Well before this Tuesday’s blockbuster Democratic primary election in the 8th congressional district, it was very clear that Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) and Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla were competing for two different universes of voters.
Menendez’s base was in the 8th district’s Hispanic community – the district is around 51% Latino overall – in towns like Union City, North Bergen, West New York, Elizabeth, and the East and North Wards of Newark. Those areas were where Menendez did best in his uncompetitive 2022 primary, and they’re where the local Democratic organizations supporting Menendez are the strongest.
Bhalla, meanwhile, concentrated his efforts heavily in Hoboken, which he’s led as mayor since 2018, and Jersey City, around half of which is in the 8th district. The two cities are the hub of Hudson County’s progressive community, and they would need to be at the forefront of any effort to kick an organization-backed candidate like Menendez to the curb.
Tuesday’s results showed definitively whose base was stronger. Menendez pulled out huge margins from his core towns, especially Union City, where Mayor/State Sen. Brian Stack delivered Menendez thousands of votes; Bhalla, on the other hand, did carry Hoboken and Jersey City handily, but not to the extent he’d have needed to win.
And the 8th district’s handful of cities that don’t fit easily into either category – places like Bayonne, Weehawken, and Harrison – all went to Menendez, indicating that the congressman’s appeal (and the strength of the Hudson Democratic organization) extended beyond just his base.
The ultimate outcome, with a few more outstanding ballots still to be counted, is 51.7% Menendez (or 21,998 votes), 37.3% Bhalla (15,887 votes), with the remaining 10.4% (4,435 votes) going to a third candidate, real estate lender Kyle Jasey. Here’s the breakdown.
The North Hudson machine
Rob Menendez’s fate may have ultimately been decided by voters, but perhaps the most important moment in the entire campaign came many months ago, when top Hudson Democrats decided that they would support him for re-election.
That was far from a sure thing. After his father, Senator Bob Menendez, was indicted on federal corruption charges and became wildly unpopular among New Jersey voters, the Hudson Democratic organization faced a choice: stand by the incumbent congressman, who had yet to complete his first year in Congress and whose mere name could be a major liability, or find a new candidate to take his place?
The organization ultimately chose to stick with Menendez, and from there, went into overdrive to make sure that their choice was the correct one. Nearly every notable Democrat in the county went along, with a few exceptions: Bhalla himself, of course, as well as Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, who has never been friends with the Menendez family.
The biggest get for Menendez was Stack, who is able to get thousands of votes for practically any candidate he wants from the devoted voters of Union City. Bolstered by high early voting rates (and a hugely disproportionate number of early voting sites), Union City backed Menendez 71%-17%, or 5,576 votes to 1,367 – a colossal margin of 4,209 votes.
North Bergen and West New York, two other predominantly Hispanic towns led by Mayors Nicholas Sacco and Albio Sires (Menendez’s predecessor in the legislature), gave Menendez solid margins too: 64%-25% in both. Lower turnout, though, meant that Menendez netted a smaller 1,853 votes from North Bergen and 1,057 votes from West New York.
All in all, those three towns, which combined are a little under one-quarter of the district’s population, gave Menendez a net 7,119 votes over Bhalla – larger than his districtwide margin of 6,111 votes.
That speaks in part to the efforts of the local leaders in each of those towns, and their ability to deliver votes even in somewhat adverse circumstances. As Democrats look ahead to the 2025 gubernatorial election – in which Fulop has the support of the overall Hudson Democratic organization but hasn’t won over some key figures like Stack – the ability to turn out North Hudson votes will be crucial.
It may also speak, though, to the Menendez’s campaign’s pointed outreach towards Hispanic voters. The congressman ran a number of bilingual ads, and his allies at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus – concerned about New Jersey losing its only Latino House member – came to his aid with a $500,000 bilingual ad buy. Whatever the reasons may have been, Hispanic voters delivered for their sitting congressman.
Hoboken and Jersey City’s lonely battle
Just south of the North Hudson Menendez fortress are Hoboken and Jersey City, the two cities that form the progressive core of the 8th district. Unlike most of the rest of the district, neither are majority-Hispanic – Hoboken is largely white, while Jersey City is an extremely diverse mix of white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters – and Bhalla needed to win both in a landslide.
And he did, sort of, but not to the extent he would have wanted. Bhalla carried the 8th district section of Jersey City 61%-29% and Hoboken 60%-34%; the two towns collectively gave Bhalla a margin of 4,171 votes, which was solid but still easily drowned out by the rest of the district.
In Jersey City, much of Bhalla’s margin came from Ward E, the downtown ward represented by Councilman James Solomon, a strong Bhalla supporter and potential mayoral candidate; the ward supported Bhalla 71%-27%. (Also backing Bhalla was Council President Joyce Watterman, another mayoral candidate, who represents an at-large seat; Fulop himself did not officially make an endorsement in the race.)
Bhalla also got a nice bonus in Jersey City: he won Menendez’s home voting district 50%-33%.
As for Hoboken, it’s far from a surprise that the mayor won his home city, but there was still a decently sized contingent of voters – 1,839 of them – willing to stand with Menendez. Some of that may come from local dissatisfaction with Bhalla’s mayoral administration, which has generally been popular (he won re-election unopposed in 2021) but which has drawn its critics.
Several of those critics serve on the city council, and four of them pointedly and loudly endorsed Menendez in defiance of the mayor. That didn’t stop Bhalla from carrying every ward in the city, though; Ward 2, which is represented by dogged Bhalla critic and Menendez backer Tiffanie Fisher, voted for the mayor 57%-38%.
The results are yet another indication that while the Hudson Democratic organization has an iron grip on much of the county, Jersey City and Hoboken are growing somewhat beyond its grasp.
That could be important in next year’s Hoboken local elections, when Bhalla and three at-large council seats are up. And it could also have reverberations in the Jersey City mayor’s race, where top Hudson Democrats are backing former Gov. Jim McGreevey – to the consternation of some local Jersey City Democrats, including Fulop. The Hudson machine can win countywide offices and congressional seats, but electing their preferred candidates in Jersey City may be an increasingly difficult task.
Everywhere else
The 8th district is generally considered a Hudson County district, and it (or its predecessor districts) has been represented by a Hudson politician for more than a century. But it also includes important pieces of two other counties: Elizabeth in Union County and the North and East Wards of Newark in Essex County.
Back when party endorsements were still being hashed out, both the Union and Essex Democratic organizations were perfectly happy to support Menendez once it became clear that the Hudson Democrats would do so. They had little desire to pick a fight over the 8th district, especially given that re-electing Menendez preserves Latino representation for the two largely Hispanic communities.
And the two cities delivered, at least margin-wise: Menendez won Elizabeth 60%-25% and the 8th district portion of Newark 57%-22%.
But turnout left something to be desired, with Elizabeth voters casting 3,888 votes and Newark voters casting just 2,643. (For comparison, Union City – a city barely half the size of either Elizabeth or the 8th district portion of Newark – cast 7,834). Essex and Union Democrats were fine with backing Menendez, but they didn’t throw their whole weight into it like Stack or other Hudson Democrats did; Newark Mayor Ras Baraka made an appearance at Menendez’s victory party, but the number of votes he actually delivered to the congressman wasn’t huge.
One other point of note in Newark: Jasey, the third-place finisher, ended up with a surprisingly high 21% of the Newark vote, nearly beating out Bhalla for second place. His unexpectedly good performance may have had to do with the design of Essex County ballots, which came close to simulating a “party line” for the top-listed candidate in each race; Jasey was listed first on the ballot, so some less-informed voters may have believed he was the party-endorsed candidate.
The remainder of the 8th district’s population is from a few towns that don’t clearly fit any label: Bayonne to the south of Jersey City, Weehawken and Guttenberg in North Hudson, and Harrison, East Newark, and a small piece of Kearny in West Hudson.
In order to win districtwide, Bhalla probably had to win most of those towns, since his Jersey City and Hoboken base wasn’t enough on its own. Instead, he lost nearly every single one (with the lone exception of Kearny, which cast just 50 votes overall). Bayonne in particular was an important result for the congressman: a plurality-white city with more residents than Hoboken or Union City, it supported Menendez 51%-38%, or 1,887 votes to 1,378.
In its endorsement of Bhalla prior to Election Day, the Jersey Journal advised voters to “correct the wrong that was done to them two years ago,” when Menendez – then an appointed member of the Port Authority with no electoral experience – was made the 8th district congressman essentially by fiat. Menendez had not earned the job then, the editorial argued, and thus should be removed from it now.
Whatever one’s thoughts on the congressman, it’s tough to say that he didn’t earn his victory on Tuesday. Bhalla threw the book at him, spending close to $2 million and eviscerating him over his connections to his father, but Menendez still convinced a (bare) majority of the 8th district’s Democratic voters to stay with him.
Of course, he got plenty of help from the party organizations that turned out thousands of votes for him – organizations that are very much not dead, even with the prospective death of the county organizational line. But Menendez’s hard-won victory is his to keep. Now headed to a second congressional term, and perhaps many more after that, it’s up to him what to do with it.