Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) has won the Mercer County Democratic convention over First Lady Tammy Murphy, his seventh county convention victory in the race for U.S. Senate.
Kim got 236 votes to Murphy’s 108, a margin of 63% to 29%. That’s enough to give him the official Mercer Democratic organizational line, the unique New Jersey system that groups party-endorsed candidates together on primary ballots; Mercer Democrats have a rule that gives shared line access to any candidate who exceeds 40% of the convention vote, but Murphy didn’t reach that threshold.
Two other Senate candidates, Patricia Campos-Medina and Larry Hamm, got 22 and eight votes, respectively. Incumbent Senator Bob Menendez, who is under federal indictment on corruption charges and is seemingly leaning against a re-election campaign, did not attend.
Mercer County is home to nearly 5% of the state’s registered Democrats, so Kim’s win is a boost to his statewide primary math – and it continues his near-unbroken winning streak at county conventions conducted by secret ballot.
“This is our 7th convention win,” Kim said in a statement. “There is no denying that the energy we are building is real and growing. Tonight is yet another example of the possibilities for our campaign when the people of New Jersey can vote freely without fear, pressure, or intimidation.”
Kim went into the convention as a favorite, thanks in no small part to the fact that he already represents a large swath of Mercer County in Congress. While Kim himself is from Burlington County, five Mercer towns were added to his district during the 2022 redistricting cycle, including Hamilton Township, the county’s largest town.
In fact, Kim got to vote for himself today, because Mercer Democrats allow members of Congress who represent parts of the county to vote at conventions even if they don’t live there. It was the first time either Kim or Murphy were able to cast convention votes for themselves, since neither were eligible in their home counties of Burlington and Monmouth.
Kim’s time in Congress engendered strong loyalty among many of the Mercer Democratic county committeemembers who cast a majority of today’s convention votes. And evidently the enthusiasm for Kim bled out beyond the borders of his district as well; last week, an influential progressive group in Princeton backed the congressman with 91% of the vote. (Murphy, who did not attend the endorsement meeting, got a single vote.)
The first lady, meanwhile, got endorsements from Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora, Ewing Mayor Bert Steinmann, and Lawrence Mayor Patricia Farmer, who lead the county’s second-, third-, and fourth-largest cities. Mercer County Democratic Chairwoman Janice Mironov didn’t make an endorsement, but she was seemingly more amenable to Murphy than to Kim.
Elsewhere in the state, Murphy has been no stranger to getting support from county Democratic chairs. Soon after she launched her campaign, she was endorsed by no fewer than nine of the state’s 21 Democratic chairpeople, many of whom have the power to unilaterally award the party line in their counties.
But in counties like Mercer with more small-d democratic convention processes, where endorsements are decided by secret-ballot vote and with minimal pressure from above, Kim’s campaign has flourished. Of the eight counties that have held secret-ballot conventions, Kim has won seven; the exception was Bergen County, where party leaders pushed heavily for Murphy.
By his own admission, though, Kim would rather not be competing for county lines at all, and he’s filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the line system as unconstitutional. Campos-Medina and Hamm have joined his call for a line-free primary, with only Murphy standing up to defend the line.
Regardless of whether the line stays or goes, though, the race between Kim and Murphy looks like it will be very competitive through the June 4 primary. Both candidates have raised millions of dollars – another fundraising deadline is coming at the end of this month – and polling shows Kim with an early advantage among Democratic primary voters.