New Jersey Democrats have a rare opportunity to rise from the ashes of the Tammy Murphy debacle and emerge stronger after cleaning house. It may be a naïve hope, but as we just learned again, politics is full of surprises.
The first step is to kill the infamous “line” that lets the county bosses manipulate the ballot to give their chosen insiders a lopsided advantage in primaries. That’s the key to boss power, because they can choose who wins the nomination, which is decisive in most districts. Then they can tell dependent legislators what bills to support or oppose.
“It’s worse now that it’s ever been,” says a Democratic legislator who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “If the lines are gone, these chairs are gone, their power is gone. If you don’t have a line, half the seats in Essex and half the seats in Hudson will flip because the elections will become competitive.”
So, I’m rooting for the two federal lawsuits that seek to kill the line, which exists only in New Jersey. And I’m trying hard to take seriously the joint statement from legislative leaders in both parties, calling for a fresh discussion on ballot design soon.
But that’s not enough. If ballot reform is all that comes from this, it will fix only half the problem. To fix the other half, the party needs to pull machine politics out by its roots. And this is the time to try, while the bosses are so thoroughly discredited.
They backed Murphy for one reason, because she is the governor’s wife, and the bosses want to stay in his good graces. Two county chairmen, Kevin McCabe in Middlesex and LeRoy Jones in Essex, work as lobbyists with business before the governor, so that relationship affects their personal income. The chair in Bergen, Paul Juliano, was appointed by the governor to a fat $280,000 job. These are towering conflicts of interest that demand a new ethics code for the party.
Even without the line, these chairs will have some power to put a finger on the scale, including money and ground operations. And the endorsed candidates will likely run under a common slogan.
The courts can kill the line, but they can’t force the party to reform its internal rules. The same goes for the Legislature. This effort has to be a cultural fight, a battle for the soul of the party.
“The Supreme Court has been very clear they are private entities, and you cannot tell parties how to run their business,” says Julia Sass Rubin Rutgers professor and leader in the reform fight. “It’d be lovely if we had 21 open conventions with lots of participation, but that’s a cultural issue for the party to tackle.”
Beyond these conflicts, the party also needs to ban the kind bullying we saw in this race and set up a fair process to hand out endorsements. All candidates deserve a chance to address the delegates before they vote on the endorsement, and several bosses didn’t allow that. The extreme case this year came in Camden, a fiefdom of George Norcross. During its convention, the organization dispatched five bullies to block one of Murphy’s rivals, Patricia Campos-Medina, from entering the hall to speak with delegates, right after they opened a pathway for Murphy to come in.
Some of the counties played fair, like Monmouth and Morris. The chairs didn’t endorse, letting grassroots delegates decide for themselves. They invited all candidates to speak. They voted by secret ballot. They didn’t pad the vote by appointing at-large delegates to tip the scale for Murphy.
“If we’re trying to protect our democracy, then we should be setting an example of how to operate in the most democratic way possible,” says Amalia Duarte, the chair in Morris County.
If Democrats reform, the party is likely to attract more voters, she says, especially among the energetic volunteers who flooded in after Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and proved decisive in flipping three Congressional seats from red to blue in 2018.
“A lot of new people have gotten involved, and they want to be heard,” Duarte says. ”They don’t want to just show up at fundraisers. They want to expand the party and run for office. They want a seat at the table, and they should be getting it.”
Kim’s lawsuit against the line could be decided within a few days. Here’s hoping he wins. And that Democrats don’t stop there.
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 986-6951. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
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