New Jersey’s slate of pro-Palestine “uncommitted” presidential delegates have officially been given two delegate slots to the Democratic National Convention (DNC), after meeting a key vote threshold in one delegate district and being given some leeway by the Joe Biden campaign in another district where they just barely missed the cutoff.
Under New Jersey Democratic State Committee (NJDSC) rules, presidential candidates and their associated delegate slates are eligible for spots at the convention if they surpass 15% of the presidential primary vote either statewide or in one of the state’s 20 delegate districts, which are each composed of two state legislative districts. A total of 28 at-large delegates and 84 district delegates will ultimately be sent to the convention.
New Jersey’s “Justice for Palestine, Permanent Ceasefire Now” delegate slate – which was not associated with a presidential candidate, and thus listed as “uncommitted” – ended up with around 9% of the vote statewide, well below the amount they’d have needed for at-large delegate spots. But the slate did much better in specific delegate districts home to more progressive, pro-Palestine Democratic electorates, enabling them to win two district slots.
In one of those districts, the Paterson-based 18th delegate district, uncommitted ended up with 16.5% of the vote, easily enough to qualify for a delegate (as the New Jersey Globe previously reported). Paterson and some of its nearby suburbs are home to a large Arab American and Palestinian American community, so it’s not surprising that they’re where uncommitted did best.
That means Ahmad Awad, the lone uncommitted candidate in the 18th district, will be headed to Chicago in August. He’ll bump out Biden delegate Saily Avelenda, until recently the executive director of the NJDSC, but Avelenda will still go to the DNC as an at-large delegate.
The other district that’s getting an uncommitted delegate is the 17th district, which covers around two-thirds of Hudson County and includes much of deeply progressive Jersey City – even though the slate technically just missed the threshold in the district, getting 14.99% of the vote when write-ins are included.
According to Avelenda, the Biden campaign and the NJDSC agreed that there was some ambiguity about how to calculate the vote threshold and whether write-ins should be counted. Given that uncertainty, and given how close the result was – even just two more votes (out of more than 30,000 cast) would have put uncommitted over 15% – they were willing to grant the uncommitted slate a second delegate spot.
The slate has not yet determined which of their five potential delegates from the 17th district will go to the DNC; whichever Biden delegate gets booted will, like Avelenda, get a ticket to the DNC anyways via an at-large spot.
In another district, the Princeton- and New Brunswick-based 10th district, uncommitted ended up with 14.7% of the vote. That wasn’t enough to qualify for a voting delegate, even if write-in votes weren’t included, but 10th district delegate candidate Azra Baig will instead go to the DNC as a page, a non-voting position.