After last Tuesday’s primary, the general election for Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown)’s House seat is set: Assemblyman Herb Conaway (D-Delran) on the Democratic side, physician Rajesh Mohan for the Republicans.
Each man had to get through a competitive primary to get to this point. Conaway defeated four fellow Democrats, among them Assemblywoman Carol Murphy (D-Mount Laurel), with the help of widespread party support and a large financial advantage, while Mohan beat three other Republicans in a race defined by the county organizational line (or lack thereof). Here’s the breakdown.
Conaway’s Democratic sweep
Long before any Democratic voters went to the polls to decide on Kim’s successor, local Democratic leaders in the 3rd district’s three counties gathered at conventions to decide on who would get the county organizational line, the ballot design system that groups party-endorsed candidates together. Conaway beat Murphy in landslides at all three, giving him what seemed to be a prohibitive advantage.
Then, on March 29, a federal judge ordered that the county line be abolished in this year’s Democratic primary. That breathed new life into the campaigns of Murphy and the other three Democrats on the ballot – civil rights attorney Joe Cohn, small businesswoman Sarah Schoengood, and teacher Brian Schkeeper – who no longer had to contend with ballots that were purposefully tilted in Conaway’s favor.
But even on fairer ballots, it turned out that Conaway had built up political advantages that were all but impossible to overcome. The assemblyman still had the lion’s share of endorsements and the many relationships he’d built up over his 26-year tenure in the legislature, which are meaningful even when they don’t impact the design of the ballot; he also substantially outraised the rest of the field, and got substantial help from several outside PACs.
When all is said and done, pro-Conaway expenditures will outstrip all other Democratic spending in the race by a margin of approximately four-to-one. With no major backers on their side to even the odds, Murphy, Cohn, Schoengood, and Schkeeper didn’t stand much of a chance.
That dominance is on clear display in the final 3rd district primary results: Conaway beat Murphy 50%-25%, with 12% going to Cohn, 10% to Schoengood, and 3% to Schkeeper. Conaway won nearly every town in the district, with Murphy winning three towns in rural southern Burlington County and fighting to a tie in suburban Hainesport.
Conaway’s single best town was Willingboro, a predominantly Black suburb that’s the most Democratic town in the district. Conaway himself isn’t from there – he lives in Delran, which he also won overwhelmingly – but he likely had appeal as the potential first Black congressman in South Jersey history.
In general, Conaway did best in the diverse towns along the Delaware River – towns that he and Murphy both represent in the legislature. Murphy, meanwhile, did better in the whiter, more conservative southern part of the county. (The towns in Conaway’s and Murphy’s 7th legislative district supported Conaway 55%-27%, while the 8th legislative district towns gave Conaway a much smaller 42%-31% margin.)
Murphy also came close to winning her hometown of Mount Laurel, losing it 41%-39%. There seemed to be a hometown effect for several candidates; Schoengood’s best town was her hometown of Manalapan, where she got 19% of the vote, and Cohn and Schkeeper both overperformed among their neighbors in Lumberton and Medford.
But it was Conaway who put up impressive numbers just about everywhere, including in Mercer and Monmouth County towns that he’d never had to go anywhere near as an assemblyman. Conaway proved that with a well-run campaign and a solid financial edge, the loss of the county line doesn’t have to be a huge setback for party-endorsed candidates.
Mohan’s closer call
While Conaway may have shown how the line isn’t the only tool at party organizations’ disposal, Mohan’s much closer primary win on the Republican side demonstrates how powerful it can still be.
Because the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the line were all Democrats, Judge Zahid Quraishi’s order didn’t apply to the GOP primary, and thus Republicans were allowed to keep their line, at least for this year. But Burlington County Clerk Joanne Schwartz decided to ditch the Republican line anyways, saying there was nothing in Quraishi’s order preventing her from doing so, and a state judge agreed with her.
Prior to the line lawsuit saga, Mohan, a cardiologist from Holmdel who ran for township committee as an independent in 2022, had won all three county lines in the 3rd district. That made him the substantial favorite against the three other Republicans who made the ballot: Shirley Maia-Cusick, Michael Faccone, and Greg Sobocinski.
With the Burlington line gone, though, Mohan suddenly lost his greatest advantage; Burlington casts nearly two-thirds of the GOP primary vote in the 3rd district, and the ballot design there would no longer guide voters towards Mohan, who had little name recognition or money to supplement his party support.
Maia-Cusick seemed to present the greatest threat of his three opponents. The first-time candidate was an odd fit for the seat – she had started out the cycle running for U.S. Senate before dropping down to the 3rd district, moving from Hunterdon County to Burlington County in the process – but she had self-funded nearly $300,000, much more than Mohan was able to raise from donors.
And indeed, Maia-Cusick was able to break through in Burlington County specifically, where the ballot design presented no impediment to her campaign. She won the county 34%-30% over Mohan, carrying 26 of its 38 towns, including some towns with otherwise strong Republican organizations like Medford and Evesham. (Faccone also won two small towns.) The fact that Mohan had party backing, and used the party slogan, didn’t seem to help him much.
What saved Mohan, though, was easily winning Monmouth and Mercer Counties, where the line stayed in place. He won Monmouth 52%-27% and Mercer 51%-20%, not losing a single town in either county. That allowed him to beat Maia-Cusick overall 38%-31%, with Faccone taking 17% and Sobocinski taking 14%.
Some of Mohan’s strength in Monmouth could be attributed to his own residence there; his best town anywhere in the district was Holmdel, where he lives and has run for office before. But it’s clear that the dominant factor in the race was the existence of the county line, or lack thereof.
(Any of the candidates running, for what it’s worth, would have been substantial underdogs in the general election against Conaway. The 3rd district re-elected Kim 56%-44% in 2022, and neither party views it as a top priority this year.)
In places where the ballot directed voters to support Mohan, they did; in places where the ballot provided no differentiation among several mostly unknown candidates, voters reacted more unpredictably. Had the Burlington line remained in place, Mohan likely would have won easily – and had the line been struck down everywhere, Maia-Cusick very well might have prevailed.
If the line is struck down long-term – which isn’t a sure thing, since Quraishi’s order only applied to this year’s primary – Mohan’s win is a warning sign for both parties. Party-endorsed candidates with low name ID and minimal funding have for years been able to count on the line to carry them over the finish line, but that era may be coming to an end.
This story was updated on June 20 with updated results following the certification of the election.