See here for a full list of every contested primary in 2024.
When U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi issued an order last month outlawing the county organizational line in this year’s Democratic primary election, he breathed new life into the campaigns of candidates without party support who would stand to benefit from office-block ballots.
The only problem? The filing deadline had already passed, meaning that no new candidates who hadn’t already filed to run could join the primary. Candidates for federal, county, and local offices had to submit their nominating petitions by March 25, when Quraishi was still deliberating the anti-line lawsuit; it’s possible that many Democratic candidates would have filed had they known that the line would be struck down, but decided against it while the outcome was still in limbo.
(For most Republican candidates, the line will in fact remain in place. Quraishi’s order, which was recently upheld by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, let the Republican county line stand, since all of the candidates who filed for a preliminary injunction were Democrats – though the Burlington County Clerk chose to eliminate GOP lines anyways and Salem and Sussex Counties didn’t have a line to begin with.)
A review of candidate filings reveals that there was, indeed, no flood of new candidates rushing to take part in the state’s reshaped political landscape. The New Jersey Globe looked at every primary this year for Congress and county and local offices, and found no substantial increase in contested primaries compared to previous years.
For Congress, there will be 16 contested primaries spread across the state’s 12 congressional districts, including seven Democratic primaries and nine Republican primaries. That’s only one more than the 15 congressional primaries that the state witnessed for the same 12 districts in 2022.
On the county level, six of the state’s 21 counties will have contested primaries (for offices like county commissioner, sheriff, and clerk), down from nine in 2023. And there will be contested races in 83 of New Jersey’s 564 municipalities, up slightly from 75 last year.
See here for a web version of the same list.
One of the chief arguments against the line has long been that it discourages non-party endorsed candidates from seeking office at all, since the obstacles to winning off-the-line are so great. Without the line, the argument goes, democracy will be strengthened because there will simply be more of it, with a greater number candidates throwing their hats in the ring and making their cases to voters.
But because of the timing of Quraishi’s decision, this year won’t be a good test of that theory, and voters will have to make do with the candidates they’ve already got. The question now becomes whether the absence of the Democratic county line (and the GOP line in Burlington) actually matters for the candidates who did file.
In 2022’s congressional races, county parties on both sides had a near-perfect record. Every single endorsee of each individual county party won that county, save one: now-Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) had the party endorsement in Sussex County – which, again, did not have a county line even before this year – but narrowly lost it to rival Republican Phil Rizzo.
With several serious congressional candidates running this year without party backing, such as Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla in the 8th district and Assemblywoman Carol Murphy (D-Mount Laurel) in the 3rd district, it remains to be seen whether office-block ballots can produce more favorable results.
Going further down the ballot, there are a few races that are more directly comparable to past years, and thus provide interesting case studies for determining the concrete impact of the county line.
In Camden County, for example, the South Jersey Progressive Democrats routinely run candidates against the local Democratic machine’s choices for county commissioner and other county offices. Last year, their two county commissioner candidates got smoked 71%-29%; this year will show whether they can do any better on fairer ballots. (Helpfully, one of their candidates will be listed first on the ballot for both county clerk and commissioner.)
And in Piscataway, Staci Berger lost a Democratic primary for township council in 2022 by all of 24 votes, a loss she directly blamed on the county line in a recent amicus brief. Berger is running for mayor this year alongside a trio of at-large council candidates, so she’ll be able to put that theory directly to the test.