Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo
Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) speaks to voters in Jersey City, New Jersey, February 23, 2024. Kim is seeking the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Robert Menendez.
The moment Tammy Murphy, the ex-Republican first lady of New Jersey, got into the state’s U.S. Senate primary to replace the fantastically corrupt Bob Menendez, experts who know a thing or two about Garden State politics pronounced the race all but over. Even though Rep. Andy Kim, who had been running for months by that point, has held double-digit leads against Murphy in all public and private polling for the June 4 Democratic primary, Murphy immediately secured the endorsements of several powerful county chairs—many with financial incentives to do favors for Tammy’s husband, Gov. Phil Murphy—who could grant her something called “the county line.”
Ballot placement in most New Jersey counties is unique among all 50 states; the endorsed candidate gets prime placement while challengers are sent to “ballot Siberia.” This can give endorsed candidates an advantage of as much as 38 points on average, according to one study I wrote about last November.
Given this dynamic, it’s no surprise that Kim sued the county clerks in federal court yesterday, arguing that the county line is “fundamentally unjust and undemocratic,” and must be prohibited for the primary on constitutional grounds. There is actually an existing challenge to the county line that has survived a motion to dismiss eight times and is currently in discovery; the same lawyers pursuing that case are lead counsel on Kim’s lawsuit. Kim clearly hopes that the high-profile nature of the Senate primary will force the judiciary to act swiftly.
“Government … cannot constitutionally design a primary ballot to favor only those candidates who happen to be endorsed by a faction of a party’s leadership,” the lawsuit asserts. It asks for an injunction that will put in place a normal-looking ballot for the June primary, where all candidates for a particular race are grouped together.
But there’s been a more surprising turn of events in parallel with the legal fight. In the counties where the county line is determined by a convention rather than the whim of the chair, Kim has been contesting—and winning. It started in Monmouth, a Southern Shore county that Kim partially represents in Congress but which has been the home county of Murphy for 25 years. Kim won the convention in a relative blowout, 56-38. Kim then trounced Murphy in Burlington County, his home county, by over 90 percent of the vote.
In smaller Hunterdon County, Kim prevailed after a seeming dirty trick, when county chair Arlene Quiñones Perez announced that any candidate receiving 30 percent of the convention vote would win the county line. She cleverly framed it as a response to Kim and other Senate candidates asking clerks to eliminate the county line altogether. But of course, eliminating the advantage in one county while keeping it for Murphy in others would represent unilateral disarmament for Kim. So delegates successfully appealed Quiñones Perez’s change, and voted Kim in as the endorsed candidate, 62-33 over Murphy.
Murphy still has the inside track in counties where the decision of the chair is all that is needed to secure the county line. But everywhere there’s been a contested convention, Kim has won. According to one analysis, Kim has the edge to become the endorsed candidate in seven counties and Murphy in ten counties, with two toss-ups. (The other two of New Jersey’s 21 counties don’t use a county line.) If Kim were to flip a lean-Murphy expectation and win populous Bergen County’s Democratic convention on March 4, he would be likely to gain the endorsement in counties with 40 percent of New Jersey’s expected primary vote. Murphy would have 51 percent, with 7 percent undecided and 2 percent no line.
In other words, despite the machine politics at play, there’s an outside chance for Kim to win the county line in enough places to blunt and almost totally nullify Murphy’s advantage. Working on two tracks, Kim is challenging a corrupt system while organizing to counteract that corruption in the handful of places where he can.
Meanwhile, Murphy’s statement about Kim’s lawsuit—whining that he is perfectly happy to participate in the county line process when he wins—shows a recognition that her grand plan to use insider connections to grab a Senate seat is faltering when it comes into contact with actual voters.
