Watch for big geographic divides in next week’s GOP primaries

In theory, when New Jersey voters go to the polls next Tuesday, they can vote for whoever they’d like. They could cast their vote for establishment-backed candidates, or for their insurgent challengers, or for Mickey Mouse if they so choose.

Realistically, though, most voters will choose the first option. The county organizational line, which allows county parties to promote their preferred candidates on primary ballots, discourages most serious candidates from running without party support and puts those who run anyways at a significant disadvantage. Only a handful of candidates every year win off-the-line.

But when county parties are in disagreement about who to support, genuinely competitive primaries can emerge.

This year, two legislative districts are hosting Republican primaries where multiple county parties are at odds: the 4th district in South Jersey and the 24th district in the state’s northern reaches. In two other districts, the 3rd and the 26th, the county GOP organizations are officially on the same side, but there’s reason to believe that different counties may vote quite differently from one another.

The New Jersey Globe already examined the 26th district primary in some detail. As for the other three districts, here’s a guide to what next Tuesday’s results may look like.

LD4
Counties covered: Gloucester, Camden, Atlantic

For a brief period this winter, it seemed like the Republican primary in the 4th district – a Democratic-held South Jersey seat that’s likely to host one of the most competitive races of 2023 – would be a sleepy one.

In February, the Gloucester County GOP decided to support Gloucester County Commissioner Nick DeSilvio (R-Franklin), who had won his countywide seat in a 2021 upset, for the State Senate alongside Assembly candidates Michael Clark and Denise Gonzalez. Since Gloucester is home to around 53% of the district’s registered Republicans, that could have been the end of it.

But Atlantic County Republicans (around 7% of the district) refused to go along, thanks in large part to a dispute over one of the district’s Assembly seats. Atlantic GOP chairman Don Purdy wanted Gloucester Republicans to put former Buena Council President Matt Walker on their ticket; they said no, and so Purdy instead put together an alternate slate of Washington Township Councilman Chris Del Borrello, Walker, and Amanda Esposito.

Crucially, anti-DeSilvio forces managed to convince Republicans in Camden County – which makes up the other 40% of the district’s GOP voters – to drop their support of DeSilvio and give their county line to Del Borrello instead.

That appears to make for an evenly matched contest, since DeSilvio and Del Borrello each have party backing in around half of the district. But thanks to a variety of factors, Del Borrello may have an easier time getting big margins out of his home turf than DeSilvio.

In both Camden and Atlantic Counties, Del Borrello has a full slate of county and local counties listed below him on the ballot, while DeSilvio’s slate is running essentially alone. In fact, because of an apparent filing snafu, DeSilvio isn’t even bracketed with his own running mates in Atlantic; instead, he’s grouped with an unrelated Assembly candidate, John Keating.

DeSilvio will have to rely purely on his own campaign outreach to convince Atlantic and Camden County voters to vote against the line – a difficult task for someone who has never run outside his home county before.

Del Borrello, on the other hand, isn’t facing nearly as much of a dire situation in Gloucester County. Alongside a fellow off-the-line ticket in the neighboring 3rd district, Del Borrello is affiliated with a full slate of candidates for county commissioner and surrogate, and in a stroke of luck, their slate snagged the coveted Column A on primary ballots.

That means that visually, it’s tough to tell who has the organizational line in Gloucester County. Two full slates are on the ballot, one running under the “Gloucester County Regular Republican Party” slogan and the other under the “Regular Organization Republican” slogan; for voters who aren’t clued into the race, it’s basically a crapshoot.

It will be up to the Gloucester GOP, then, to educate those voters, which may be tough for a still-budding organization that doesn’t yet have the institutional heft of other county parties. Even more established organizations like the Bergen GOP have struggled to overcome unfavorable ballot design in recent years.

Del Borrello is also a former Gloucester County politician himself, serving one term on the Washington Township Council, and his brother remains a current township councilman – so DeSilvio isn’t the only one with deep ties in the county.

There are still some factors in the race that are working in DeSilvio’s favor. He’s positioned himself as the race’s conservative crusader – dangerous in a general election but helpful in a primary – and he’s also benefiting from an unknown amount of spending on his behalf by Democratic outside groups.

Perhaps most importantly, DeSilvio is strongly aligned with State Sen. Ed Durr (R-Logan), who is favored in his own neighboring primary. If voters associate DeSilvio with the now-famous Durr, that would likely to be to his benefit.

But thanks to a combination of political alliances and good luck, Del Borrello is in an enviable position. If DeSilvio does manage to win, it will be in spite of substantial geographic and institutional hurdles.

LD24
Counties covered: Sussex, Morris, Warren

If the GOP primary in the 4th district is a standard inter-county war, the 24th district primary for two open Assembly seats is something more unusual: an open primary.

At least, sort of. The bulk of the far northwestern district – 63% of its GOP voters – is in Sussex County, one of only two counties in the state that doesn’t have a county line (the other being Salem County). While the other two counties in the 24th district do have lines, Sussex is likely to be the king- or queenmaker, creating an unpredictable contest between two competing slates.

On one ticket is Sussex County Commissioner Dawn Fantasia (R-Franklin) and Chester Township Mayor Mike Inganamort; on the other is Warren County Commissioner Jason Sarnoski (R-Independence) and Lafayette Board of Education President Josh Aikens. A fifth candidate, Rob Kovic, is also on the ballot, but he’s likely to be boxed out by the four top contenders.

At least on paper, Fantasia and Inganamort are better positioned to win in the line-free environment of Sussex County.

Even though they don’t have the benefit of a line, they’re heavily associated with the county’s top Republicans. They’re running on a joint ticket with Assemblyman Parker Space (R-Wantage), who’s uncontested for the district’s Senate seat; the man he’s seeking to succeed, retiring Senate Minority Leader Steve Oroho (R-Franklin), is backing Fantasia and Inganamort as well.

Fantasia is also the only candidate in the Assembly race who has run countywide in Sussex before. Her first freeholder campaign in 2018 resulted in a blowout Republican primary victory against two incumbents, establishing her as a force to be reckoned with across the county.

Aikens, meanwhile, has only ever run in Lafayette Township (though his network of conservative school board candidates extends much further), and Sarnoski and Inganamort hold office in other counties entirely.

But like DeSilvio in the 4th district, Sarnoski and Aikens are counting on their deeply conservative campaigns to make up for their lesser institutional connections. And if there’s anywhere that strategy could work, it’s Sussex County.

The district’s next-biggest share of votes comes from Morris County, where around 32% of Republican voters live. There, things are a bit more straightforward: Fantasia and Inganamort (a Morris politician) have the line, and Aikens and Sarnoski don’t.

The Morris line, though, is still only two years old, and doesn’t have a spotless track record of getting its preferred candidates across the finish line. Last year, Morris County Commissioner Tom Mastrangelo (R-Montville) won renomination despite losing the county line, while Paul DeGroot got the GOP nomination in the 11th congressional district thanks in part to a strong off-the-line showing in Morris County.

DeGroot is now running off-the-line again, this time for county commissioner, and he’s joined up with Aikens and Sarnoski in Morris County’s six 24th district towns. The trio has Column A; their slate isn’t complete enough for voters to confuse them with the party-backed ticket, but they are at least in a prominent position on primary ballots.

Finally, the remaining 5% of the district’s Republican voters live in two towns in Warren County. They’d likely be an afterthought, if it weren’t for the fact that Sarnoski lives in one of those two towns and could get monstrous margins out of them.

Aikens has the Warren line alongside Sarnoski, the result of an interesting set of behind-the-scenes maneuverings. Warren Republicans initially offered their line to Sarnoski, Space, and Fantasia, but the latter two refused to abandon Inganamort and declined the line, allowing Aikens to step in instead; technically, that means the Warren GOP has no organizational candidate for Senate in the 24th district.

What does this all add up to? Other than a probable strong performance from Fantasia in Sussex County and Sarnoski in Warren County, it’s hard to say.

Hypothetically, let’s say Fantasia and Inganamort collectively get 52% of the vote in Sussex County, 55% in Morris County, and 20% in Warren County. Assuming turnout is approximately the same across the three counties, that results in them getting around 51% of the vote districtwide, a narrow victory.

Those numbers are totally fudged; don’t take them as predictions for what Tuesday will look like. They’re only meant to demonstrate that each of the 24th district’s counties could go in a different direction – and balance one another out in the process.

LD3
Counties covered: Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland

Heading back down to South Jersey, the 3rd district is something of a different case. Every county party is backing Ed Durr for re-election, putting Assemblywoman Beth Sawyer (R-Woolwich) – Durr’s erstwhile running mate who has sharply broken away from him – in a tough position.

Still, thanks to differing circumstances in the three counties, Durr may be stronger in some places than he is in others.

In Gloucester County – home to 60% of 3rd district Republican voters – Durr has the line, while Sawyer and her lone Assembly running mate, Joseph Collins, are on the same slate as Del Borrello. That means they have Column A and a full set of county-level candidates running below them.

Like in the 4th district, then, it’s hard to tell based on the ballot design alone who has the party line, though Sawyer’s empty second Assembly slot probably won’t help her. (The reason for the missing candidate is that Sawyer is backing her seatmate, Assemblywoman Bethanne McCarthy Patrick, for re-election even though she’s on Durr’s ticket.)

Salem County, meanwhile, is like Sussex County in that it doesn’t have a county line, though Durr and his slate won the right to use the official Salem Republican slogan on the ballot. The county, the least populous in the state, makes up 30% of the district’s Republicans.

McCarthy Patrick is the lone Salem County native on either slate, giving her a leg up and possibly boosting her running mates as well. Still, several prominent Salem politicians, including County Commissioner (and former Durr opponent) Mickey Ostrum, are backing Sawyer.

If there’s anywhere that’s likely to provide a huge margin for Team Durr, though, it’s Cumberland County.

There are no mitigating factors in the six Cumberland towns in the district, representing 10% of GOP voters. Durr has support from the county organization, a powerful thing under chairman Mike Testa; Sawyer has no affiliated candidates running on her slate; and Durr’s second running mate, Hopewell Township Committeeman Tom Tedesco, is a Cumberland County officeholder.

But looming over everything is Durr’s popularity among GOP voters. Thanks to his shocking defeat of Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) in 2021, Durr is among the best-known Republican legislators in the state, giving him name recognition that transcends county party endorsements.

Even in Gloucester and Salem Counties, where the organizational line is either unclear or nonexistent, Durr can likely count on a substantial boost from voters who know him as Ed the Truck Driving Giant-Slayer. The bigger question is whether that’s enough to get all of his running mates across the finish line.

And the winner is…

…the ongoing lawsuit against the county line.

When it comes to the benefits of the county line, most people think of primaries like the one happening this year in the 18th legislative district, where State Sen. Patrick Diegnan (D-South Plainfield) faces a solo challenge from Christopher Binetti. Diegnan, who of course has the Middlesex Democratic line, is going to win in a landslide.

But even without the line, Diegnan would easily win. Binetti, like most off-the-line candidates in any given year, is not an especially serious candidate; he has little money, no endorsements, and no clear message as to why voters should deny Diegnan another term. The dreaded line may have discouraged serious opponents from taking on Diegnan to begin with, but it will not be the determinative factor in his victory.

Instead, the races where the effect of the line really comes to the fore are ones like the 4th, 24th, and possibly 3rd district GOP primaries. When county organizations disagree, or when they have significantly different ballot designs, the county-by-county power of the line becomes impossible to miss.

The activists trying to abolish the line in federal court have argued that the line provides an unfair and unconstitutional advantage to its preferred candidates; while there are all sorts of ways to go about proving that, races with opposing county parties are probably the best examples they could hope for.

Whether any of next Tuesday’s primaries will fit the bill is still to be determined. It’s possible that Morris County voters in the 24th district, for example, will vote for the candidates they believe to be the most conservative, ignoring the line and handing the Morris GOP a loss.

But geography and ballot design are still set to play a key role in all of New Jersey’s most closely watched primaries. If you see some wildly divergent results on Tuesday night, or an unexpectedly good performance by a candidate in one county or another – there’s probably a reason behind it.