First Lady Tammy Murphy defeated Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) at this evening’s Bergen County Democratic convention in Paramus, a critically important result that marks Murphy’s first proper convention win in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.
Murphy received a total of 738 votes from convention delegates – a mix of local party leaders and elected officials from across the county – while Kim got 419, a margin of 64%-36%. Two other candidates, Patricia Campos-Medina and Larry Hamm, did not file to compete at the convention; neither did indicted incumbent Senator Bob Menendez.
A total of 1,157 delegates cast votes, which Bergen Democratic Chairman Paul Juliano said was the highest turnout he had seen in decades. “That’s a tribute to the people in this room and to the organization that we have here in Bergen County,” said Juliano, who deserves much of the credit for Murphy’s win.
The final margin is something both candidates can spin as a victory: Murphy won the county party endorsement, a big deal in New Jersey’s party-dominated political system, but Kim still got a significant percentage of the vote despite the many advantages his opponent possessed. Clearly, though, Murphy is the undisputed winner tonight.
“I am really thrilled at the huge momentum here in Bergen County,” Murphy said. “Deep appreciation. Here we go – we’ve got more work to do.”
Long before the convention, Murphy had received endorsements from Juliano and more than 100 state legislators, local officeholders, and municipal party leaders from across the county. (Juliano – who holds a top state government post to which he was nominated by Gov. Phil Murphy – reportedly didn’t meet with Kim before making his endorsement of Tammy Murphy.)
In a typical election year, a candidate with that sort of endorsement list would be slated to win the convention in a landslide. The Bergen Democratic Party is among the state’s most robust organizations, commanding a large network of political alliances that were activated this year in support of Murphy.
But Kim put up an unexpectedly strong fight, swaying over many of the county’s rank-and-file Democrats even as their leaders got behind Murphy. The fact that the convention was held by a secret-ballot vote almost certainly helped Kim, since many delegates may have been hesitant to cross the first lady in public but were more amenable to doing so via their private paper-ballot convention votes. (Even then, the Kim campaign said some delegates may have feared to vote how they wished due to pressure from above.)
Kim said after the results were announced that he was proud of the support he received and that he’d continue fighting in Bergen County even without the party endorsement. He also repeated what he’d said before the convention, which is that the cards were stacked against him from the beginning: that Juliano and other top county Democrats had worked to make it harder for him to win.
“The energy that we’ve had – over 200 people at the Ridgewood event, and the Korean American community has been fired up here,” Kim said. “Bergen is going to be central, and we’re going to continue to be up here. Again, the fact is that [this is] one of the most powerful machine operations in the state, and we had over 400 people willing to stand up against them.”
Murphy rejected the idea that the convention was unfair, saying that the resounding support she received was due to her own hard work and that of her campaign.
“I’ve been working this really hard, as have a lot of people,” she said. “At the end of the day, we are one party, and we have to all be positive and we have to all be leaning in together and making sure that we’re keeping together. That’s the most important part.”
Murphy’s victory means that she will appear on the official Bergen County Democratic line, the unique New Jersey institution that groups party-endorsed candidates together on primary ballots. Candidates running on the line typically receive a substantial, and controversial, advantage; last week, Kim filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the line is unconstitutional and should be struck down.
Since Bergen County is home to around one-tenth of the state’s Democratic primary electorate, the party endorsement there carries quite a bit of weight in a statewide primary. Murphy previously won the line in two other big, Democratic-leaning counties, Union and Passaic.
But neither of those votes were held by proper convention, instead being decided in private by a small group of top party leaders. Before today’s Bergen vote, five counties (Monmouth, Burlington, Hunterdon, Sussex, and Warren) had held actual open conventions – and Kim won all five by double-digit margins.
Those five successive convention victories were major momentum-builders for Kim, and prompted questions about Murphy’s ability to win on an even playing field. Today’s convention result won’t necessarily erase those questions, given Murphy’s overwhelming institutional advantages in Bergen County, but it does give her campaign a needed shot in the arm.
“To paraphrase my old boss, tonight, with the help of Chairman Juliano and the Bergen County Democrats, Tammy Murphy is the comeback kid!” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff), a Bergen Democrat and strong Murphy supporter.
It also means that Murphy is likely to be on the line – assuming it still exists – in a substantial majority of the state. Even if Kim wins every truly open convention from here on out, he’ll still be locked out of official party support in counties representing more than 60% of the statewide Democratic primary electorate.
That’s typically not a recipe for success in New Jersey politics, but Kim is trying to become the exception.
A three-term congressman from Burlington County, Kim launched his campaign the day after Menendez (who has not said if he’s seeking re-election) was indicted on federal corruption charges. Since then, he’s led in every publicly released poll of the Democratic Senate primary, and has raised several million dollars in his quest to become the country’s first-ever Korean American senator.
Murphy, who has been the state’s First Lady since 2018, kicked off her own campaign in November, and quickly amassed support from many of the state’s most powerful Democrats and six of its nine Democratic House members. She, too, has raised millions of dollars for her campaign.
As for Menendez, his political fortunes sank dramatically the minute the indictment against him was released; though he has professed his innocence, he stands virtually no chance of winning a fourth term in the Senate this year if he does run for re-election. Barring an unexpectedly strong challenge from Republicans in the general election, either Kim or Murphy is very likely to be elected as New Jersey’s next senator.