As Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) sweeps up county party endorsements in his campaign for U.S. Senate, one key to his success has been secret-ballot votes. His race against First Lady Tammy Murphy has emotions running high, but secret ballots allow convention delegates to vote how they wish without fear of pressure from party leaders.
That won’t be the case, however, in next week’s Democratic convention in Somerset County, where endorsement votes are determined by a public show of hands. And the county’s Democratic chairwoman, Peg Schaffer, endorsed Murphy months ago and has been strongly promoting her campaign to county committeemembers ahead of the convention.
That has led some Somerset Democrats to call for a rule change that would allow Democratic committeemembers to cast secret votes, among them former Assemblywoman Sadaf Jaffer (D-Montgomery), who remains a county committeewoman and municipal chair in her hometown.
“Thankfully my county, [Somerset], has a convention, but the votes aren’t by secret ballot,” Jaffer, who supports Patricia Campos-Medina for Senate instead of either of the two frontrunners, said on Twitter. “This should change to allow everyone to vote their conscience.”
Her argument was echoed by several other county committeemembers and local elected officials in Somerset County – and by Kim himself, who said that a secret ballot is the best way to ensure a vote free of intimidation and outside influence.
“It is vital that the county convention vote be seen as fair, and the committee chair should adopt the request from committee members to hold a secret ballot,” Kim said. “There is honestly no good reason not to use a secret ballot for a contested race, and not doing so will only increase discontent and division about the broken politics we have in New Jersey.”
In theory, Somerset County should be fertile territory for Kim, who overwhelmingly won a convention last weekend in Hunterdon County, a neighboring county with somewhat similar political demographics. But Schaffer’s outspoken advocacy for the Murphy campaign could sway conflicted convention delegates into Murphy’s camp.
In a letter sent earlier this week to convention delegates, Schaffer – whose position as the state party vice-chair is due in part to support from Gov. Phil Murphy – praised Tammy Murphy, saying that she would be “a force in the Senate from Day One.” The letter also criticized Kim for his lawsuit to end the county line, the system that allows county parties (including Somerset Democrats) to place their endorsed candidates in a favorable slot on primary ballots.
“Congressman Kim would not be in Congress if George Norcross hadn’t given him the organization line in 2018,” Schaffer wrote. “The Organization is what turned Somerset Blue. We did this together. WE ARE THE ORGANIZATION!” (Norcross, the powerful South Jersey Democratic boss, is backing Murphy this year.)
Schaffer noted that many convention delegates’ own jobs rely on the Somerset Democratic Party’s control over county government and its close relationship with top state politicians like the Murphys.
“Due to the success of the organization we have worked with the administration and local officials to put many of our members on the Superior Court,” Schaffer wrote. “We have gotten our local members responsible, rewarding positions with State and County government.”
It remains to be seen how next week’s convention will go down. An attempt at a rule change during the convention itself is a possibility; that’s what happened at last weekend’s Hunterdon convention, where county Democratic leaders tried to make it so that any candidate who got more than 30% of the vote would be able to share the county line, in an apparent attempt to aid Murphy. (The effort failed.)