Seth Wenig/AP Photo
Rep. Andy Kim greets supporters outside the Bergen County Democratic convention in Paramus, New Jersey, March 4, 2024.
There were some early rumblings a week ago. Steven Fulop’s resume may just say mayor, but he’s been in that position for a decade, Jersey City is the second-biggest city in the state, and Fulop is running for governor next year. He’s always cultivated a kind of outsider persona, but he endorsed Phil Murphy for governor in 2017, and endorsed Murphy’s wife Tammy for Senate in 2024, joining virtually every ambitious politician and county boss in the state.
I’m sure Fulop didn’t see much of a choice. If you wanted to get ahead in New Jersey politics, you had to endorse Tammy Murphy. That was the expectation in a state that hasn’t really had contestable elections for a while, because the establishment of the party could by a wave of their hand choose winners and losers. And they had a long enough memory that being on the wrong side of the winners was nowhere to be for anyone with thoughts of higher office.
So when Fulop came out one week ago and said, “At this point, I don’t think it’s in the state’s best interest for Tammy to continue her campaign,” while switching his endorsement to Andy Kim, it was a signal that the old rules just didn’t work anymore. The extreme gap in quality of candidate between Kim and Murphy just blew up the corrupt bargain that had held in New Jersey for decades, and may turn that state into something approaching a democracy.
Yesterday, Murphy did indeed drop out, a stunning turnaround for someone who seemed destined to waltz into a Senate seat. Kim won this race on the ground, in a series of grassroots performances at the handful of county conventions that weren’t rigged from the get-go. He won just about every single convention with a secret ballot (except for Bergen County, where party boss Paul Juliano seemed to still control the process), and demonstrated that voters would tilt in the same direction.
That didn’t necessarily mean Murphy had no chance. She still had the endorsement in nine out of 21 counties, most of which were awarded by the fiat of the county chair. Several of those counties were among the biggest in the state; more primary voters were expected to come from counties with a Murphy endorsement. And 19 of the 21 counties in New Jersey use the controversial “county line” system, giving endorsed candidates prime space on the ballot while unendorsed challengers are sent to hard-to-find corners known as “ballot Siberia,” with a proven effect on election outcomes.
But it’s not a stretch to suggest that polling was available to Murphy showing that she could not succeed. In her farewell speech, she admitted that she would have to go negative to win, something you do when you’re losing. The edge in ballot position—a more modest edge than at first suspected because Kim won so many of the contested conventions—would not survive voter opinions on Murphy, a first-time candidate who was a Republican for much of her adult life with little to recommend but her family name and the support of political bigwigs trying to win whatever favor they could out of Trenton.
There was probably an element of “lose the battle, win the war” here. Lurking in the background of this race was a lawsuit to end the county line, which gives party bosses their power. Kim, while trying to win the Senate race despite the built-in disadvantages, had launched the lawsuit and sought an injunction against the county line, arguing that the ballot system is “fundamentally unjust and undemocratic.” The party bosses might have figured that, if Murphy were to drop out and they all endorsed Kim (which is what appears to have happened), Kim would drop the lawsuit, and they would retain the ballot weapon for future use.
They were wrong. Kim’s adviser Anthony DeAngelo immediately told the New Jersey Globe that the congressman still supported abolishing the county line; his case received a hearing from federal district court judge Zahid Quraishi last week. “The status of our injunction remains in the hands of the judge and we remain ready to strongly advocate for the changes the Congressman and so many others have called for,” DeAngelo said.
Incredibly, New Jersey’s attorney general Matt Platkin—who was appointed by Murphy and is close to the Murphy family—refused to defend the state in the county line lawsuit, saying in a statement that his office believed the system to be unconstitutional. Other New Jersey leaders like Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D) have called for the county line to be terminated.
Last week, the leadership of both parties in the state legislature released a statement of their own, saying that they would “launch a bipartisan discussion” about reforming the county line, insisting that the legislature would be the proper venue for any changes. One of those leaders, state Senate President Nick Scutari, is himself the chair of the Union County Democratic Committee, in one of the counties where party chairs virtually unilaterally decide the county line endorsements. Craig Coughlin (D), Speaker of the state Assembly, works for the law firm that is defending the county clerks in the case.
At the time, that statement seemed like lip service, a way to promise tweaks while preserving the system. But with Kim not relenting on the court case, the legislative leadership might be saddled with a losing hand. Judge Quraishi hasn’t said when he would make a decision, but the rumbling among observers is he’s going to rule in favor of the injunction. Even if it stays in place for this primary, the days of the county line seem to be numbered.
So Andy Kim didn’t just win a primary. He might have forced the machine to relinquish its iron grip. And politics just might be viable again in the Garden State. Several incumbents drew primary challengers across the state this year, including Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah against 87-year-old Bill Pascrell in the northern part of the state. Primaries against the line are usually fruitless affairs; a regular ballot won’t usher in a wave of change by itself, but it will at least give challengers a chance.
New Jersey has perhaps the most connection in the modern day to the old-line machine politics of the past. Reforms have weakened the power of Tammany Hall and its antecedents virtually everywhere, except in New Jersey. Voters have generally decided that they want to be in control of who represents them, and this simple request has imploded the gilded towers of the presumed deciders in our politics.
That’s not to discount the achievement here, though. The combination of a comically corrupt senator and what people clearly saw as a corrupt process to replace him proved too much for the system to bear. But without Kim stepping up, with his profile as an ethical anomaly in the state and a message to run directly against that corruption, to loudly highlight the deficiencies of the system, it probably would have lingered on a while longer. It turns out that running on an actual belief system in politics can defeat the cynicism of a machine.
