As expected, President Joe Biden won New Jersey’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday in a landslide – but a slate of “uncommitted” delegates running on a pro-Palestine message appears to have won one ticket to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from Passaic County.
Under the New Jersey Democratic State Committee (NJDSC)’s rules, 28 delegates to the DNC are elected at-large in the presidential primary, while another 84 are elected at the district level. (The state is divided into 20 delegate districts, each of which is made up of two legislative districts.) In order to win any delegates, a presidential candidate needs to get at least 15% of the vote, either statewide or in individual districts.
The uncommitted slate, running on the slogan “Justice for Palestine, Permanent Ceasefire Now,” failed to meet that threshold statewide; they won 8.9% of the vote overall, or just over 43,000 votes and counting. Biden got 87% of the vote, while another 3% went to Terrisa Bukovinac, a pro-life activist running a gadflyish Democratic campaign.
But in the 18th delegate district – which includes Paterson, home to a large Palestinian American community – uncommitted won 15.9% of the vote. Assuming the result doesn’t substantially shift as the few remaining ballots are counted, that’s enough to get Ahmad Awad, the lone uncommitted delegate who filed in the district, one of the district’s five delegate tickets to the DNC in August.
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, will have to decide which four of their five 18th district delegate candidates they’ll send to Chicago for the convention. The list includes some notable names: Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin, Paterson Councilwoman Lilisa Mimms, former NJDSC Executive Director Saily Avelenda, political strategist Adam Silverstein, and Marqweesha Guthrie, a former chair of the New Jersey Young Democrats Black Caucus. (Whoever loses their spot could still be chosen to go to the convention as an at-large delegate.)
In several other delegate districts, the uncommitted slate is close to the 15% threshold, but doesn’t seem to have quite met it – though late-counted ballots could still shift some results. In the 17th delegate district, which includes the progressive hotbed of downtown Jersey City, uncommitted is at 14.9%; in the 10th delegate district, which is based in New Brunswick and Princeton, uncommitted is at 14.3%.
The uncommitted slate did not field any delegate candidates in two districts, the 6th and 7th, in Monmouth and Ocean Counties; that reduced their statewide vote total, though they likely wouldn’t have won any delegates in those districts. (The Ocean County Clerk chose to include “uncommitted” as an option in those districts anyways, but the Monmouth County Clerk did not.)
On Facebook, Uncommitted NJ claimed the result as a win, saying that the tens of thousands of protest votes show that Biden needs to change course on the war in Israel.
“The votes are still being counted, but the results are in… NJ says NO to Genocide Joe!,” the group said.