Delgado-Polanco running for delegate on Sanders ticket

A controversial former Murphy administration official is mounting a political comeback as a candidate for delegate to the Democratic National Convention pledged to Bernie Sanders.

Lizette Delgado-Polanco, forced to resign last year her state job and party post in a nepotism scandal, filed on Monday for a district delegate post on Sanders’ ticket.

The slate also includes CWA state director Hetty Rosenstein, Perth Amboy Mayor Wilda Diaz, and Ted Glick, the 2002 Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate.

Former New Jersey Working Families Alliance state director Analilia Mejia is running on the New Jersey Sanders ticket.  She is the national political director of Sanders’ campaign.

Sanders’ delegate slate also includes the three leaders of Sanders’ New Jersey leadership team: Larry Hamm, Patricia Campos Medina and Barry Brendel.

Hamm, the chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress and a former Newark school board member, is challenging Cory Booker for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.  Campos Medina is veteran labor leader and Latino community activist, and Brendel, who has worked on national campaigns since the 1970s, became chairman of Our Revolution New Jersey after spearheading Sanders’ state campaign four years ago.

A total of 84 delegates and nine alternates will be selected in the June primary election from 40 delegate districts formed by combining two legislative districts.  The state party will pick an additional 28 at-large delegates, fourteen Pledged Party Leader and Election Official (PLEO) delegates, and two alternate at-large delegates at a meeting on June 13.  New Jersey also has 20 automatic party leader and elected official delegates.

The Sanders slate is still unclear.  The full list of candidates who filed was released late Monday evening by the New Jersey Division of Elections, but slogans were still pending and the last should be updated later today.

Joe Biden’s delegate slate was first reported by the New Jersey Globe twelve days ago.

With a 15% threshold for winning a district delegate it’s unlikely that any candidate will sweep New Jersey on June 2. 

Also on the Sanders ticket: former Hunterdon County Democratic Chairman Joey Novick; Middlesex County Democratic state committeewoman and CWA official Franceline Ehret; Blue Jersey editor Rosi Efthim; Dover councilman and Democratic municipal chairman Edward Correa; West Orange councilwoman Cindy Matute-Brown; Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey president and CEO Staci Berger; Our Revolution Essex County chairman Justin Goldsman; former congressional candidate Peter Jacob; and Make the Road New Jersey director Sara Cullinane.

Jeremiah Schenerman, a 28-year-old Army reservist who mounted a write-in campaign for State Senate last fall after Democratic incumbent Bob Andrzejczak said he would consider voting for Donald Trump, is running for delegate on the Sanders slate.  So are Steven Farkas, a horror and science fiction writer who ran for State Assembly in the 30th district in 2019, and John Hsu, who dropped his primary challenge to Rep. Frank Pallone in order to focus on helping Sanders win the presidency.

Delgado-Polanco was ousted as CEO of the New Jersey Schools Development Authority under heavy criticism for hiring about three dozen people with personal or political connections to her, including several relatives.

She was also forced out of her post as vice chair of the Democratic State Committee, a post that would have given her an automatic delegate slot at the national convention in Milwaukee.