Prior to New Jersey’s legislative elections on Tuesday, a lot of attention was directed at the phenomenon of “phantom candidates,” or conservative third-party candidates whose main purpose appeared to be siphoning away votes from GOP legislative nominees. In close races, many wondered, would these candidates deny victories to Republicans who otherwise would have won?
Looking at the final results, it’s pretty clear that the answer is no. In the four competitive districts with independent candidates on the ballot – the 2nd, 4th, 11th, and 16th – the victorious party won with a majority of the vote, meaning that the independent candidates’ vote share was irrelevant to the final result.
By far the most high-profile phantom candidates were Giuseppe Costanzo and Maureen Dukes-Penrose, two candidates running under the “Conservatives South Jersey” banner in the highly competitive 4th district.
To be clear, they weren’t high-profile by their own making; neither had any visible campaign apparatus, and Costanzo repeatedly refused to talk to the New Jersey Globe about the race. But a mysterious independent expenditure group called Jersey Freedom aired TV ads and sent out mailers promoting Costanzo in the hopes of sinking GOP Senate candidate Chris Del Borrello.
The source of Jersey Freedom’s funding remains unknown, but it’s not a wild leap to assume that Conservatives South Jersey were tied to the South Jersey Democratic organization, which played hard and dirty this year to win as many legislative seats as possible; Dukes-Penrose even said that Democratic State Sen. Fred Madden (D-Washington) encouraged her to run. (Four days before the election, after a lawsuit by the GOP, a judge froze Jersey Freedom’s bank account and banned the group from making any further communications.)
Regardless, it didn’t seem to matter in the end. Assemblyman Paul Moriarty (D-Washington) defeated Del Borrello 53% to 44%, with the remaining 3% going to Costanzo; that’s pretty high for an independent legislative candidate in New Jersey, but not nearly enough to impact the outcome of the race. Democrats similarly won a majority of the vote for both Assembly seats, while Dukes-Penrose got just 1%.
Even if Costanzo hadn’t been on the ballot and every single one of his voters had voted for Del Borrello instead – which is highly unlikely – Moriarty still would have won by six percentage points. It’s possible that the attack ads boosting Costanzo and savaging Del Borrello hurt Republican turnout, but almost certainly not by enough to account for all of Del Borrello’s 4,874-vote deficit.
Jersey Freedom also spent some money boosting Libertarian Shawn Peck in the 2nd legislative district, where State Sen. Vince Polistina (R-Egg Harbor Township) faced off against Atlantic County Commissioner Caren Fitzpatrick (D-Linwood). Peck was incensed enough by the spending that he dropped out of the race before Election Day and endorsed Polistina, though his name remained on the ballot.
But like Costanzo, Peck didn’t get nearly enough votes to make a difference. He received 3% of the vote, while Polistina beat Fitzpatrick 53%-44% overall.
The two other independent Senate candidates, NJ Patriot Party candidate Karen Zaletel in the 11th district and Libertarian Richard Byrne in the 16th district, didn’t seem to have any outside assistance like their South Jersey counterparts did, and both were largely irrelevant in races that Democrats won by huge margins.
11th district State Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Long Branch) beat Republican Steve Dnistrian by a towering 60%-39% margin, with Zaletel pulling less than 1%; 16th district State Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-South Brunswick) beat former U.S. Rep. Michael Pappas (R-Branchburg) 55%-43%, while Byrne got just over 1%.
Before the election, New Jersey Republicans cried foul over the presence of phantom candidates, and they were probably right to do so – especially in the 4th district, where the Conservatives South Jersey gambit may have even broken state law. But in the end, the GOP’s substantial legislative losses had little to do with who else was on the ballot.