Because New Jersey has one of the most corrupted anti-democracy political systems in the country, where bosses— from each of the corrupt political parties— pick candidates, news out of the state is almost always bad. Yesterday the Newark Star-Ledger featured an OpEd by officials of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice about the notorious "county line" on the state’s primary ballots. It explains why New Jersey has some of the shittiest politicians in America— think Robert Menendez (D) and his son (D) and Tom Kean (R) and Jefferson Van Drew (R). Even the best candidates wind up playing footsie with the county bosses for their own self-preservation.
Ryan Heygood and Henal Patel focused in on the race to replace Menendez Sr with the governor’s wife (a wealthy lifelong Republican pretending to be a Democrat) but their explanation of how corrupt politicians like Phil Murphy use the county-line system is what’s most valuable. “[U]nfortunately,” they wrote, “though the election [to replace Egyptian agent Bob Menendez] hasn’t yet happened, the decision of who will win the Democratic primary race has likely already been made for us.” When the governor’s wife announced her campaign, it “came ready-made with the endorsements of party leaders across the state. While this could pass for just another candidate announcement in another state, in New Jersey it is essentially a fait accompli. In New Jersey, this announcement effectively makes the upcoming primary election beside the point.
That’s because in the Garden State, chairs in most county branches of major political parties decide who they want to run, and then literally place them on the ballot in a line or column— the “county line”— with maximum visibility.
Once that happens, the election is essentially sewn up— a result partly of positional bias, a phenomenon where a significant percentage of people choosing between a set of visually presented options will demonstrate a bias toward the first option.
Candidates on the county line in New Jersey gain, on average, a 35% advantage at the polls— effectively guaranteeing them a win. No incumbent state legislator on the county line has lost a primary since 2009, and only two congressional incumbents on the line have lost a primary in the last 50 years.
In the coming weeks, more private deals will take place and be announced in a series of public endorsements by politically connected people, elected officials, and faith and other community leaders, ensuring that Ms. Murphy will get the “county line.”
The other candidates? They are often relegated to “ballot Siberia,” way off to the side and easy to miss, appearing as stray candidates. Off-the-line candidates are then forced to not only run against their opponent in a specific race but essentially also against other candidates on the county line.
So next year, a candidate running off the line in the U.S. Senate race would also, in effect, have to run against the party leaders’ preferred candidate for President.
…New Jersey stands alone as the only state in America with the grossly anti-democratic practice of “the line.” In the rest of the country, candidates are grouped on the ballot by the office they are running for.
Because the county line is so powerful, it ensures that our elected officials, from city council members to state legislators to members of Congress, are chosen by and accountable to party chairs instead of voters.
The most important strategic move a candidate can make, leading up to a primary election, is to garner the support of their party chair, not the voters.
This shift in priority diminishes the importance of voters to candidates and binds candidates to the existing political machinery. Candidates who cannot or do not want to garner the support of party chairs are unlikely to win— and might not even run.
The county line undemocratically dilutes the voting strength of voters, particularly of Black and other voters of color, who are always hurt most by democracy restrictions. While New Jersey is almost half people of color, we have some of the worst racial disparities in America. That makes diluting the votes of these voters especially pernicious.
While we rail against voter suppression in the South, the county line in New Jersey is itself a sophisticated form of voter suppression. While voter suppression elsewhere might outright block voters from exercising their right to vote, our suppression manifests itself here in a different, but also harmful and racially discriminatory way.
Here in New Jersey, we decide who is on the ballot and how they are positioned on it, such that it might not matter whether or how voters vote because the outcome has already been decided well in advance of the election.
The line is a frontal assault on our democracy. This is true no matter how qualified— or not— a candidate on the line happens to be.
…The line is currently being challenged in court and will eventually be struck down as unconstitutional. But for now, Ms. Murphy, already advantaged by her husband’s name— and supported, along with other candidates, by party bosses— is almost guaranteed a victory.
Unless we do something.
We, New Jersey voters, can demand that New Jersey hold its upcoming primaries more openly— without using the party line— starting next year and let the best candidate win based on their merits.
Tom Moran’s column was also devoted to the toxicity of the governor’s wife. Tammy Murphy is such a terrible candidate that this grotesque bit of uniquely New Jersey nepotism could actually lose a senate seat in a state that Biden won by 16 points to a Republican. One woman who worked on the governor’s notoriously sexist campaign told Moran that “I’ve seen nothing to show she’s qualified for this position. Yes, we should have a woman in the Senate. But it’s a slap in the face to have someone with no relevant experience put up as our best option. Women are not interchangeable.”
Moran wrote that the wife “is presenting herself as a champion of women, taking credit for improvements in maternal health care, and promising to smash the glass ceiling and become New Jersey’s first woman U.S. senator. But look a little deeper, and it gets complicated fast. For one, many others were working hard on maternal health for years before the First Lady claimed it as her cause.”
But there is fury at the First Lady as well, from women who worked on the governor’s toxic 2017 campaign and feel betrayed by her. The same goes for women who fought against gag orders that blocked them from discussing what they considered to be a misogynist crew around the governor and First Lady, men who have remained in the Murphys’ inner circle to this day.
Their testimony could prove damaging among Democratic primary voters, especially the women voters the First Lady is courting.
…“I’m extremely negative about this campaign,” Nancy Erika Smith, a Montclair lawyer and champion of women’s causes, represented Gretchen Carlson in her successful harassment lawsuit against Fox News. “If Mrs. Murphy is going to present herself as his equal partner and take credit for the work of this administration, she has to face the failures, too, particularly with regard to women.”
…The governor’s most tragic failure of women, and the most inexcusable, was his neglect of the epidemic of rapes at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility by prison guards. It was documented in horrifying detail in a 2018 report from the federal Department of Justice, which found that sexual assaults of inmates by guards there was “severe and prevalent through the prison.”
The governor took no significant action to stop it for three years, and resisted calls to fire his incompetent Corrections Commissioner, Marcus Hicks, even after the Senate passed a resolution calling for his resignation in a unanimous bipartisan vote.
The governor finally agreed to a federal consent decree in 2021, and announced plans to eventually close the prison. What tipped the balance was a political embarrassment, a midnight attack by prison guards who assaulted several women inmates in January of 2021. Even then, Murphy tried to hide the assault, which was revealed weeks afterward by the Star-Ledger and Nj.com. This was no change of heart; it was political damage control.
You have to wonder: How many women were raped during the three years when the governor dawdled?
The Edna Mahan failure is on the governor, not the First Lady. But there were plenty of women, and men, who were horrified after reading the 2018 DOJ report. So, you have to wonder if Tammy Murphy at least spoke to her husband about it. Again, I asked and her team would not answer. The mistreatment of players on a women’s team owned by the Murphys, Gotham FC, may come up as well.
So who are the top criminal machine bosses behind Murphy’s wife, the characters who are responsible for the grotesque corruption that defines New Jersey politics?
George Norcross, New Jersey’s capo dei capi controls the southern part of the state and even put his worthless brother, Donald, into Congress
Craig Guy and Brian Stack- Hudson
LeRoy Jones and Phil Alagia (sitting in for Joe DiVincenzo)- Essex
Nick Scutari- Union
Peg Schaffer Somerset
Paul Juliano- Bergen
Kevin McCabe and Gary Taffett- Middlesex
Lenny Currie- Passaic
Last week, the Washington Post reported that the race between Andy Kim and the governor’s wife is a test of the power of the Democratic machine. Rep. Kim told reporters Tobi Raji, Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell that he believes “that our democracy and ultimately, who the voters choose, is not dependent upon who’s the most connected person. It’s about who can speak to the voters and be able to represent what they want to see in our democracy.”
“[I]nsiders and members of the state party— who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter— have raised concerns about the process in which Murphy has received these endorsements,” they wrote.
“You will not find one person who was happy about this unless they are an employee of either the governor or the first lady,” said one New Jersey Democratic Party leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They’re worried about the perception of nepotism, especially in the wake of the Menendez corruption allegations,” a second Democratic insider said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter freely. “Corruption and nepotism aren’t the same things. But replacing one with the other is not exactly the best way to improve New Jersey’s image.”
“Endorsing anyone other than Tammy Murphy is like picking a fight with the sitting governor and that’s uncomfortable,” the insider continued. “They all have business in Trenton.”
They also noted that “Progressive organizations and state officials have long criticized the county line system.” The New Jersey Working Families Party is another progressive group calling for abolishing the county-line system.