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New Jersey politics has seen one of the greatest upsets of the electoral institutions within living memory. The March 29 ruling by US District Judge Zahid Quraishi signaled the end of the “Party Line” system, unique to New Jersey, where county organizations levied undue influence and ballot-placement advantage to their endorsed candidates in primary elections.
Representative Andy Kim (D, CD-3) sued the county clerks in New Jersey, arguing that the party line system was unfair and undemocratic. He was, at the time, running against the Democratic machine favorite, First Lady Tammy Murphy. Kim has served in the House of Representatives since 2018. Murphy’s political credibility, given the cold facts of the matter, was derived only from her position as the wife of the governor. Governor Phil Murphy, constitutionally the most powerful executive governor in the country, wields enormous influence as far as patronage opportunities are concerned, and it was of no surprise that so many Democratic county chairs fell into line. Andy Kim’s campaign, therefore, took on the characteristics of being a popular insurgency within the Democratic party, pitting the populares against the optimates.
With Murphy facing a stronger challenge than many had expected, the First Lady withdrew from her senate race on March 24. Mrs. Murphy said she wanted to avoid a nasty primary campaign and cause potential damage to party unity. “It is clear to me that continuing in this race will involve waging a very divisive and negative campaign,” the First Lady said, “which I am not willing to do.”
Perhaps she had also seen the writing on the wall, as far as the court ruling was concerned. Perhaps the Murphys had pushed the machine to its breaking point. The machine which, greased with cash, delivered up two terms for the governor, had buckled under pressure. The governor’s attempt to keep his family in the public sphere—and at an especially high level, by attempting to replace incumbent Senator Bob Menendez—the end result was blowback against the machine itself.
With little to commend its constitutionality—party insiders said the “line” was defensible under the First Amendment as political associations’ right to expression—Judge Quraishi struck it down five days after Murphy’s withdrawal, a second major win for Andy Kim. The judge ordered the immediate redesign of the primary ballots, which will bring New Jersey in line with the other 49 states around the US.
Defenders of the line argued that this provided for a kind of vetting process, or quality control for candidates put to the voters. There could be some merit, on the surface, to such a notion, but it is a notion that, with more than a moment’s consideration, would appeal only to the profoundly naïve or zealously institutional.
“This is going to put more money into politics,” some argued. How often, however, do political parties actually reject the person with the greatest means of financing? One of the qualifiers for getting a county party endorsement is general electability, which can be distilled into appeal as well as resources. This is not always the case, as political observers are seeing in the Passaic County Sheriff’s race, for example. Former sheriff and Paterson Public Safety Director Jerry Speziale, a Democrat, is running against Chairman Currie’s endorsed candidate, Chief Thomas Adamo. Speziale commands name recognition within the county which could have off-set the advantage of not having “the line.” In the end, however, it is up to the campaigns themselves to make their best pitch to the rank-and-file Democrat voters. Political party establishments have not lost their power, far from it, but the redesign of the ballots may have transferred some of that coveted power from the party bosses back to the people.
“Here come the crazies now,” another argument said. The reality is that the people elect those who reflect their own values. If parties are concerned about putting forth good, quality, candidates of good character—and they should be—then it is incumbent on them to make the case for their candidates to the public, with or without a line. Election-denying Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is anathema to most New Jersey politicians, but the overtly pro-Putin, self-described Christian nationalist has been re-elected to office. She was not a one-off fluke. The QAnon conspiracy theorist congresswoman is embraced by her own local machine and, most importantly, her constituents. Would New Jersey’s political parties behave any differently with respect to a candidate who got in and stayed in? So far, New Jersey has not put forward any particularly heinous Democratic or Republican candidates for governor or US Senator compared to some other states where the extremes are more pronounced. This is because New Jersey is a fairly moderate state. New Jersey has no equivalent of Bernie Sanders as a serious political office contender for the left, and the MAGA brand of Republican generally fails on the higher levels, as evidenced by Jack Ciattarelli’s victories over the likes of Phil Rizzo and Hirsch Singh.
However, Judge Quraishi’s decision has caused New Jersey, in effect, to mature, as far as democracy goes, in an actually meaningful way. Smug and self-confident as New Jersey politicos can be, especially comparing themselves to those of other, less-fortunate places than God’s own Garden State, New Jersey has shaken off one of the last vestiges of a democratic skepticism that has marked American electoral politics over the centuries, sometimes in self-contradictory ways.
Consider: New Jersey had been one of the very first states to allow women the right to vote. The 1797 Electoral Reform Enrolled Law stated, “All free inhabitants of this State of full age, and who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money…shall be entitled to vote for all public officers…and no person shall be entitled to vote in any other township or precinct, than that in which he or she doth actually reside at the time of the election.”
This would be rolled back in the early 19th Century, when women were disenfranchised again until the passage of the 19th Amendment, ratified in the summer of 1920.
One step forward, one step back, one step forward again.
More closely parallelling the “party line” and elections, however, were the circumstances behind the 17th Amendment, which reformed the way in which US Senators are chosen. Constitutionally, until that time, the state legislatures would choose the US Senators, although the Representatives in the House were popularly elected, directly by the people. The initial intent behind this design was based on a lingering distrust of democracy itself. It should be noted that “democracy” was not necessarily a virtue for the Founding Fathers. Instead, democracy was associated with the likes of Athens and instability—mob rule. The United States was structured with the Roman Republic in mind. The institutions headed by wise and virtuous men, thoughtfully chosen by those with some stake in society, would be tasked with ensuring the liberty of the people.
In reality, the pre-17th Amendment system was decried as cronyist by advocates of directly elected senators. Supporters of the system felt that those in the state government would send US Senators to Washington who would protect the rights and privileges of their states against the federal government itself. This, nevertheless, was showing its problems, leading up to the passage of the amendment—and the erosion of the political elite to self-perpetuate their own kind without check by the people. The Oregon System, as it was known, was a common practice in most states by the early 20th Century where voters would be asked who they wanted for US Senate, and then that choice would bind the state legislators to vote in accordance with the public’s decision. It was a miniaturized Electoral College, in a sense, for the US Senate candidates.
The 17th Amendment cut through that. The people themselves could choose their Representative as well as their Senator without going through the motions of the Oregon System, or risking deadlock in the state legislatures and leaving them without a Senator at all.
Judge Quraishi’s decision is the natural extension of that organic political growth in presenting an authentic choice for voters. It demonstrates that the people themselves, not the parties with their gamesmanship on the ballots, are entrusted with the responsibility of picking their candidates without gimmicks or gatekeepers.
New Jersey party kingpins and bosses now in line with the rest of the country, whether they like it or not, have the opportunity to ask themselves how committed they have been to the idea of democracy. As unlikely as it seems, if the new ballot structure does, in effect, result in more crazies gaining office (something no other state has worried about except New Jersey when it comes to primary ballots), then that is a symptom of a failed political machine with no one to blame but themselves. Disappointed or frustrated operatives, deal-makers, and party chairs would do well to self-reflect while considering the words of H.L. Mencken who said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
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