan won rogue campaigns for a pair of Assembly seats in District 32, ousting Assemblywoman Jessica Ramirez, one of three Democratic incumbents statewide who lost primary challenges.
On the Republican side, voters chose Jack Ciattarelli, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, over outspoken former radio host Bill Spadea, who had the backing of the Ocean County GOP, and state Sen. Jon Bramnick, a moderate endorsed by the Morris County organization.
Dworkin was circumspect about what those outcomes might portend.
“We don’t know if this is a unique set of circumstances or whether, really, it’s a trend,” he said. “That’s going to take a few cycles for a consensus to develop.”
Rubin, however, was sanguine about the results.
“In terms of the governor’s race, the fact that nine counties did not go the way of the endorsed candidate, that’s really significant,” she said. “For New Jersey, this is an earthquake.”
While tremors were felt across the state, the epicenter was clearly in Camden County, where insurance executive George Norcross III once exerted total control over Democratic politics and built a machine that dominated Garden State elections since the last century.
Norcross — famously caught on tape boasting, “In the end, the McGreeveys, the Corzines, they’re all going to be with me. Not because they like me, but because they have no choice.” — was indicted last year on corruption charges. (They were later dismissed by a state judge.) Ahead of the indictment, though, Norcross, who now spends most of his time in Florida, had announced he was stepping back from political activity, leaving Democrats hanging.
“There seems to be a little bit of a power vacuum” in Camden, Rasmussen said. “That led to people maybe being a bit asleep at the switch.”
There had been hope that a resurgent governor’s primary showing by Sweeney, once the second most powerful politician in Trenton, could revive the county organization. Sweeney lost his Senate seat to trucker Ed Durr, a first-time candidate, in 2021. Four years later, it was even worse. Sweeney couldn’t carry Camden, finishing second with a woeful 23% of the vote despite the county organization’s support and resources.
“If Camden can’t deliver,” Rubin said, “that speaks to a machine that doesn’t have any power.”
The county’s demise was highlighted by the returns for county party committee seats in Cherry Hill, the largest municipality in the county and the longtime base for the Camden County Democratic Committee.
In addition to the elected public offices on the ballot, primary voters also selected local representatives for the partisan organizations. In Camden, 522 committee slots were up for grabs, most of them elected by hyper-local districts representing about 750 registered Democrats each.
In Camden County, 522 committee slots were up for grabs. Unlike most of the rest of the state, where committee posts are elected by hyper-local districts representing about 750 registered Democrats each, that’s not how it works in Camden.
In Cherry Hill, specifically, the 74 committee seats are elected at large, rather than by district, and the slate endorsed by the organization was presented in a single bloc on the ballot.
But three renegade progressive candidates for the municipal seats, positioned at the top of the ballot, crushed the de facto party line. In doing so, according to their reading of the county party’s bylaws, the winners will be responsible for filling the other 71 seats.
Yael Bromberg, a lawyer involved in the recent, successful legal challenges to New Jersey’s county line ballot design, says those who wanted to maintain the status quo failed to work around the court rulings.
“This is a system defended by the Camden County Democratic Committee and the clerk, and they have to live with the consequences,” she said.
Camden County Democratic Committee leaders, caught completely off guard, had a muted response.
“Based on last night’s results, we want to recognize and congratulate the members of the Progressive party who have gained three seats on the Cherry Hill Democratic Committee,” chair Jim Beach and vice-chair Barbara Holcomb said in a statement issued Wednesday, according to news site 70and73.com. “At this juncture, we will be reserving further comment about the future of the committee until the election has been certified.”
Even so, Bromberg said, in Camden and statewide, “voters made their voices clear” at the ballot box.
“What we saw in this election was an unprecedented number of qualified candidates really running for office … and it boosted turnout,” Bromberg said. “We’ve seen real progress.”