Andy Kim is battling Tammy Murphy and the machine in the race to replace Sen. Bob Menendez. There’s Jersey drama every weekend.

FLEMINGTON, N.J. — Andy Kim looked stunned. Tammy Murphy barely blinked.

It was the second county convention of the weekend, and Kim, a three-term Democratic congressman from Burlington County, was looking to go two for two against Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady, in the bruising primary race for the U.S. Senate seat held by indicted Sen. Bob Menendez.

In New Jersey, each county’s ballot is determined by these conventions — a grouping of all party-endorsed candidates known as “the line” — and can make or break a candidate’s chances in a primary election, this year on June 4. It seriously haunts their dreams and nightmares.

Now, in the heart of hippie horse farm country in central Jersey, Hunterdon County Democratic chair Arlene Quiñones Perez tried a last-minute rule change in a move that would have helped Murphy. Chaos erupted.

“Insane,” Kim told reporters after, still reeling.

Was this your basic weekend in Jersey politics, the state’s mind-blowing political aesthetic on full display? Or was change actually afoot?

“This is what I’ve been speaking out against,” Kim said. “Party elites just trying to make decisions here that can put a thumb on the scale of this election. Seeing it up close and personal, in real time, was something else, honestly.”

Kim had routed Murphy on his home turf the day before by a vote of 245-21; Murphy had one foot out the door of the Rowan auditorium in Mount Laurel before the vote was even read. But Hunterdon had a twist up its sleeve.

But wait.

Do voters really care that Hunterdon’s Democratic leader, Quiñonez Perez, tried to push through a last-minute switch that would have given any candidate with 30% of delegates’ votes a share of the line? Murphy would go on to receive 33% of the paper ballot vote, Kim 62%.

Or that Quiñones Perez was part of a group of county chairs (joining North Jersey heavyweights from Hudson, Essex, Bergen ,and Somerset) invited to the Murphy home on Super Bowl Sunday (they eventually met that Monday)?

Kim’s supporters did. They shouted down her idea in a voice vote. Let’s just say that voices carry in a converted pottery factory.

Murphy said she was as surprised as anyone by the Hunterdon drama, and has said she’s just playing by the rules.

Allegations that Gov. Phil Murphy and the first lady are using their considerable power to line up endorsements in the counties, including the ones where the party bosses decide ballot position without a convention, have dominated the race.

As have questions about the merits of having the two top statewide elected positions in New Jersey belong to one household. Murphy said there’s no problem with a possible concentration of power inside her household. Her spouse will be in Trenton, finishing up his second and final term as governor, if voter voters send her to Washington. (A new governor will take over in 2026.)

The Kim campaign has also taken off the gloves in reminding voters of Murphy’s record of donating to Republican candidates, most recently on Wednesday after she released her first TV ad criticizing the gun lobby.

Kim thinks voters need to pay attention to the whole ballot position thing (or at least be able to find him in ballot Siberia in the Murphy-friendly counties where no open conventions are held.)

Two others, Lawrence Hamm and activist Patricia Campos-Medina, are also running as Democrats. Menendez, indicted on charges of taking gold bars and other bribes, has not said whether he is seeking reelection.

A field of Republicans, including Cape May hotelier Curtis Bashaw and former television reporter Alex Zdan, will also compete for their party’s nomination on June 4.

Kim said he’s been shut out by the party power structure, from Essex to Hudson to Camden, and now aims to topple them altogether.

“If the party leadership were talking to me, this would be a fundamentally different campaign to start with,” Kim told reporters. “I bet the first lady will probably gather a bunch of chairs at her house after this weekend to try to figure out what comes next for them.”

By Monday, Kim’s camp had filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to declare the line unconstitutional and order a change in New Jersey’s primary ballot design so that candidates are organized by office (office block) rather than as a block of county-endorsed candidates (the line), this year from president on down.

Murphy spokesperson Alex Altman called the lawsuit a “sad hypocritical stunt.”

The assigned judge, Zahid Quraishi, had signaled in another lawsuit that he was interested in the question.

Will it spell the end ... of the line?

On Sunday at a Flemington brewery, Kim told his 2018 candidate origin story. A national security official in the Obama administration, he recalled how he and former U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, also an Obama vet, decided to meet the moment following Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016.

» READ MORE: Andy Kim’s 2018 campaign took off in the Mt. Laurel Wegmans.

And so Kim, 41, child of Korean immigrants, father of two, his wife a tax lawyer, his dad a PhD scientist, his mother a nurse, the extremely-proud product of the Cherry Hill public schools, took on and squeaked by Republican incumbent Rep. Tom MacArthur, the architect of the failed attempt to repeal Obamacare and a close ally of Trump’s.

At once cerebral and impulsive, Kim was behind on election night, but boldly declared victory the next evening, when mail ballots pushed him ahead but before all the votes had been counted. It held. Similarly, when Menendez refused to resign, Kim quickly declared for the Senate seat, as a matter of conviction.

“How is it that the greatest, most powerful nation in the world is being brought to its knees by such incompetence?” Kim said. “By people that you and I know should not be in Congress, should not be in the Senate.”

Kim has been a grinder, holding 72 town hall meetings in South Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District, which now covers Burlington County and parts of Mercer and Monmouth Counties. He gained recognition when the morning after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, he was photographed on his hands and knees cleaning up trash.

“I believe the next four to five years of this country will shape the next four to five decades of this nation,” he told supporters.

Is it good to be Murphy in this Senate race?

The initial consensus was yes.

And the powerful county chairs representing more than 50% of Democratic voters immediately announced their endorsement of the first lady.

Kim has won open conventions in Monmouth — Murphy’s home county — as well as Burlington and Hunterdon.

But half of the counties don’t have conventions: Party leaders decide who gets the preferred ballot position, which studies have shown offer a substantial — often deciding — edge.

Polls have shown Kim with a double-digit lead over Murphy, and her initial jump into campaigning has played to mixed reviews. In Hunterdon, she asked for more time to better repeat her stock line: “We need more ticked-off moms with Jersey grit to go to Washington, D.C.”

Behind the scenes, party brokers have been lining up behind Murphy. Kim says it’s been hard to schedule events in some North Jersey counties.

A registered Republican until 2014, Murphy, 58, is now running in some cases to the left of Kim. She’s criticized him for what she said were Trump-aligned immigration votes; he said they were procedural votes. She’s for Medicare for All. Kim says that would be one option he would vote for, but he’s open to other single-payer options.

Both were targeted by pro-Palestine protesters outside Rowan’s Burlington Campus during that convention.

Supporter and activist Anjali Mehrotra said Murphy has been a fighter for women’s issues, including getting menstrual products in New Jersey schools. But some of Kim’s loyal supporters continue to be women who organized after Trump’s election. The National Organization for Women gave him its endorsement.

Mehrotra said Murphy has been unfairly portrayed. “From day one, there were people attacking her,” she said. “They talked about how she wouldn’t be in this position if she didn’t have the last name Murphy. You should understand that you have a qualified candidate.”

Murphy said she has a clear vision for how she’ll succeed in D.C.

“I’ll be serially moving around every senator’s office, making sure I know their family structure, their priorities, their passions, their hopes while they’re in the Senate, making sure I’m logging away in my head, OK, that’s great, so I can go to that person if I need them to cosign or coauthor or they can help me,” she explained.

She says her beliefs no longer align with the Republican Party. Recently, a photo surfaced of the Murphys with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in a restaurant in July. Asked whether they were personal friends of hers, the first lady rolled her eyes.

Upstairs at the Lone Eagle Brewery in Flemington, former U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski talked about his endorsement of Kim, which had been immediately attacked by Murphy (and likely frowned upon in high places).

“What people didn’t know, because they don’t really know New Jersey that well, is that it is against the law to endorse Andy Kim in the state of New Jersey,” he dead-panned.

“It is hard to explain to people outside of New Jersey how people can be ahead 20 points in the polls and still be the underdog.”

It’s hard to explain that to people inside New Jersey. Still, Kim is betting his chances on people rebelling against the way things have always been done. Or a federal judge doing it for them.

“Rank-and-file Democrats, they don’t go along with it,” Kim said. “They want to make sure we have an actual democracy.”

» READ MORE: Andy Kim files suit challenging ‘the line’ in N.J. Senate race against Tammy Murphy

Terry Callahan, 65, of Somerset County, said the fairness issue is resonating.

“They thought it was going to be a slam dunk for Tammy,” said Callahan. “This is why people are so fired up about Andy Kim and the whole race. They keep trying to put the finger on the scale.”