Cumberland County Democrats are in complete disarray.
Two different groups of Democrats in the South Jersey county – one led by Cumberland Democratic Chair Kevin McCann, the other led by a coalition of anti-McCann committeemembers – met tonight in different locations. Each claimed to be the true manifestation of the Cumberland Democratic Committee, and each dismissed the other as a breakaway group that has no official authority.
Both groups departed for the night without making endorsements in any of the races on Cumberland ballots this year: U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, county clerk, and two county commissioner seats.
That sets up a chaotic week before next Monday’s candidate filing deadline and next Thursday’s deadline for submitting slogan and bracketing letters (which are the formal mechanisms used to create county organizational lines). It’s possible that the two groups end up running two different “party line” slates, each led by a different Senate candidate.
The trouble roiling within the Cumberland Democratic organization first reared its head on March 7, when the party was originally set to meet for its county convention. Before the convention even began, party leaders chose to delay Senate and House endorsement votes by two weeks; then, a fight over the convention rules led to a similar two-week delay in votes for county clerk and commissioner.
Evidently, tensions between the two rival factions have only gotten worse since then.
In one corner is McCann, who took over from Nancy Sungenis as county chair last year and is aligned with the broader South Jersey Democratic organization. In the other corner is an assortment of local Democratic leaders, among them the municipal chairs in Bridgeton and Millville, the county’s second- and third-largest cities, and former County Commissioner Donna Pearson (D-Bridgeton).
According to the latter group, McCann locked them out of the main convention, prompting them to move to an alternate location and hold a rival meeting there. With enough committeemembers to represent a quorum supposedly in attendance, the splinter group voted to oust McCann as chairman and amend the committee’s bylaws so that the county chair can no longer award the line unilaterally.
“With the passage of all three motions, no longer will the Cumberland County Democratic Party be run by one person,” Vineland municipal Democratic vice chair Joeigh Perella said in a statement. “This marks a new beginning for the committee, where the people will decide who they want to represent them!”
From McCann’s point of view, though, that entire meeting was illegitimate, and he remains the county chair.
It seems likely that outside parties, probably including the state judiciary, will have to get involved to determine which side represents the “real” Cumberland Democratic Committee. But that process may not be speedy; in the meantime, both sides will have to decide what they’ll do about the races on the ballot this spring.
For U.S. Senate, the contest is primarily between Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) and First Lady Tammy Murphy. If each Cumberland group does end up running a full slate of candidates, it seems logical that McCann would choose Murphy – who has the support of South Jersey Democratic boss George Norcross – to lead his ticket while the anti-McCann group would opt for Kim.
But that’s largely speculative, and it’s not even clear if the Senate candidates will want to get involved in a fight as toxic as the one in Cumberland seems to be. Kim and Murphy, and President Joe Biden, have the option to disengage from the Cumberland battle entirely and run at the top of the ballot on their own. (The county, population 154,000, is home to around 1.3% of the state’s registered Democrats.)
The same goes for the three main Democratic candidates running against Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) in the 2nd congressional district: Tim Alexander, Joe Salerno, and Carolyn Rush. Alexander, for what it’s worth, submitted nominating petitions today that featured the official slogan of the Cumberland Democratic organization, but that may not mean much.
Then there are the three county offices that are up this year. Cumberland Democrats have had a rough few years, losing every single seat on the county board of commissioners and falling to just a single countywide officeholder, County Clerk Celeste Riley. Given the chaos that’s engulfed the county party, Riley may face a primary challenge this year, and a showdown seems almost certain for the nomination for two county commissioner seats.
Cumberland Democrats are no stranger to infighting over county races. In 2020, two rival slates duked it out for three different commissioner seats, with two incumbents prevailing on the party line and one off-the-line challenger, Pearson, winning the third slot. Pearson’s victory remains the last time an off-the-line candidate has won a Democratic primary for county office anywhere in the state.
This year’s fight, though, is taking place with a very high-profile Senate race at the top of the ticket, and with more attention on county lines and the inner workings of county political parties than ever. Kim has filed a lawsuit to abolish the county line entirely; it was heard in federal court on Monday, though it’s unknown when a ruling might come down.
If Kim’s lawsuit succeeds, then all current discussions of bracketing letters and party slates will become largely meaningless. Senate and House candidates would be able to run at the top of the ticket without having to deal with the political implications of local battles like the one in Cumberland.
But the suit won’t do much to ease the tensions within the Cumberland Democratic organization in the short term. That battle will probably produce a brutal county-level primary no matter what – and may ultimately need a judge to weigh in and settle it once and for all.
This story was updated at 2:07 p.m. on March 23 with a correction: only two county commissioner seats are up this year, not three.