Katz’s lead grows to 49 votes after remaining Atlantic VBMs, provisional ballots counted

Chesterfield Democratic municipal chair Andrea Katz’s razor-thin lead for an Assembly seat in New Jersey’s 8th legislative district has grown to 49 votes after Atlantic County’s provisional ballots and remaining vote-by-mail ballots were counted. Katz now leads incumbent Assemblyman Brandon Umba (R-Medford) 27,179 to 27,130, gaining a net four votes from Atlantic’s mail ballots and 18 votes from provisionals.

There are still several hundred votes remaining to be counted, including 103 mail-in ballots and 697 provisional ballots in Burlington County – though not all of the latter will likely be counted – and an unknown number of defective mail ballots that could be cured by voters via cure letters. All three pools of votes probably lean towards Katz.

The Burlington County Board of Elections is set to meet tomorrow to adjudicate the county’s provisional ballots, and plans to count the valid ballots either late tomorrow or on Wednesday; Burlington mail-in ballots will likely be counted tomorrow. Atlantic County – which makes up a much smaller portion of the district and is much more Republican – appears to be done counting, save for any cure letters.

On the night of the election, Umba held a modest lead over Katz, and the New Jersey Globe and the Associated Press both declared him the victor. In a Facebook post the day after the election, Katz even seemed to concede, saying that she was “grateful for the experience” of the campaign and congratulating other Democrats around the state who won their races.

But last Thursday, an unexpected batch of votes from Burlington County was counted that put Katz in an extremely narrow lead. Burlington election officials have not clarified why those votes took so long to be counted, though there is no evidence of any fraud or wrongdoing.

As of the latest count, Assemblyman Michael Torrissi (R-Hammonton) has the lead in the race for two seats with 27,634 votes; Katz and Angelozzi are duking it out for second place with 27,179 and 27,130, while Katz’s running mate Anthony Angelozzi is in last place with 26,997. The leader of the GOP ticket, State Sen.-elect Latham Tiver (R-Southampton), defeated former Pemberton Township Councilwoman Gaye Burton 51%-49% in his Senate race.

If Katz does end up winning when all votes are counted – something both parties increasingly think will happen – it would be a substantial upset in the 8th district, which hasn’t elected a Democratic legislator since 1973. It would also give Assembly Democrats an overall gain of six seats and a 52-28 majority, a remarkable result given that before the election, Republicans were optimistic that they could gain substantial ground in the legislature.