7/7 Primary Preview

It's all Jersey baby

Note from Opinion Haver: Normally everything written here is a collaborative effort between me and Nick (we’ve had more authors in the past, but that’s not important right now). At any rate, when we discussed the primary preview for today, which consists entirely of New Jersey, Nick said he wanted to do it all, and I said “sure”. Everything that follows is on him.

This preview is all Nick, because New Jersey is, conservatively, 10% of my personality.

Before you read this, a few vocabulary terms you’ll need to understand New Jersey’s insane, absurd ballot line system:

“The line”, also “the party line” and “the county line”: the ballot column awarded to the preferred candidates of the county party organization in primaries. Generally goes to incumbents, generally placed towards the beginning of the ballot. Powerful because it’s often the only full slate on the ballot, because it usually has most or all prominent officeholders (for example, senators, representatives, state legislators, mayors) in one column, and because the machine can consequently circulate campaign materials cheerfully urging people to “vote Column A!” (Or Column B, or C, or whatever column they got.)

“Off the line”: running without the support of the county organization--therefore not on the line.

“Bracketing”: appearing in the same ballot column. It’s a convoluted process that involves coordination between campaigns, usually only achievable by machines; bracketed candidates must agree on a slogan to appear under each candidate’s name on the ballot, for example.

If you’re a New Jersey Democrat who has somehow not yet voted, I urge you to choose candidates with “Not Me, Us” under their names wherever possible, except in the 2nd Congressional District (where you should vote for every candidate in whichever column is home to congressional candidate Amy Kennedy) and the 5th Congressional District (where you should vote for every candidate in whichever column is home to congressional candidate Arati Kreibich.) The “Not Me, Us” slate (which does not include Bernie Sanders, whose campaign did not bracket with anyone) is, with the two cases above excepted, home to the most viable progressive and leftist candidates at every level of government. Whether you’re voting for Congress or county clerk, the “Not Me, Us” slate is your best shot at progress.

Senate

Cory Booker (i) vs. Lawrence Hamm

Lawrence Hamm, the New Jersey state chair of Bernie Sanders’s campaign and a respected Newark activist, would be a great senator, but his challenge to Booker never took off.

Who has the line? Booker, in all but three counties: Salem and Sussex, which do not use the party line system, and Atlantic, where no Senate candidate has the line. Booker rejected it after Atlantic County Democrats awarded the line in NJ-02 to Amy Kennedy over machine favorite Brigid Callahan Harrison.

Congress

NJ-05

Josh Gottheimer (i) vs. Arati Kreibich

Josh Gottheimer consistently stands out as one of the worst Democratic members of Congress. He infamously killed a House bill because it did too much to protect children in ICE custody, a move which prompted Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Mark Pocan to say the Problem Solvers Caucus, of which Gottheimer is a leading member, had “become the Child Abuse Caucus.” He’s a reliable advocate for handing money to Wall Street, he’s comically reluctant to criticize the Trump administration, and on top of all that he has anger management issues so extreme he once punched a car several times. (Allegedly.) This district barely voted for Trump in 2016, and is rapidly moving left. Gottheimer’s conservatism would be unnecessary even if Republicans were seriously contesting the seat. Instead, they look set to nominate John McCann, who is allergic to raising money and lost badly to Gottheimer in 2018.

Glen Rock Councilor Arati Kreibich is one of the many activists who organized to get Gottheimer elected in 2016, when he defeated the utterly loathsome Republican incumbent, Scott Garrett, who was one of only two Republicans to lose reelection in 2016 in a district carried by Donald Trump. (The other was New Hampshire Rep. Frank Guinta, who was ensnared in an ethics scandal.) As Gottheimer continually ran interference for Republicans and Wall Street, she soured on him--so much so that in 2019, she decided to run against him. Backed by local Indivisible groups which grew out of the successful 2016 effort to oust Garrett, as well as national progressives including Bernie Sanders and the Working Families Party, she’s run a spirited campaign; the campaign says they've made over 500,000 calls and 400,000 texts to voters, with a volunteer base of over 1,000. Kreibich has clearly made Gottheimer nervous--nervous enough to drop over $100,000 on last-minute TV advertising after being off the airwaves since 2019. Kreibich has raised and spent close to half a million dollars, not bad for a challenger to New Jersey’s machine, and has been bolstered by $126,000 in digital and mail spending from national Indivisible. Unfortunately, because this is New Jersey, she’s still a serious underdog.

Who has the line? Gottheimer, in three of the district’s four counties (Bergen, Passaic, Warren); the fourth county, Sussex, doesn’t use the ballot line system.

NJ-06

Frank Pallone (i) vs. Russ Cirincione vs. Amani al-Khatahtbeh

Frank Pallone, the powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, deserves a serious challenge. He’s a key obstacle to the Green New Deal, and climate action under any Democratic administration will have to go through him. Unfortunately, attorney Russ Cirincione and author/blogger Amani al-Khatahtbeh have struggled to gain traction. While no district in New Jersey is favorable to an outsider, given the machine’s unmatched powers, this is one of the less hostile ones: it includes New Brunswick, home to New Jersey’s flagship public university, Rutgers; it also has a burgeoning South Asian population, particularly in the town of Edison (“town”---over 100,000 people live there), and the white Democratic machine Pallone embodies has struggled to make inroads with South Asian communities. Watch the margins--given Pallone’s influence, any areas of weakness need to be scrutinized to aid possible future challengers.

Who has the line? Pallone, in both of the district’s counties (Middlesex, Monmouth.)

NJ-08

Albio Sires (i) vs. Hector Oseguera (vs. Will Sheehan)

Albio Sires is a very, very boring machine Democrat, more noteworthy for his past as a Republican congressional nominee and independent municipal elected official rather than anything he’s actually done since becoming a Democrat, which includes his entire tenure in Congress. His 2020 primary is one of the most interesting chapters of his career. Hector Oseguera, an attorney and activist, is running a campaign that has the Hudson County machine scared. Together with a slate of county candidates--more on that later--Oseguera has capitalized on Hudson County’s explosive growth, which is adding tens of thousands of new residents with no habit of voting for the machine. 

He snagged a favorable ballot position in Hudson County, where the majority of the district’s voters are; he also did so in Union County, but Union County’s machine has gotten other ballot columns in the past and survived without much trouble, so the effect of Oseguera having Column A in Union should be muted. (Oseguera got the less-favorable Column B in Essex and Bergen counties. To be clear, Sires has the line in every county; the line itself just got a less-good-than-normal ballot position in Hudson and Union.) Oseguera’s campaign is serious enough that the Working Families Party endorsed him--and, perhaps more tellingly, so did some local politicians, including Jersey City Councilman James Solomon and former Jersey City Deputy Mayor John Thieroff. Crossing the machine in Hudson (or anywhere in New Jersey) is dangerous for any politician with higher ambitions, and most politicians don’t do it unless they think the machine could be on the losing side for once. Sires remains a strong favorite, but the Hudson County Democratic Organization’s shift into attack mode tells us that this is a race to watch tonight.

Reports indicate that the machine is mostly afraid of Oseguera finishing in the 20s and thus inspiring a real challenger, so on one level that would be a victory, but the higher Oseguera (who, to be clear, has raised next to no money) finishes, the more it would show a weakened machine, and opportunity to strike after the district is redrawn for the 2020 Census. Getting into the 40s sounds far-fetched, but then again, it also sounded far-fetched for Rachel Ventura, right before she did in IL-11. And something like that, or even the high 30s, would be the cause of some glorious pants-shitting on behalf of the calcified power structure of Hudson County.

Who has the line? Sires, in all four of the district’s counties (Essex, Hudson, Union, Bergen), aforementioned ballot placement situation notwithstanding.

NJ-09

Bill Pascrell (i) vs. Zina Spezakis

Bill Pascrell is another low-profile representative from a blue North Jersey district, this one centered on the city of Paterson. Activist and businesswoman Zina Spezakis’s campaign never garnered much attention, unfortunately. Expect him to win easily.

Who has the line? Pascrell, in all three of the district’s counties (Essex, Hudson, Bergen.)

NJ-10

Donald Payne Jr. (i) vs. John Flora vs. Gene Mazo

Payne, who succeeded his father Donald Payne Sr. after his death in 2013, is yet another low-profile representative from a North Jersey district. Challengers John Flora and Gene Mazo never got much traction--and one reason may be that neither is Black, unlike Payne and the majority of voters in this district, which includes Newark, Linden, parts of Jersey City, and surrounding communities. Flora is on the Not Me, Us slate.

Who has the line? Payne, in all three of the district’s counties (Essex, Hudson, Union.)

Boards of Freeholders

“Board of Freeholders” is just New Jersey’s weird, antiquated term for a county council or county commission. There are particularly interesting and potentially competitive battles in two blue counties: Hudson, a diverse, majority-minority county located on the banks of the Hudson River (hence the name); and Cumberland, a working-class, majority-minority, somewhat rural county in South Jersey. There are also races for county office in Essex, Union, and Middlesex counties which I will not cover in the interest of brevity (and so as not to bore you with the minutiae of half a dozen additional local races)--in summary, there are Not Me, Us candidates for freeholder seats in all three counties, as well as Not Me, Us candidates for other county offices (such as sheriff and county clerk.) They will likely lose, but if you really want to get down in the weeds, they’re worth watching, and if there are any shocking upsets or surprisingly close races, we’ll tell you in our next regular issue of the newsletter.

Hudson County

Local progressives put up candidates in five of the county’s nine freeholder districts, most of them overlapping with NJ-08. It seems like the most competitive races are the 4th, an open-seat race between machine favorite Yraida Aponte-Lipski (the wife of a former Jersey City Councilman) and activist Eleana Little, and the 5th, where machine incumbent Anthony Romano faces former Hoboken mayoral candidate Ron Bautista. However, the 3rd (machine incumbent Jerry Walker and challenger Rachael O’Brien), the 6th (machine incumbent Fanny Cedeño vs. challenger Kevin Hernandez), and especially the 8th (machine incumbent and Board of Freeholders chairman Anthony Vainieri vs. challenger Roger Quesada) are worth watching, too. Vainieri, in particular, is powerful and well-connected; the son of an assemblyman and the brother of Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle, he is also chief of staff to Nicholas Sacco in the latter’s capacity as mayor of North Bergen, which makes up most of the 8th district. (New Jersey banned the practice of double-dipping, or holding multiple public offices, under Chris Christie, but current officeholders were grandfathered in; Sacco is both a mayor and a state senator. The same is true of Brian Stack, who is concurrently a state senator and the mayor of Union City, which borders North Bergen and comprises the entirety of the 6th district.)

Every challenger is, without exception, further left on policy. Every incumbent on the Board of Freeholders facing a contested primary, other than Cedeño, voted to extend the county’s contract with ICE to 2020 rather than immediately cutting it off in 2018. (Cedeño was not on the board at the time.) Given the strength of the machine, you should, sadly, expect every machine favorite to win. But the machine is facing a real challenge from the left, and it’s not just one candidate; it’s a coordinated effort. That’s new, and it’s a welcome change.

Who has the line? Walker (District 3), Aponte-Lipski (District 4), Romano (District 5), Cedeño (District 6), Vainieri (District 8).

Cumberland County Board of Freeholders

Incumbent Freeholder Jack Surrency, who considered primarying then-Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew over the latter’s barely concealed support for Trump, was thrown off the line by Cumberland County’s Democratic machine. Like all South Jersey machines, the Cumberland machine is aligned with George Norcross, the asshole who ruins everything in New Jersey. They threw Surrency off the ballot for not being sufficiently loyal to the machine; he responded by forming a slate of progressive freeholder candidates for the three seats up in 2020. He bracketed with NJ-02 candidate Amy Kennedy, who is, despite being one of those Kennedys and a Steny Hoyer-endorsee, the best shot anyone has at defeating machine-backed candidate Brigid Callahan Harrison for the right to take on Van Drew in November.

The other two candidates on the slate are former freeholder Donna Pearson and former Vineland school board candidate Tracey Huggins; all three have been endorsed by the Working Families Party, which has also endorsed Kennedy. The machine slate includes two incumbents, Carol Musso and George Costellini; Surrency was replaced by Millville commissioner (read: councilor) Bruce Cooper. Cumberland County elects freeholders at-large, rather than by district like Hudson does.

Who has the line? Musso, Costellini, and Cooper.

Piscataway Mayor & Council

Piscataway is a diverse, well-to-do suburb of about 55,000 sandwiched in between the city of Plainfield to the north and the city of New Brunswick to the south, located about 25 miles southwest of Manhattan. Given demographic trends in the past several decades, New Jersey is only going to look more like Piscataway in the coming years, which is one reason why I’m focusing on this. (The other reason is because I grew up right around the corner; rarely do I get to find the local angle for this newsletter.)

The New Jersey Working Families Alliance, the state’s WFP affiliate, is backing a slate of challengers running off the line with the “Not Me, Us” slogan; so is a major healthcare workers’ union. Leading the slate is mayoral candidate Bill Irwin, a member of the Piscataway Board of Education; running for at-large seats on the Piscataway town council are Board of Education member Ralph Johnson and teachers Kamuela “Nikki” Tillman and Laura Leibowitz. The machine’s candidates are 20-year incumbent mayor Brian Wahler and incumbent councilors Gabrielle Cahill, Kapil Shah, and Chanelle Scott-McCullum. (Cahill and Shah are the council’s president and vice president, respectively.) If the progressive slate manages to unseat these incumbents, it can only mean bad things for the future of the machine in New Jersey: if the machine is losing Piscataway, a large and ever-growing list of similar towns and cities suddenly look like attractive targets for the left.

Correction: in the initial edition of this issue’s NJ-05 item, I wrote that former Rep. Scott Garrett was the only Republican to lose reelection in 2016 in a district carried by Donald Trump. This is incorrect; New Hampshire Rep. Frank Guinta also lost reelection that year in a district which voted for Trump. (Guinta faced an ethics scandal involving $350,000 in illegal campaign contributions.) The NJ-05 item has been updated accordingly.