Just under two weeks ago, Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown)’s campaign for U.S. Senate got a major boost when Kim emphatically defeated First Lady Tammy Murphy at the Monmouth County Democratic convention. This weekend, he’ll have the opportunity to do it again – twice.
Democrats in Burlington and Hunterdon Counties are set to meet on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon, respectively, to vote on their official endorsements for U.S. Senate from a field of Kim, Murphy, and Patricia Campos-Medina. (Another candidate, Larry Hamm, does not seem to be a candidate at either convention; indicted incumbent Senator Bob Menendez is not competing for county lines as he mulls whether to run.)
In both counties, albeit for very different reasons, Kim appears to be favored.
Burlington County is Kim’s home county, and he remains immensely popular with the county’s Democratic rank-and-file; from the very beginning of his campaign, if he was going to win party support anywhere, it was going to be there. Kim has never represented any of Hunterdon County, on the other hand, but its progressive county committee (the low-level elected backbone of county parties in New Jersey) is likely full of Kim-friendly voters.
Unlike the vote in Monmouth County, which Murphy’s campaign was predicting to win, Murphyworld is setting expectations lower this time. It would be a surprise to just about everyone, probably including Murphy herself, if she won either of the weekend’s conventions.
Should Kim indeed win both, it’d be a major symbolic victory that would continue his campaign’s momentum and start Murphy out at 0-for-3 in open convention votes. It would also have practical benefits; party endorsements in New Jersey confer a favorable position on primary ballots via the county line system, and Kim is trying to win as many conventions as possible to counter Murphy’s advantage in huge urban counties where party leadership unilaterally determines endorsements.
The Monmouth convention was the Senate primary’s first at-bat, and Kim hit a home run. Now we’re slogging through the top of the second inning, and this baseball metaphor is already collapsing under the weight of its own inanity. Here’s what to look out for in this weekend’s convention votes.
Burlington County
By far the bigger prize this weekend is Burlington County, which is based in the suburbs of Philadelphia and is home to 5.6% of the state’s registered Democrats. Unfortunately for Murphy, it’s almost certainly Kim’s for the taking.
Kim was raised in Evesham Township, the county’s largest town; after a long spell in Washington D.C. working as a national security official, he returned home in 2017 to launch his first campaign for Congress against then-Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-Toms River). Few Democrats initially thought he had any chance of winning, but he proved them wrong, unseating MacArthur by 3,973 votes.
That campaign – and the two successful re-election efforts that followed – made Kim into something of a hometown hero for Democrats in Burlington County. Kim was never the type of politician to make himself into a local power broker, but he didn’t need to in order to win the loyalty of the county’s Democratic rank-and-file.
So when Kim announced his Senate bid last September, it was immediately apparent that Burlington would stand by him even if nowhere else would. State Sen. Troy Singleton (D-Delran), probably the most powerful person in county politics, endorsed Kim the day he launched his campaign; more recently, he got the support of the entire board of county commissioners and several big-town mayors.
Kim has not been endorsed by county Democratic chair Joe Andl, however, which could be tied to Burlington’s in-between spot in the New Jersey political universe.
While the county has an independent-minded county committee and an open convention process, it’s also closely tied to the larger South Jersey Democratic organization, which is supporting Murphy. Pro-Murphy power broker George Norcross and his deputies have quite a bit of influence in Burlington politics, and they’d probably prefer Burlington not break with the rest of the South Jersey organization by backing Kim.
Thus was born a proposed deal to give both Kim and Murphy the county line, a move aimed at mollifying everyone and keeping Burlington out of the statewide battle entirely. But Kim said last week that he would “absolutely reject” that proposal unless Murphy agrees to run on a shared line everywhere, and his supporters in Burlington County would have little reason to go along with such a deal unless they felt heavily pressured from above.
Burlington Democratic convention rules allow for all members of the Democratic county committee and all Democratic municipal chairs who aren’t already county committee members to serve as voting delegates. The county has more than 700 county committee seats and 40 municipal chairs, but since many of those committee seats are unfilled and many delegates simply won’t show up for the convention, the actual universe of votes will be significantly smaller. (The endorsement will be awarded by secret-ballot vote.)
The towns with the biggest potential footprint at the convention will likely be Evesham, Mount Laurel, and Willingboro, the latter of which is a majority-Black, strongly Democratic town that could make up more than one-tenth of the convention vote all by itself. Kim has endorsements from the mayors and Democratic municipal leaders of Evesham and Willingboro, so they should be strong Kim territory.
But there’s really nowhere in the county that isn’t strong Kim territory; he currently represents all but two of the county’s towns, Palmyra and Maple Shade, in Congress. And Kim has still been working the phones and talking to county committeemembers in recent weeks, just as he would in a county that didn’t already know him well.
For Murphy, anything but a landslide loss should be considered a solid result. If Murphy gets a significant percentage of the vote, that may be a sign that the shadow of the South Jersey Democratic organization loomed larger than expected – or that Kim isn’t as popular in his home territory as many have assumed.
Hunterdon County
Hunterdon County is much more of a real contest, and either candidate could prevail when delegates meet on Sunday. For a few different reasons, though, it’s looking like Kim is in a better position to win than Murphy.
Located in the state’s wealthy northwestern exurbs and including famously picturesque towns like Lambertville and Clinton, Hunterdon County’s Democrats have long had one of the most small-d democratic convention processes in the state. With a relatively hands-off chairwoman in Arlene Quiñones Perez, candidates up and down the ballot can generally count on Hunterdon to give them a fair shake.
The county has also been able to frequently punch above its weight due to its early placement in the convention schedule. While Hunterdon itself only accounts for 1.2% of the state’s registered Democrats, the tea leaves of other counties with somewhat similar profiles – Morris, Somerset, Warren, Sussex, and to a lesser extent Mercer – can be read in Hunterdon’s vote.
An endorsement in Hunterdon can set candidates on the path to victory elsewhere. In 2018, its unexpected landslide endorsement of Tom Malinowski over Linda Weber for the 7th congressional district kicked Malinowski’s campaign into full gear; he went on to win the Democratic nomination and eventually a seat in Congress.
Malinowski, who lost re-election in 2022, is backing Kim this year after considering a Senate campaign of his own, and he’s been making calls to the delegates he’s known for years in support of Kim’s campaign. That provides Kim with a big – perhaps decisive – boost, one that was only accentuated when Murphy made the strategically questionable decision to attack Malinowski for his past stock trading issues, a move that frustrated many of Hunterdon’s pro-Malinowski Democrats.
Even without Malinowski, though, Hunterdon County might have tilted in Kim’s favor. Mostly white, mostly progressive-leaning, and unencumbered by any fealty to a larger patronage network, Hunterdon is the perfect setup for the Kim campaign, which has found its most ardent support in conservative areas without strong local Democratic organizations.
Murphy certainly isn’t giving in without a fight. She has endorsements from two influential local officials, Clinton Mayor Janice Kovach and former Flemington Mayor Betsy Driver, and also has gotten some help from Quiñones Perez, who hasn’t made an official endorsement but did attend a Monmouth convention postmortem hosted by the Murphy campaign.
The universe of voting delegates in Hunterdon County is broader than in Burlington: all county committeemembers; all municipal, county, and state elected officials in the county; each town’s Democratic municipal chair and vice-chair; all members of the Hunterdon Democratic Committee Executive Board; the county’s two Democratic State Committee members; the president and vice president of the Hunterdon County Young Democrats; and ten delegates chosen by the county chair.
All in all, there’s a universe of somewhere around 250 potential delegates (accounting for unfilled county committee seats). With 37 county committee members, Raritan Township makes up the largest voting bloc, but there’s no reason to expect very much regional variation in the vote; there isn’t any obvious geographic divide between Kim’s and Murphy’s bases the way there was in Monmouth County. Like in Burlington, the vote will be held by secret ballot.
One wild card is Campos-Medina, a labor activist who lives in Hunterdon County herself. Campos-Medina’s campaign has struggled to break through against Kim and Murphy elsewhere around the state, but she could make a dent in Hunterdon if the local connections she’s built over the years pay off.
Campos-Medina, who is running a more unabashedly progressive campaign than her opponents, would probably take more votes from Kim’s base than from Murphy’s. Since Hunterdon Democrats hold runoffs in the event that no candidate reaches 50% of the vote, though, she won’t be able to act as a spoiler.
Downballot races
It isn’t just the U.S. Senate on Burlington Democrats’ ballots this weekend. They’ll also vote in a contested primary for Kim’s open House seat that pits two politicians from the 7th legislative district, Assemblymembers Herb Conaway (D-Delran) and Carol Murphy (D-Mount Laurel), against one another.
Conaway and Murphy (no relation to the first lady) aren’t the only candidates running; civil rights attorney Joe Cohn and seafood businesswoman Sarah Schoengood will also compete at the convention. But given the extensive networks the two assemblymembers have in Burlington County, the organizational line is near-certain to go to one of them.
Conaway, a 26-year veteran of the legislature, has the lead in local endorsements. Burlington Democratic chair Joe Andl is backing him, as are five of the county’s eight countywide officeholders and several big-town mayors.
Murphy, though, has closer ties to the South Jersey Democratic organization and to organized labor, both of which are influential in Burlington politics. She also has the endorsement of Assemblywoman Andrea Katz (D-Chesterfield), the only Democratic Burlington legislator from outside the 7th district.
But as demonstrated by the Senate vote in the Monmouth convention two weeks ago, endorsements and internal whip counts can be an unreliable way to predict county convention results. The delegates at the Burlington convention have known both Conaway and Murphy for years, and are incentivized to stay on both legislators’ good sides; no one really knows how people will vote when they reach the privacy of the convention ballot.
Singleton has stayed out of the race between his two running mates, and he worked on a peace plan to give both Murphy and Conaway the line, much like the proposed detente in the Senate race. Conaway, like Kim, has firmly objected to that idea, and it’s not really clear whether the idea is still on the table.
Burlington County makes up two-thirds of the Democratic primary electorate in the 3rd district, so the convention vote really could be do-or-die. Conaway has already won the line in Monmouth County (which makes up a much smaller percentage of the district), and if he wins the line in Burlington too, his campaign may start to look unstoppable.
Burlington also has an open seat on the board of county commissioners this year thanks to the retirement of Commissioner Dan O’Connell (D-Delran), but the party endorsement for that seat won’t be decided at this weekend’s convention.
Hunterdon County, meanwhile, was set to hold a contested vote on its preferred nominee for Congress in the swingy 7th congressional district – but one of the two candidates, Jason Blazakis, dropped out of the race earlier this month, leaving Sue Altman as the only Democrat left standing.
Blazakis’s exit probably didn’t change the result in Hunterdon, where Altman had fostered a deeper bench of connections and was favored to win regardless of how many opponents she faced. With Blazakis out, though, the convention has turned into a coronation, and Altman is on a glide path for the Democratic nomination against freshman Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield).
Coming soon to a county near you
Once Hunterdon wraps up voting on Sunday, convention season will truly begin. Next weekend will bring two more in Sussex and Warren Counties, both small, conservative counties that should be favorable territory for Kim. (Sussex is one of two counties in the state that doesn’t use the county line system, meaning that its endorsement is of limited importance.)
Then, on March 4, Bergen County – the biggest county in the entire state – will hold its convention. Tammy Murphy has been endorsed by Bergen Democratic chairman Paul Juliano and practically every elected Democrat of note across the county, but both sides are treating the convention like a genuinely competitive race.
If Kim does the near-impossible and pulls off a win in Bergen, or even if he comes close, that could throw Murphy’s entire statewide strategy for a loop. (It would also call into question how many public Murphy supporters are in fact private Kim supporters when they get to the ballot box.)
But that’s getting far ahead of ourselves. First, Kim and Murphy need to face off in Burlington and Hunterdon, the two counties that will take their share of the political spotlight this weekend. Like in Monmouth two weeks ago, their respective conventions may only apply to one county, but the rest of the state will be watching.
This story was updated at 4:56 p.m. with a correction: Burlington Democrats will not be holding a vote on an open county commissioner seat at this weekend’s convention.