For months, Jersey City Mayor and 2025 gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop has grown increasingly strident in his opposition to the county organizational line, the New Jersey ballot design system that allows political parties to shape primary ballots in their favor. This morning, he made that opposition official, filing an amicus brief in the ongoing appeal over the line’s constitutionality.
A panel of federal appellate judges will hear oral arguments later this week from several county party organizations who say that U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi erred when he struck down the county line for this year’s Democratic primary. Their appeal, Fulop said today, should be denied.
“Whether it was Tammany Hall in New York or Nucky Johnson in Atlantic City, [former Jersey City Mayor] Frank Hague ran neither the first nor the last political machine in history, and the current county line system that is in place is just its latest version,” elections attorney Scott Salmon wrote in the brief. “Each of the various county parties (on both sides of the spectrum) serves as its steward and helps propagate its inequities. This system … places a significant burden on voting rights, while failing to further any legitimate government interest.”
The brief was officially filed on behalf of Fulop’s gubernatorial campaign, which of course has a substantial stake in whether the line is ultimately ruled unconstitutional or allowed to stand – although the appeal that’s being heard now only applies to this year’s election.
The plaintiffs in the current case are Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) and two off-the-line Democratic congressional candidates, who requested a preliminary injunction preventing the line from being used in their elections this year. In the initial proceedings, the line was defended by the state’s county clerks, but after Quraishi issued his opinion and the Third Circuit declined to halt it, they all dropped out of the case and began work on preparing new office-block Democratic ballots.
Now, the task of defending the line falls instead to the Camden County Democratic Committee (CCDC), alongside a few other party organizations, including the Middlesex County Democratic Organization (MCDO) and the Morris County Republican Committee, who filed as amici. In a brief written by former U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal filed on Saturday, the MCDO defended the line as an important – and constitutional – tool that county parties use to assist voters and further their interests.
That argument, as well as the identity of the person writing it, should prompt substantial skepticism about the party organizations’ motives, Fulop’s brief says.
“For the CCDC’s decision to intervene in the lawsuit to make any financial sense, to say nothing of the MCDO’s decision to hire one of our country’s most prominent appellate lawyers at its sole cost and expense, the benefits associated with the county line must be staggering,” Salmon wrote. “If the saying is, as Shakespeare wrote, that ‘the lady doth protest too much,’ then the CCDC and MCDO’s protest here is a bloodcurdling scream.”
As for the party organizations’ contentions that party-line ballots are easier to understand, and switching to a new ballot system might serve to confuse voters, Salmon said there is no reason to believe that’s true. After all, New Jersey already uses office-block ballots for nonpartisan municipal elections and school board races – not to mention the fact that voters in every other state in the country, as well as in two New Jersey counties, use office-block primary ballots just fine.
“As this appeal is being heard, votes are already being cast using office-block ballots for numerous positions and have been for decades, preliminary injunction or not,” Salmon wrote. “Far from reinventing the wheel, using office-block ballots for primaries will simply conform to the vast majority of other elections held in the State of New Jersey. If anything, voters will be less confused about their ballots than they were before.”
Back in 2016, Fulop – then a first-term mayor – was considered a likely candidate for governor, but he ultimately backed out in favor of now-Gov. Phil Murphy. The reason, implied at the time and stated explicitly in today’s amicus brief, was that Murphy had secured the support of all-important party chairs and organizations, and Fulop did not want to go up against the power of the party line.
In the upcoming 2025 election, depending on how Quraishi rules in a separate lawsuit on the line’s constitutionality, there may not be any lines at all for Fulop to contend with. That, he said today, would be a positive thing for New Jersey.
“He who controls the nomination process controls the electorate,” Salmon wrote. “It is long past time for the nomination process to be returned to the people, where it belongs, and the age of Boss Tweed, Frank Hague, and all other political machines put to rest.”
Fulop 3rd Circuit Amicus Brief