In theory, the special Democratic primary for New Jersey’s 10th congressional district should have been a competitive race. It featured 11 candidates, several of whom held local office and had loyal voter bases; it was held in the middle of summer, when turnout would be low and unpredictable; and it took place in a year of unprecedented upheaval, where the sacred cows of New Jersey politics were dismantled one by one.
But the end result wasn’t close, or surprising, at all: Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver won in a rout, getting 47% of the vote while her ten opponents squabbled over the remainder. McIver is now overwhelmingly likely to become the deep-blue district’s next congresswoman after the September special general election, succeeding the late Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark), who died in April.
How did she do it? By winning over critical party leaders early on – giving her access to organizational support far outside of her Newark base – and, with their substantial help, outworking her opponents both in fundraising and on the ground, closing off their paths to victory. Based on detailed results from the district, McIver may have simply been unbeatable.
McIver won all but three of the 10th district’s 18 towns, including every town in Essex County and all but two in Union County. Linden Mayor Derek Armstead, who got 14% of the vote districtwide, won two, and Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker (D-Jersey City), who got 10% of the vote, carried one.
Not surprisingly, McIver did best in Newark, her political home base and the domain of her closest ally, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. She got 64% of the vote there, or 3,393 votes, while none of her opponents could crack 7%.
Turnout in the city wasn’t terrible, either, with 8.5% of the city’s registered Democrats, 5,279 voters, turning out to the polls versus 9.4% districtwide. (Newark turnout is often cataclysmically bad, so only being slightly lower than the district overall is a win.) In total, the district cast just over 25,000 votes, a bit less than the 30,180 votes Payne posthumously received in the regularly scheduled primary back in June.
Crucially, though, McIver’s support didn’t end at Newark’s boundaries. The neighboring majority-Black towns of East Orange, Irvington, and Hillside gave her 51%, 55%, and 53% of the vote, respectively; whiter, further-out suburbs like Cranford (49%) and Verona (54%) stayed in her corner, too, indicating that her support crossed demographic lines.
That speaks both to McIver’s broad appeal as a candidate and to the power of the Essex and Union County Democratic organizations. McIver had name recognition of essentially zero outside of Newark prior to the start of the campaign, but with the help of organization surrogates and a big financial advantage, she was able to make serious inroads in just a few months. (McIver raised $145,000 as of the end of the second quarter, nearly twice as much as her closest competitor, state economic development official Darryl Godfrey; most candidates reported raising less than $20,000.)
And, crucially, none of her opponents were able to find a consistent angle from which to dent her support. Even the full weight of organizational support can’t always stave off serious challengers, but those challengers need to give voters a clear reason to buck the organization’s preferred candidate. Armstead, Walker, and their fellow also-rans were never able to do that against McIver, who has a good political profile for the district and who hasn’t made any major enemies determined to take her down.
Armstead, for his part, did perform well in his home base, winning Linden overwhelmingly – 75%-13%, a margin of around 1,000 votes – and carrying neighboring Roselle 44%-34%; he got 32% of the vote in Union County overall to McIver’s 42%.
It’s possible that had he gotten the support of the Union County Democratic organization, he might have carried the county. But instead the party endorsement went to McIver on a vote of 5-4, a sign that Armstead never sufficiently built up political relationships outside of Linden. (A recent lawsuit alleging antisemitic comments and hiring practices likely didn’t help those relationships, either.)
Walker, meanwhile, scored a 46%-24% win in Jersey City, where he had the support of Hudson County Democratic Chairman Craig Guy. The Democratic organization itself remained neutral, as did Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, who probably could have swung quite a few more votes for Walker if he’d gotten involved.
The problem for both Walker and Armstead, though, was that their bases simply weren’t very big when compared with the rest of the district. Jersey City cast 14% of the district’s overall primary vote, and Linden and Roselle collectively cast 10%; Newark alone, for comparison, cast 21%.
Even worse off were the candidates who had no clearly defined base at all, like Godfrey (who got 7% of the vote overall), former East Orange Councilwoman Brittany Claybrooks (5%), and former Payne staffer Shana Melius (5%). They came in second in some towns – Godfrey in Newark and West Orange, Claybrooks in her home of East Orange – but didn’t get strong support anywhere in the district.
(Looking at a map of second-place finishers reveals another interesting statistic: John Flora, one of the race’s two white candidates, was the runner-up in Verona, Caldwell, and Essex Fells, all white-majority towns in Essex County, while coming in dead last in Newark.)
Many of those candidates could have theoretically been real contenders, but things never came together for them. Claybrooks, despite working on Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown)’s Senate campaign, never got his endorsement or the network of donors and volunteers that would have come with it; Godfrey’s early ad buy quickly dried up; and Melius’ time in Payne’s office was for naught, since Payne’s family endorsed McIver.
In what was technically a separate contest, McIver also won a convention vote last night to succeed Payne on the November general election ballot, meaning that she’ll continue to serve in Congress after the current term ends in January 2025. At only 38 years old, she could serve for a long while to come.
Could someone have hypothetically defeated McIver in the primary, despite her myriad advantages? Maybe. While McIver had the inside track on local party support early on, someone with national political ties – someone who could have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars or attracted the attention of outside groups, which in reality ignored the race – could have maybe made the primary into a real contest.
Or, alternately, had there been a split within the party organizations, a more competitive race might have developed. Mayor Baraka and Essex Democratic Chairman LeRoy Jones don’t always see eye to eye, and if they had backed different candidates rather than aligning behind McIver, all bets would have been off.
But in reality, none of those things came close to happening, and the real-life candidates who did show up to take on McIver were not up to the challenge. Their political bases were too small, their support was too fractured, and their fundraising was too weak to seriously contest the organizational strength McIver had behind her campaign; McIver’s rise to Congress may have been set in stone the moment candidate filing closed.