Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) easily prevailed at the Hunterdon County Democratic convention today, marking his third straight convention win against First Lady Tammy Murphy in the battle for indicted Senator Bob Menendez’s seat.
In a meeting of nearly two hundred local politicians and party officials in Flemington, Kim received 120 votes to Murphy’s 64, a margin of 62% to 33%. Patricia Campos-Medina, a labor activist who lives in Hunterdon, received nine votes.
Midway through the convention, Hunterdon Democratic chair Arlene Quiñones Perez proposed implementing a shared organizational line, in which any candidate who received more than 30% of the vote would all be placed on the line, the powerful tool in New Jersey politics that groups party-endorsed candidates together. That would have been to the benefit of Murphy, who was considered the underdog; indeed, her 33% of the vote would have been just enough to share the line under the proposal.
Quiñones Perez argued that two of the candidates running, Kim and Campos-Medina, had called for such a system; Kim and Campos-Medina have in fact called for office block voting, in which all candidates appear on ballots as equals grouped by office (as exists in other states). Many delegates at the convention – most of them seemingly Kim supporters – strongly objected to Quiñones Perez’s effort, and after several minutes of confusion, the line-sharing attempt was defeated on a voice vote.
Quiñones Perez declined to comment on the proposal after it was scuttled.
Kim himself appeared incredulous at the last-minute attempt at a rule change, and said it was another example of party leaders trying to unfairly assist Murphy.
“This is what I’ve been speaking out against: party elites trying to make decisions here that can put their thumb on the scale of this election,” Kim said. “Seeing it up and close and personal, in real time, was something else, honestly. But I have to say that I’m really heartened by the fact that the rank-and-file Democrats, they don’t go along with it. They want to make sure we have an actual democracy here.”
Murphy, for her part, claimed she had no hand in the proposal, though she sounded open to the idea. (Murphy has more broadly declined to call for an end to the county line, unlike Kim.)
“They were trying to find an equitable way to be responsible,” Murphy said. “I don’t know, I thought it actually might have made sense, but I had no vote in it.”
Kim’s substantial convention win comes on the heels of Kim’s overwhelming victory yesterday in Burlington County, his home county and political base, where he received more than 90% of the vote. Two weeks ago, Kim won the race’s first open convention in Monmouth County, where Murphy lives and which Kim partially represents in Congress.
Hunterdon County is a Republican-leaning county in New Jersey’s picturesque northwestern corner; it includes towns like Lambertville and High Bridge and is home to a little over 1% of the state’s Democratic primary electorate. It tends to have a progressive and very independent-minded county committee, a perfect recipe for Kim’s anti-establishment campaign.
Crucially, Kim also had the support of Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes), the most prominent Democrat elected from Hunterdon County in a long time. Malinowski was not himself eligible to vote at today’s convention, but he had substantial influence over many people who were.
Murphy, on the other hand, had unveiled endorsements from noteworthy local Democrats like Clinton Mayor Janice Kovach and former Flemington Mayor Betsy Driver; Assemblywoman Mitchelle Drulis (D-Raritan), the one Hunterdon Democrat in the legislature, spoke in support of Murphy’s nomination today. Murphy also appeared to count Quiñones Perez as an ally, though Quiñones Perez has not typically been the type of county chair to lean on county committeemembers who want to vote a different way.
As for Campos-Medina, she drew relatively little support despite her own residence in the county, but she said that won’t deter her.
“This is not where I win,” Campos-Medina said. “I win when I go up north to Essex, to Hudson, to Passaic, to Middlesex talking directly to voters.”
Next weekend, Democrats in nearby Warren and Sussex Counties will meet to decide their own endorsements; given today’s result, Kim should feel good about those votes as well. But Murphy, the wife of Gov. Phil Murphy and a political power player in her own right, already has guaranteed support in many of the state’s largest counties, most of which have much more top-down endorsement processes.
The Democratic primary itself won’t be until June, but the party endorsements awarded now are usually a critical part of any candidate’s path to victory. The eventual winner of that primary will be the heavy favorite to succeed Menendez, who has not said whether he’s running for re-election but who did not seek party support today or at past conventions.