Despite lots of turnover, new legislature will be demographically similar to current one

One of the dominant themes of this year’s New Jersey legislative elections was turnover. Thanks to a large number of retirements and defeats, there will be a whopping 29 new faces joining the legislature in January, plus another seven current or former assemblymembers who will begin their first terms in the Senate.

Demographically speaking, however, the statehouse isn’t going to change much. White and male politicians have long made up a disproportionate percentage of the legislature’s 120 members, and that’s set to continue; in fact, the number of women in the legislature will decrease once the new legislature is sworn in.

Race

The current legislature is 69% white, 17% Black, 8% Hispanic, and 6% Asian; that will remain basically the same when the new legislature is sworn in, with the current total of 83 white legislators dropping ever so slightly to 82. (For comparison’s sake, New Jersey as a whole was 54% white, 14% Black, 20% Hispanic, and 8% Asian as of the 2020 Census, with another 4% of residents not fitting into one of those four categories.)

There will be a net loss of one Black legislator, down from 20 to 19, because Assemblywomen Britnee Timberlake (D-East Orange) and Angela McKnight (D-Jersey City) are ascending to the State Senate and will be replaced by non-Black assemblymembers. Assemblywoman-elect Tennille McCoy (D-Hamilton), on the other hand, will take the seat currently held by Assemblyman Dan Benson (D-Hamilton) and become the 14th district’s first-ever legislator of color.

The legislative Hispanic caucus is set to grow by two, from 10 to 12 – not including Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin (D-Newark), who is a member of Newark’s Portuguese American community.

The gains in Hispanic representation come entirely from Essex County; Assemblywomen-elect Rosy Bagolie (D-Livingston), Alixon Collazos-Gill (D-Montclair), and Carmen Morales (D-Belleville) will all soon begin their first terms representing Essex’s 27th and 34th districts. Assemblywoman Gabriela Mosquera (D-Gloucester Township), meanwhile, will depart her South Jersey district in favor of a white candidate.

And the number of Asian American legislators will remain steady at seven; Assemblywoman Sadaf Jaffer (D-Montgomery) is retiring after just one term, but Pakistan-born Assemblyman-elect Al Barlas (R-Cedar Grove) will take office right as Jaffer leaves.

Two majority-minority districts, the 17th in Middlesex and Somerset Counties and the 36th in Bergen and Passaic Counties, will continue to send all-white, all-male legislative delegations to Trenton.

Of the 38 legislators of color who will serve in the statehouse next year, a whopping 34 of them are Democrats – which isn’t terribly surprising, since Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters all tend to lean Democratic.

Gender

Thanks to a large number of women retiring from the statehouse this year, the legislature’s steady climb towards gender parity will reverse slightly when the new members are sworn in. The current legislature includes 77 men and 43 women, a ratio of 64%-36%; the new legislature will have 80 men and 40 women, or 67%-33%.

There’s no single cause of the drop in female representation. Instead, it was lots of little choices in districts across the state that all added up: Mosquera, Assemblywoman DiAnne Gove (R-Long Beach), Assemblywoman Angelica Jimenez (D-West New York), State Sen. Jean Stanfield (R-Westampton), Assemblywoman DeAnne DeFuccio (R-Upper Saddle River), and Assemblywoman Beth Sawyer (R-Woolwich) all either retired or were pushed aside this year in favor of male candidates.

(McCoy, Collazos-Gill, and Assemblywoman-elect Dawn Fantasia (R-Franklin) did the reverse and won seats previously held by men, but it wasn’t enough to offset the loss of female legislators elsewhere.)

It also didn’t help that in a few key districts that were competitive in the general election, the less diverse slate won. Had Democrats won in the 2nd or 8th districts, or Republicans in the 4th or 38th districts, that would have meant the election of several more female and nonwhite legislators.

Overall, the Democratic caucus will come far closer to gender parity. 32 of the new legislature’s 76 Democrats will be women (42%), while women will make up just eight of the GOP conference’s 44 members (18%).

There is one additional caveat worth noting. Two of the current legislature’s 43 women, State Sen. Renee Burgess (D-Irvington) and Assemblywoman Jackie Yustein (D-Glen Ridge), both won special election conventions mid-session to replace retiring male legislators; in the 2021 elections, women won 41 seats overall, so this year’s results aren’t much of a step back from that benchmark.

Other demographics

New Jersey’s LGBT population doubled its representation in the legislature, with Assemblyman Don Guardian (R-Atlantic City) getting re-elected and Assemblywoman-elect Luanne Peterpaul (D-Long Branch) winning her first term after defeating an incumbent Republican. Peterpaul is the first-ever openly gay woman to win a seat in the legislature. 

There are still a number of other firsts that have yet to be made; New Jersey has never had an openly LGBT state senator, an openly LGBT legislator of color, or a transgender legislator.

The new legislature will also be a fair bit younger than the current one on average, with lots of the oldest incumbent legislators – among them 88-year-old State Sen. Sam Thompson (D-Old Bridge) and 85-year-old Assemblyman Joe Egan (D-New Brunswick) – stepping aside in favor of far younger slates.

Currently, the average age of a New Jersey legislator is 59.7 years old; that will soon fall to 56.1. Some districts, like the 9th, 24th, 27th, and 34th districts, are witnessing their average age fall by a decade or more.

The legislature will also be getting a new youngest member: 32-year-old Assemblyman-elect Cody Miller (D-Monroe), who will take the crown away from 34-year-old Assemblyman William Sampson (D-Bayonne). Miller is the first-ever legislator born in the 1990s; he was born a year into the administration of Gov. Jim Florio, who was similarly first elected to a South Jersey legislative seat at age 32.