Risk of losing House seats likely prevents some New Jersey Democrats from making Biden short list

Speculators should pass over most of New Jersey’s congressional delegation when talking about potential cabinet members in Joe Biden’s administration.

The Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to be slim and Biden will likely want to avoid any appointments that could trigger Republican gains in special elections next year.

That seems to preclude any administration post for Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff), Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) or Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair).  All four of those seats could flip Republican in a 2021 special election.

Democrats can’t afford to lose any U.S. Senate seats, and while New Jersey is low-risk – the state has not elected a Republican U.S. Senator since 1972 – the ghost of Republican Scott Brown capturing Ted Kennedy’s seat in a 2010 special election in deep blue Massachusetts could loom large.

Booker, re-elected last week by a huge margin, has dismissed any interest in serving in a Biden cabinet and said in a New Jersey Globe debate that he would remain in the Senate if voters re-elected him.

“I pledge to finish my full six-year term,” Booker said.  “That is totally my intention.”

If Booker were to change his mind, it would trigger a 2021 special election to fill his seat.

Gov. Phil Murphy would appoint an interim senator to replace Booker.

Murphy would then need to decide if he wants to hold a separate primary and general for the Senate, or allow a special U.S. Senate election that would gain national notoriety to be run concurrently with his own re-election campaign.

Following the death of Frank Lautenberg in June 2013, then-Gov. Chris Christie didn’t want special U.S. Senate election – specifically with Booker on the ticket – to overshadow his own re-election campaign.  Instead, he appointed a caretaker and scheduled a special election in October.

Democrats strongly criticized Christie for the extra cost of another statewide election.

The winner would serve until January 3, 2027.

In August, The (Bergen) Record reported that United Brotherhood of Carpenters president Douglas McCarron launched a trial balloon by mentioning Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden) as a possible candidate for U.S. Secretary of Labor if Biden won the presidency.

McCarron, the Record said, wants “somebody who has worked with their hands, especially a construction guy.”  That’s code for a preferring that the next Labor Secretary come from the building trades, instead of the public employee sector.

Norcross, the former South Jersey AFL-CIO president and a former union electrician, might be a good fit to head the Labor Department, McCarron said.

Vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives are filled uniquely.  Unlike other offices, where there are appointments or special election conventions, only voters can send someone to the peoples’ house.  There is no way around that.

In this particular situation, Murphy wields extraordinary, unchecked power in determining how and when the seat would get filled.

Only the governor has the authority to issue a writ of election to fill a vacant congressional seat.

Murphy could order the seat filled in the next election — which means a June 2021 primary and a November 2021 general – or he could order a free-standing election to fill any congressional vacancy.

The governor has statutory authority to schedule a special primary between 70 and 76 days after the vacancy occurs, but only if he wants to.

Hypothetically, if a New Jersey House member were to resign on January 22 – that’s the date Rep. Hilda Solis (D-California) left the House to become Barack Obama’s Secretary of Labor – and if Murphy were to immediately call a special election, that could set up an April 6 primary and a June 15 general election.

Murphy isn’t obligated to issue the writ immediately.  The primary could be anytime in April or May, with the general election scheduled between 64 and 70 days later.

The governor could also hold the special congressional election in June, July or August and isn’t necessarily obligated to run it concurrently with the regularly scheduled primary and general elections.

While the Norcross seat would be an easy hold for Democrats, the seats currently occupied by Gottheimer, Kim, Malinowski and Sherrill would be heavier lifts in a special election.

New Jersey has not held a free-standing special February 1951, when William B. Widnall (R-Saddle River) won a Bergen County-based congressional district a month after the incumbent resigned following was convicted on fraud charges.

Two years later, when Clifford Case (R-Rahway) resigned his House seat to head a think tank run by the Ford Foundation, Gov. Alfred Driscoll let the seat remain vacant for five months and scheduled the special concurrent with the 1953 general election.

(That strategy backfired on Republicans, who saw Harrison Williams, who had lost races for the State Assembly and Plainfield City Council, beat Plainfield Mayor George Hetfield by a narrow 51%-49% margin on the coattails of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Robert Meyner’s 14,171-vote plurality in Union County.)

Since then, New Jersey allowed House seats to remain vacant until the next regularly scheduled election 9 times.

In some cases, the seats sat vacant for nearly a year.

After Jim Florio became governor, he declined to call a special election to fill his Camden County-based seat in Congress.  By the time of the November special election, Florio had already proposed a $2.8 billion tax increase, and Democrat Rob Andrews won the seat in November 1990 by a narrow-than-expected 55%-45% margin against a Republican in a staunchly Democratic district.

Bob Menendez left the House in January 2006 when newly-elected Gov. Jon Corzine appointed him to fill his old U.S. Senate seat.  His seat went to then-Assembly Speaker/West New York Mayor Albio Sires, who preferred to wait until the fall to make his transition to Washington.

Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark) died in March 2012 and Gov. Chris Christie eschewed a special election and let the seat be filled in the regularly scheduled primary and general elections.

Following the death of U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg in June 2013, Christie didn’t want a U.S. Senate special election to interfere with his own re-election in the fall.  He issued a writ calling for a special primary on August 13 and a special election on October 16.

Murphy told POLITICO in August that he had no interest in a Biden administration post.   He announced last month that he was planning to seek re-election as governor.