OPINION
Andy Kim’s victory in the U.S. Senate primary shows just how thoroughly New Jersey’s Democratic Party was transformed by the coalition that flipped five of our Republican congressional seats between 2016 and 2018. The center of gravity in the Party has shifted to rank and file Democrats who volunteer and donate for idealistic reasons, away from the Party organizations in Democratic stronghold counties that have jealously guarded their power to decide who governs the state. The power brokers who endorsed Tammy Murphy’s campaign failed to appreciate the magnitude of this change. Their future and the Party’s success in winning elections depends on embracing it.
When I launched my first Congressional campaign in 2017, I was naive about party primaries in New Jersey, and about how little say actual voters have in picking their candidates. I wasn’t alone — most of the Democrats I met campaigning over three elections, even those who follow politics closely, did not fully appreciate how things worked in our state.
My first introduction to the “party line” on the primary ballot did not make me militantly opposed to it. This was partly because three of the counties in my Congressional district (Hunterdon, Morris, and Warren) awarded the line in open conventions. I won those lines by speaking personally with hundreds of delegates, folks who had no personal or professional interest in the outcome, who could not be bought, or pressured, or swayed by TV ads. All they cared about was finding a Democrat who shared their values and who could win a traditionally Republican seat. It felt like grass roots democracy at its best. It made me a stronger general election candidate.
But over time, I learned some interesting things about how the institutional Democratic Party in New Jersey and our system for picking candidates sometimes makes it harder for Democrats to succeed. The rules that follow aren’t hard and fast, and there are exceptions to each. But in my experience, they hold largely true.
First, the main function of the Democratic Party organization in New Jersey is not to help Democrats win the hard races. It is to decide which Democrats are allowed to win the easy ones. This is a natural consequence of giving party leaders the power to give their favorite candidates a virtually insurmountable ballot advantage. If party chairs can singlehandedly pick their county’s Commissioners, legislators, and mayors, and a handful of chairs can band together to decide who our next governor or U.S. Senator will be, then of course these leaders are going to be preoccupied with using and preserving that power, instead of with what political parties are supposed to do, which is to expand the electoral map in their favor.
This is why the resources the organization raises and spends are concentrated mostly in Democratic stronghold counties and municipalities, instead of in winnable purple areas. It’s why in 2022, our institutional Party was much more involved in managing the succession from one Democratic Congressman to another in overwhelmingly Democratic Hudson County than in winning the only remaining contested Congressional race in the state (in my 7th District). In my campaigns, I worked with some wonderful local Democratic municipal clubs, but for volunteers and donors we built our own organization; the party at county and state levels had little to offer. I raised every single penny the state party “spent” on my behalf, and had to be vigilant to ensure the party didn’t skim off what we raised for other purposes. New Jersey’s other purple district Congressional Democrats have told me they experienced the same.
Second, party leaders prefer gerrymandering a smaller number of easy-to-win blue districts to allowing a larger number of potentially winnable purple ones, because this maximizes their power to pick candidates. In contested districts, county chairs face pressure to endorse the best, most electable candidates. But in safe districts, they don’t have to worry about winning in November, so they have more freedom to pick whom they want based on loyalty, favors or even family ties. I believe this was one reason Democratic insiders drew a Congressional map in 2021 that made 11 of our 12 House districts a lock for one party or the other, even if at the risk of losing a House seat. The organization did not handpick Andy Kim, Mikie Sherrill, or Josh Gottheimer when these talented outsiders first ran in districts few believed a Democrat could win. The map it drew will give it huge sway in choosing their successors.
Third, the Democratic organization spends more time on fights in the family that its voters don’t care about than on beating Republicans. This is another consequences of the party line — since party chairs have the power to choose and then influence elected officials, they naturally want to concentrate as much of that power as possible in and for the benefit of their counties, rather than working together to increase the number of Democrats they elect statewide.
When Jersey politicians get together, they talk about North vs. South; they gossip about which county will pick our next governor, and what trades and donations will be made to build a winning alliance. I enjoy these conversations for the same reason I love watching Game of Thrones. But not a single normal Democratic voter in New Jersey gives a damn if the lords of Middlesex, Camden, or Bergen get to choose our next king. They expect their party to be focused on one thing — winning elections everywhere to protect our health care, schools, and freedoms. This is a huge disconnect between the institutional party and its ascendant rank and file.
Fourth, New Jersey’s institutional Democratic Party cares much more about local, county, and state races than about federal races. This surprised me at first, but eventually made sense. As a Congressman, I could not deliver jobs or contracts or veto or sign bills in Trenton in which Jersey power brokers had a stake. In my first election, Union County’s Democratic chair, Nick Scutari, stuck his neck out to support me for no reason other than he thought I could win, but that was an exception. For the most part, state party leaders have shown too little interest in Congressional seats that decide the balance of power in Washington, and often use their endorsement power in federal races to protect their local and statewide interests. This is another disconnect with rank and file Democrats, who are increasingly motivated by national concerns.
Despite our self-defeating tendencies, Democrats still win statewide in New Jersey. How can we not with a one million voter registration advantage? Moreover, Republicans operate the same dumb party-line patronage system, and have the added burden of having to explain their party’s blind loyalty to Donald Trump.
But Democrats didn’t have to come close to losing a governor’s race in 2021. We didn’t have to passively watch MAGA extremists take over school boards in suburban and rural towns. We didn’t have to offer up to Republicans a Congressional seat when the survival of American Democracy depends on Democrats keeping the House.
Democrats need a party organization that prioritizes winning elections in purple and red areas over picking office holders in blue ones. This will sound crazy to Jersey insiders, but it would be obvious to almost anyone outside our state: our Democratic organization should dedicate more resources to swing counties like Morris, Hunterdon, Monmouth, and Atlantic and the municipalities within them where we can actually gain ground, than it does to stronghold counties like Middlesex, Bergen, Essex, Camden, and Hudson!
State and county party leaders should see themselves first and foremost as organizers helping candidates in these contested areas, in partnership with local grassroots groups, not as power brokers. They should wake up every morning asking: Who are the best candidates we can persuade to run in these places? What do they need from Trenton and Washington to deliver for their voters? How can we improve our message to give them the best chance?
Without question, the Democratic Party must stay rooted in and representative of the communities where most Democratic voters currently live. But Democrats in Newark, Camden, and Jersey City don’t need a party organization to tell them who their Democratic Representatives in Congress and the State Legislature must be. They need their party to win more seats in suburban and rural areas, so that the Representatives they send to Washington and Trenton are in the majority.
So long as party leaders can award the party line on the ballot, it’s hard to see these changes happening soon. The line encourages them to focus on all the wrong things, in all the wrong places. It creates conflict between party insiders and the activists who do most of the work of getting candidates elected. And so, the line should go — not just for the sake of democracy with a small “d” but for the good of the Democratic Party. We should thank both Andy Kim and Tammy Murphy for showing us that the old system is spent, and that a new one will serve New Jerseyans better.