This could be a perfunctory press release, like others issued in past elections over the years, or it may be an announcement that significantly impacts a gubernatorial primary election, which is less than six weeks away.
U.S. Attorney Alina Habba launched a federal Election Integrity Task Force on Tuesday to implement directives from an Executive Order signed by President Donald Trump last month. The task force will include prosecutors and law enforcement officials from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
Among the goals outlined by Habba are removing ineligible voters from the state voter rolls, investigating and prosecuting election crimes, including registration fraud, casting fraudulent ballots, voting by non-U.S. citizens, multiple votes cast by one person, and foreign interference in U.S. elections.
“The Election Integrity Task Force will take all appropriate steps to achieve that integrity and will vigorously pursue anyone who violates or attempts to violate federal laws designed to safeguard elections,” Habba’s press release stated.
The question is how aggressive the U.S. Attorney’s office plans to get, how proactive, and whether they view local election officials as partners – or potential targets in their bid to follow he intent of Trump’s directive. It’s unclear whether the New Jersey Attorney General’s office, which acts as the counsel to state election officials and county election boards, will work alongside Habba on this initiative or oppose it outright.
Trump’s order seeks a “documentary proof of citizenship.”
Another potential wrinkle: Trump says the “United States has not adequately enforced Federal election requirements that, for example, prohibit States from counting ballots received after Election Day.”
AS IF THE REAL ID CRISIS ISN’T ENOUGH: No one in New Jersey played a greater role in disenfranchising voters in 2024 than Latrecia Littles-Floyd, the state motor vehicles director, and could wind up under a microscope if Alina Habba’s Election Integrity Task Force asks the right questions.
The motor vehicle commission appears to have made a considerable number of mistakes in processing new voter registrations and changes of addresses. In a way, this was foreseeable; motor vehicles have struggled to issue driver’s licenses for decades, so it was no surprise that they couldn’t handle voter registration without massive irregularities.
During early voting, and on Election Day, record numbers of voters appeared before judges to advocate against their disenfranchisement; there’s no record of how many voters, turned away from the polls, quietly accepted their fate and didn’t vote. One judge openly complained that he waited two hours for motor vehicles to respond to a document request. Littles-Floyd knew about the problem; either she didn’t understand it, or she didn’t care about it. Either way, she played a critical role in denying some people the right to vote.
Allegations of election-related crimes can be submitted to the U.S. Attorney’s hotline at 888-636-6596, or by submitting an online complaint at https://tips.fbi.gov/home.
MAYBE DON’T BOTHER: A Univision/YouGov poll of the New Jersey Governor’s race will be released on Tuesday, May 6, at least five weeks after it came out of the field; the New Jersey poll was being held so it can be rolled out with another survey unrelated to New Jersey. It’s unclear what value the poll has; millions of dollars have been spent since the data was collected.
CULTURAL CHANGE: It looks like New Jersey’s top Democratic elected officials are staying out of the gubernatorial primary, with Gov. Phil Murphy, Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way, and U.S. Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim opting not to take sides in the six-way race for the Democratic nomination. The state’s two Democratic legislative leaders, Senate President Nicholas Scutari and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, have also not made personal endorsements. In contrast, the race for Dick Durbin’s open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois came with two early endorsements: Gov. J.B. Pritzker and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth announced their support of Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton for the open Senate seat despite a large and unsettled field.
DUBICKI’S WATCHING: According to Associated Press election analyst Ryan Dubicki, the Sultan of the VBM Numbers, 29,207 New Jersey voters have already returned their vote-by-mail ballots six weeks in advance of the primary election; that’s 4.3% of the 685,602 ballots sent out by county clerks. Democrats have returned 4% and the GOP has sent back 5%, but 70% of all VBMs mailed out went to registered Democrats.
HELLO DARKNESS: A shadowy group, The Florence Avenue Initiative, continues to spend money in the Democratic gubernatorial primary against its intended target: Rep. Mikie Sherrill. They sent out a mailer citing a minor violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act by not reporting her husband’s receipt of stock as part of his employment compensation before the deadline. This is not a silver bullet issue for Sherrill’s rivals, but it represents the only real spending to drive up her negatives. Click HERE and HERE to view the mailer.
OKLAHOMA: Two years ago, Republican U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin challenged Teamsters president Sean O’Brien to a fight after the union leader disparaged him during a social media dispute. O’Brien: “You know where to find me. Anyplace, anytime, cowboy.” Bernie Sanders had to break up the argument. This week, Mullin weighed in on a new AI-generated ad that showed a ripped Rep. Josh Gottheimer in a boxing ring with President Donald Trump: “I normally don’t comment on anybody’s campaign ads, especially in a governor’s race in New Jersey, but I don’t know if you’ve seen this new ad that Josh Gottheimer put out about literally getting in the ring with President Trump. Can you imagine if a Republican would challenge — let’s say I would challenge Biden or Obama to a fistfight — the left media would go nuts. But Josh, I know you’re from New Jersey. I know that video is enhanced. No way you actually look like that. But my money is on President Trump. I think he would win that fight.”
TAKING SIDES: Retired General Michael Flynn will be in New Jersey on May 10 for a rally and high-dollar fundraiser supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Spadea. Ocean County GOP Chairman George Gilmore is hosting the event.
CAMPAIGN TEAM: Democrat Brian Varela, seeking to challenge Tom Kean, Jr. in New Jersey’s 7th district, has signed Mark Putnam and Tucker Middleton of Putnam Partners to handle his media strategy. The firm was the ad maker for Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, and is currently in New Jersey working for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop. Varela has also brought on Lake Research Partners as his pollster, Aaron Beytin for direct mail, Brent Comstock for digital strategy, and Stephanie Berger and Annie Weir as his finance team.
CAN’T BLAME THEM: For a little while tonight, News 12 New Jersey will move off its mission of “as local as local news gets” when they preempt local news to pick up an interview of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on News 12 New York’s Power & Politics at 9:30 PM. The impact of the New York City mayoral race, where Cuomo is seeking to resuscitate his political career, on New Jerseyans is undeniable, so it makes sense to let Jersey watch the interview, too. Perhaps News 12 will return the favor and air an interview with Jersey City mayoral candidate and former Gov. James E. McGreevey on their New York station.
BLAST FROM THE PAST: The mayor of Hoboken from 2001 to 2009, David Roberts, has endorsed Ravi Bhalla and Katie Brennan for State Assembly in the 32nd district. Roberts, then a sixteen-year councilman, ousted two-term incumbent Anthony Russo in 2001. He stepped down after two terms.
NARROWLY, AGAIN: A Cliffside Park native who played in a North Jersey Italian wedding band and opened for Hootie and the Blowfish as a member of Soul Engines in the 1990s, was re-elected as a Member of Parliament in one of Canada’s most competitive House of Commons districts. Liberal Tim Louis won his Kitchener-based district by 622 votes against Conservative Doug Treleaven. Louis won by 251 votes in 2015, by 365 votes in 2019, and by 567 votes in 2021. Note to Americans: less than 24 hours after the polls closed, 343 of 343 races were called.
BEST LINE OF THE WEEK: “Is there a Canadian Kornacki we should all be following tonight? A Steve Canucki, if you will?” — Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin on the Election Day in Canada.
RUNNER UP BEST LINE OF THE WEEK: “Both the Energy & Commerce reconciliation markup and the Papal Conclave will begin on May 7, but only one of them will allow 80-year-olds to vote.” — Rubashkin, again.
TRIVIA: When 30-year-old Republican Douglas Stringfellow sought a Utah congressional seat in 1952, he had the kind of life story Hollywood made movies about: a World War II Army veteran who walked with a cane after being wounded by a land mine in France and the sole survivor of an espionage unit who parachuted into Nazi Germany to kidnap a nuclear scientist; he claimed to have been captured and tortured. That story helped him flip a district that Democrats had held for about 40 years by 21 points. While running for re-election two years later, he appeared on an NBC prime time show, This Is Your Life; which triggered two things: a bidding war for the movie rights to his life story, and fellow veterans repudiated his claims. Under fire, Stringfellow went on television and admitted he made the story up. “I fell into the trap, which in part had been laid by my own glib tongue,” he said. He dropped out of the race and returned to Utah, where he lived until dying of a heart attack at age 44.
IN RELATED NEWS: Sussex County Commissioner Bill “Stringfellow” Hayden, who faced his own Stolen Valor scandal last year, opted not to seek re-election after making untruthful claims that he’s been a Navy SEAL and Marine, that he’d been awarded the Purple Heart, and that he was involved in the killing of drug cartel boss Pablo Escobar. (Editor’s note: This is the first time Escobar’s name has appeared in The Watcher.)
BOOK & FILM: A few months before Douglas Stringfellow died in 1966, Frank Jonas published The Story of A Political Hoax, the definitive story on the congressman’s career. The book is long out of print, but used copies are still available; Stringfellow’s autobiography remains unpublished. If you’re looking for mindless entertainment, Peter Sellers plays three main characters in the 1959 film, The Mouse That Roared. It’s about the world’s smallest nation declaring war on the United States, hoping their surrender would make them beneficiaries of American aid. But the war doesn’t go as badly as they wanted it to. Click HERE to watch the trailer; you can watch the whole movie for free on YouTube.
If you’ve missed reading The Watcher, click HERE to catch up.