Albert Harshaw, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, attempted to appeal U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi’s decision eliminating county organizational lines for Democrats but not for Republicans – and was promptly rebuffed by Quraishi, who said Harshaw is not a party in the case and thus has no grounds to appeal.
Last Friday, Quraishi issued a preliminary injunction declaring that county lines, which group party-endorsed candidates together on primary ballots, could not be used in this year’s primary elections. But the next day, he clarified that his ruling only applied to the Democratic primary, because the plaintiffs were all Democrats and thus were not harmed by ballot designs on the Republican side.
Harshaw, whose Senate campaign won zero county lines, attempted to appeal that portion of Quraishi’s decision to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that it created two unequal classes of candidates in New Jersey. The ruling, Harshaw said in a filing submitted over the weekend, should apply to both parties equally.
“It cannot be made, so that, in ruling, that there are two classes of citizens created, when in fact there is only one, citizen(s) of the United States of America,” wrote Harshaw, who acted pro se. “As in this case, the Democrat Party line is abolished, and the Republican Party Line is retained; That is the two classes created. As found and as ordered, that the party line is in fact unconstitutional, to be correct, simple Boolean logic states that, what is true on one side, is also true on the other side. Two opposite states cannot co-exist, in this instance, simultaneously. It is one or the other. Not both.”
But in a terse order, Quraishi said Harshaw “is a non-party to the lawsuit and therefore has no standing to pursue an appeal of the decision in this matter. Moreover, the deadline to move to intervene as to the motion for preliminary injunction has passed. Therefore, the arguments presented will not be considered by this Court.”
Quraishi left the door open to Harshaw joining a longer-term lawsuit against the county line which has been going on since 2020; that suit aims to completely abolish the line rather than simply suspend it for this year, as the preliminary injunction filed by Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) and two others did.
Harshaw’s failed appeal is one of the many overlapping legal developments following Quraishi’s decision, which has been appealed to the Third Circuit by a coalition of most of New Jersey’s county clerks, who were named as the defendants in the original lawsuit. Those county clerks have also asked Quraishi for a stay of his own ruling pending that appeal.
Quraishi has sent some mixed signals on what the deadlines for intervention are. The Morris County Republican Committee filed to intervene in the case yesterday, and Quraishi said this morning that he’ll give both sides until Wednesday to respond to their request – even though he unilaterally told Harshaw just a few hours later that the deadline to intervene has passed.
The clock is ticking, meanwhile, on New Jersey’s election calendar. County clerks are scheduled to hold their drawings for ballot order on Thursday – drawings that could take hours this year thanks to a quirk of Quraishi’s ruling – and the work to prepare ballots, both office block-style on the Democratic side and party line-style on the Republican side, will begin soon afterwards.