Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has won the special Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 10th congressional district, the New Jersey Globe projects, defeating a crowded field of opponents and putting her on the path to succeeding the late Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark) in Congress.
The 38-year-old McIver – widely seen as the frontrunner before tonight – has 47% of the vote, well ahead of her closest competitor, Linden Mayor Derek Armstead, who has 14%. Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker (D-Jersey City) has 10%, state economic development official Darryl Godfrey has 7%, and former East Orange Councilwoman Brittany Claybrooks and former Payne staffer Shana Melius each have 5%.
McIver has 55% of the vote in her home of Essex County – including 65% in Newark, the district’s largest city – and leads Armstead 41%-33% in Union County; Walker has a 46%-24% lead over McIver in the Hudson County portion of the district. Turnout currently stands at just under 25,000 votes, a bit less than the 30,180 votes Payne received in his uncontested posthumous primary win last month.
Republican Carmen Bucco, meanwhile, won his primary uncontested, and McIver will have to beat him in the September 18 general election in order to take Payne’s seat. But the majority-Black 10th district is one of the most Democratic in the country, so McIver’s primary win is essentially tantamount to election.
The result is a major victory for Essex County Democratic Chair LeRoy Jones (who also leads the state Democratic Party) and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who came together soon after Payne died to decide on McIver as their preferred replacement. While New Jersey’s party organizations have taken some major hits this year via Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown)’s Senate campaign and his efforts to abolish the county line, they very clearly retain the ability to marshal votes for their candidates when push comes to shove.
Because the special election only applies to the remainder of Payne’s current term, there will also be a Democratic convention on Thursday to determine who will replace Payne on November general election ballots for the congressional term beginning in 2025. Since McIver has the support of most local party leaders and, after tonight, the backing of the voters, there should be little question that she’ll prevail.
Payne was first elected to the 10th congressional district – which includes most of Newark, many of the city’s close-in suburbs in Essex and Union Counties, and part of Jersey City – in 2012, after his father, Rep. Donald Payne Sr. (D-Newark), died in office. The Paynes were the first and second Black congressmen in New Jersey’s history.
The younger Payne suffered for many years from a variety of health issues, and in April of this year, he had a heart attack that sent him into a coma from which he never woke up. After he died on April 24, there was an outpouring of tributes from across the state and country – and a debate about what to do with his seat, since the filing deadline had already passed and he was set to win the Democratic primary uncontested.
Gov. Phil Murphy eventually chose to schedule a special election to fill the remainder of his term, marking the first time since 1950 that New Jersey would host an off-cycle special election. (Payne himself was first elected in a special election, but it was held at the same time as the 2012 general election.) The decision about who would take his place on the November ballot, meanwhile, was left up to the 10th district’s county parties, per state law regarding vacancies.
Once the special election was scheduled, candidates only had a weeklong window to enter the race and file the requisite 200 petition signatures to appear on the ballot. Despite that short timeframe, 11 Democratic candidates – McIver, Armstead, Walker, Godfrey, Claybrooks, Melius, teacher John Flora, former Newark mayoral candidate Sheila Montague, Democratic district leader Alberta Gordon, activist Debra Salters, and law professor Eugene Mazo – stepped up to run.
From the beginning, it was clear McIver had the inside edge. First elected to the Newark City Council’s Central Ward in 2018, McIver became the council president in 2022 as an ally of Baraka, Newark’s mayor and a candidate for governor in 2025. Baraka passed on a congressional campaign of his own, instead coming together with Jones and the Essex County Democratic Committee to promote McIver as the chosen candidate of the most powerful political organizations in the 10th district.
Those two critical early endorsements helped McIver get support from a bevy of other key figures, among them Murphy, Senator Cory Booker, and the family of the late Congressman Payne. McIver also narrowly won the backing of the Union County Democrats over Armstead, Union’s hometown candidate; Democrats in the Hudson County portion of the district decided not to endorse anyone, though now-Hudson Democratic Chairman Craig Guy personally endorsed Walker.
McIver also fundraised at a pace that none of her opponents could match. She reported raising more than $230,000 for her campaign; the next-best fundraiser was Godfrey, who reported raising $112,000 with the help of some self-funding, and the remaining candidates were far behind him.
And outside groups, which have played a crucial role in many other primaries both in New Jersey and nationwide, declined to get seriously involved in the race. That may have in part been because of the perceived low stakes; across several forums and candidate questionnaires, the candidates largely declined to stake out clear ideological differences from one another, instead focusing on their own backgrounds and experiences.
(One notable national group did come out in support of McIver: the PAC affiliated with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the House’s most left-leaning major caucus. If McIver is elected and joins the caucus, there will be five CPC members from New Jersey serving in the House at once, the most in state history.)
When the special election was first called, it seemed like there might be a window for a serious challenge to McIver and to the party organizations that supported her. Armstead and Walker each had their own bases in Linden and Jersey City, respectively; Claybrooks served as the North Jersey political director on Kim’s Senate campaign, which could have earned her a grassroots following; and Godfrey seemed at one point like he could be the field’s fundraising leader.
But none of their campaigns were evidently able to put together the kind of operation that would have been needed to overcome McIver’s financial advantage and the full weight of the 10th district Democratic establishment.
“By drawing a large field of so many candidates with a breadth of experiences, the race showed a lot of early promise out of the gate, but none managed to put together an effective campaign or reason to vote for them instead of McIver,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
Given the deep-blue hue of the 10th district – Payne won re-election in 2022 with 78% of the vote – McIver should easily beat Bucco when the seat comes before general election voters in September. Soon after that, she’ll be able to take her seat in the House, at last restoring congressional representation for the district’s voters.
And assuming that McIver is chosen at Thursday’s convention for the November general election as well, which is a fairly safe assumption, it could be her first term of many.