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.
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.