Cape May County Democrats tonight voted not to take sides in the U.S. Senate primary between Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) and First Lady Tammy Murphy, which will essentially create an open primary.
The decision was recommended by the party leadership—former NJEA President Marie Blistan is the county chair—and ratified by a vote of the full county committee.
The conventional wisdom was that Kim, a three-term South Jersey congressman, had a slight edge in a head-to-head with Murphy.
Cape May cast slightly less than 1% of the statewide vote in the 2020 Democratic primary. With 18,207 registered Democrats, it ranks 20th in the state, just ahead of Salem. To put the size into perspective, Cape May has slightly fewer Democrats than Piscataway.
Blistan was one of the most powerful people in the state when she headed the New Jersey Education Association. She is trying to build a party that hasn’t won a countywide race since 2000 and felt strongly that her county committee members be empowered to make their own decisions.
Neither candidate attended the special meeting of county committee members – in Cape May, it’s not called a convention — instead preferring to focus on Mercer, which has nearly 100,000 more Democrats.
Cape May will also stay out of a three-way primary between Joseph Salerno, Carolyn Rush, and Tim Alexader to take on Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) in the 2nd district.
In 2022, Cape May cast 14% of the votes in the 2nd district Democratic primary. Alexander, a former prosecutor, had the Cape May line and edged out Rush by 523 votes, 57%-43%. Two years earlier, under a different map, Amy Kennedy scored an off-the-line victory in Cape May with 56% of the vote in a five-candidate field.
Alexander won the Ocean County Democratic line on Sunday.