A Senate candidate accused of nepotism has another advantage: the ballot
Tammy Murphy, the wife of New Jersey’s Democratic governor, announced early Wednesday that she was running to unseat the state’s embattled senior senator, Robert Menendez.
Within hours, she had received support from Democratic leaders in two counties, followed by a third the next day. That Friday, four more district leaders joined the chorus of praise.
Within 72 hours, Ms. Murphy, a first-time candidate with limited experience who had never been on the campaign trail, had won the support of Democratic leaders in a third of the state’s counties, who 56 percent of registered Democratic voters in New Jersey.
They had every reason to jump on board quickly. The fate of six of those seven county leaders depends in part on being in the governor’s good graces.
In many states, such expressions of support would have limited value. But in New Jersey, county leaders have enormous power in primaries because of election rules unique to the state. In 19 of the state’s 21 counties, Democratic and Republican leaders are allowed to place their preferred primary candidates on what’s known as “the line” — a preferential voting position that often means the difference between victory and defeat.
These county-endorsed candidates are placed between horizontal or vertical lines among the incumbent candidates best known to voters. Unendorsed candidates often appear on the sidelines – lone names in a nearby row or at the edge of the ballot, a location commonly referred to as “ballot Siberia.”
Good governance groups have labeled the decades-old practice as a relic of corrupt machine politics; Others have filed a federal lawsuit hoping to overturn it.
Now Ms. Murphy’s high-profile race in one of the nation’s bluest states is being seen as a test of the system itself at a time when Democrats are trying to take the moral high ground on issues of democracy.
Henal Patel, director of law and policy at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, called the line a “sophisticated form of voter suppression” that contradicts the state’s “halo of progressivism.”
“We like to think, ‘Those poor voters in the South — in Alabama and in Georgia,’” she said.
“But this is how we suppress voters in New Jersey,” she added.
Ms. Murphy is vying for the Democratic nomination against a field of candidates that includes Rep. Andy Kim, a third-term Democrat from South Jersey.
Mr. Kim, 41, entered the race a day after Mr. Menendez was indicted in what federal prosecutors described as an elaborate bribery scheme. He is one of the few elected leaders in New Jersey who has called for the line’s nullification, but he has acknowledged that he will nevertheless fight for the line in every county as he runs for Senate. (He has walked the line in all of his House primaries.)
Ms. Murphy, 58, who worked as a financial analyst before she and Gov. Philip D. Murphy married and has since volunteered on boards of nonprofits and philanthropic organizations, has been plagued by questions about nepotism from the start. If elected in November, she and the governor, a second-term Democrat, would hold two of New Jersey’s four state elected offices.
Even Mr. Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty to taking bribes and has not ruled out running for re-election, criticized her entry into the race. “They believe they are not accountable to anyone,” he said of the Murphys.
The governor, who declined to comment for this article citing the lawsuit challenging the county-line system, suggested last week that any backlash Ms. Murphy faced was sexist. “I think they resent her for being my wife,” he said on a call radio program on WNYC. “I bet if she was my husband it would be a different story.”
“She has overwhelming support,” he added, “and she has earned it.”
Yet six of the seven county leaders who endorsed Ms. Murphy within three days of her entry into the race also have financial incentives to appease the governor, who controls a budget that exceeded $54 billion last year and who has the final say on all legislation.
Two are lobbyists with millions of dollars in business with the state. Two of them have generous, taxpayer-funded jobs. One runs a law firm with clients who want to do business with the state. Another sits on the board of a hospital that receives millions of dollars in state subsidies.
Alex Altman, a spokeswoman for the Murphy campaign, said in a statement that the first lady worked within the existing system, “like every candidate this cycle.” The early endorsements were the result of “deep relationships she has built” and “her track record of building the Democratic Party in New Jersey and beyond,” Ms. Altman said.
No final decisions have been made on who will be assigned each county’s title for the June 4 primary, and it remains a matter of open debate in many counties. But there is no doubt that the candidate who wins the most county lines will have an extraordinary advantage.
No New Jersey legislator elected to run for the county line in all the counties he or she represented has lost a primary since 2009, according to a recent research by a professor at Rutgers University, Julia Sass Rubin. By comparison, in the remaining 49 states, 1,145 incumbent legislatures lost primaries during the same period. Candidates for Congress had a 38 percentage point advantage, the survey found.
Sam Wang, professor of neuroscience at Princeton University and head of the school’s Gerrymandering Project, called the line the “special New Jersey sauce” that “leads the eye.”
“We like lines of objects in a row,” Professor Wang said of its potential. Voters gravitate toward the candidates whose names appear on the line — and may overlook the others, he said.
The provincial line system is not without defenders.
Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said he believed the county line could be a useful tool for screening candidates and maintaining party identity. “It’s a bit like a board of directors making a recommendation to the shareholders,” says Professor Rasmussen. “It is up to voters whether or not to ratify the recommendations.”
The contours of Ms. Murphy’s primary have created an extraordinary situation for Democratic county chairmen.
LeRoy J. Jones Jr. is the chairman in Essex County, which includes Newark and has more Democratic voters than any other county in the state, and the chairman of the State Democratic Party; he is also a registered lobbyist with 1868 Public Affairs. Since 2018, when Mr. Murphy was sworn in, Mr. Jones has earned about $1.5 million in lobbying fees, including $378,000 in 2022, according to state lobbying records.
Mr. Jones said he provided early support because he had worked well with Ms. Murphy during the governor’s two terms and believed she would be a successful senator. He said he never felt pressured to support her to keep his position with the governor.
Kevin P. McCabe, chairman of the Middlesex County Democratic Organization, one of the most influential in the state, is also a partner at a lobbying firm, River Crossing Strategy Group. River Crossing announced just under $2 million in compensation in 2022. One customer, Equinor, is an energy company specializing in wind turbines. The Murphy administration is currently looking for a new supplier for one multi-billion dollar wind farm planned for the Jersey Shore.
Mr McCabe was also nominated by Mr Murphy for the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an unpaid position considered one of the most powerful political positions in the New York region, overseeing a $9 billion budget. (He was first nominated by former Gov. Chris Christie in 2018 and nominated again by Mr. Murphy in 2021.)
Mr McCabe had no comment on his support for Ms Murphy.
Paul A. Juliano, the Democratic chairman of Bergen County, the state’s most populous region, endorsed Ms. Murphy on the same day as Mr. McCabe and Mr. Jones. In March, the governor nominated Mr. Juliano will become CEO of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, a state job with a salary of $280,000. Mr. Juliano declined to comment on his approval.
Other supporters have financial ties to municipal or provincial governments, which receive both money and direction from state leaders.
Passaic County Democratic Chairman John Currie was hired by the Passaic County Board of Social Services for a part-time consulting job focused on social benefits in April 2018. The job pays $92,000 per year. (Mr. Currie said his job with Passaic County has nothing to do with the state, and that he supported Ms. Murphy because “she helped me a lot” when he was state chairman and the two are friends.)
Peg Schaffer, the Democratic chairwoman of Somerset County, runs a law firm that is regularly hired by local governments. Her biography about the company website also states that she “represents a number of out-of-state entities that would like to do business in New Jersey.”
Ms. Schaffer, who is also vice chair of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, said her support for Ms. Murphy was “completely based on who she is.”
“She is a voice that is not being heard down there,” Ms. Schaffer said of Congress.
George E. Norcross III, a powerful insurance executive, is not a county chairman but still has enormous influence over Camden County Democrats and others in South Jersey. He is the chairman of the supervisory board from Cooper Health System and Cooper University Hospital, which received more than $50 million in grants this year from the state.
Camden County’s Democratic chairman also endorsed Ms. Murphy the day after she entered the race. Mr Norcross declined to comment on the approval.
Even if Ms. Murphy wins the right to run in most provinces, voters will have the final say. And there are early signs that progressive groups that emerged in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when Democrats organized to weaken former President Donald J. Trump’s power in Congress, are mobilizing in Kim’s favor. This, combined with the high-profile nature of the race for Menendez’s seat, and renewed media attention on the county line itself, has left opponents hopeful that the state could be on the brink of change.
“If there’s a recipe for overturning it,” Ms. Patel said, “it’s now.”
Kitty Bennett research contributed.