Cory Booker will stay out of Dem gubernatorial primary

The six-way Democratic primary for governor of New Jersey has strained old political alliances and created unexpected new ones, but the state’s U.S. Senate delegation has decided to remain above the fray entirely.

Last week, Senator Andy Kim said that he wouldn’t make an endorsement in the race, stating that the decision about who to nominate “belongs to the voters and the voters alone.” And his colleague, Senator Cory Booker, told the New Jersey Globe today that he, too, will not get involved in what has become a fractious and competitive primary.

“I will not be making an endorsement,” Booker said. “Whoever wins the primary, I’m going to get fully behind, and do everything I can to make sure they win [in November].”

Booker said that the one thing he does want to see in the primary is voter engagement – oftentimes a difficult task in an off-year June primary election, even with the tens of millions of dollars that have already been spent to entice voters to the polls.

“I think it’s important that we have high voter turnout, and that Democrats participate in the primary,” he said.

Booker’s own successor as the mayor of Newark is among the candidates running; after Booker was elected to the Senate in 2013, then-Councilman Ras Baraka was elected to succeed him, setting him up for his current campaign to be New Jersey’s first Black governor. Two of Booker’s congressional colleagues, Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) and Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), are also running.

Of course, as a statewide elected official, Booker has had plenty of opportunities to get to know all six of the Democratic candidates, each of whom currently holds or previously held major public office in the state. That same dilemma of choosing among friends applied to Kim, and it also applies to term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy, who has declined to weigh in on his would-be successors thus far and said last year that the party has a lot of “good talent.”

(Booker also pointedly did not involve himself in last year’s U.S. Senate primary even as most of the state’s Democrats lined up behind First Lady Tammy Murphy’s ultimately unsuccessful primary campaign against Kim. But in the state’s last open-seat gubernatorial race eight years ago, Booker endorsed Murphy in January 2017, helping the then-first time candidate sail through the Democratic primary and flip the state blue.)

Five of the state’s House Democrats have made endorsements in this year’s governor’s race: Reps. Herb Conaway (D-Delran) and Donald Norcross (D-Camden) for former State Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford), Reps. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) for Baraka, and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) for Sherrill.