Andy Kim files suit challenging ‘the line’ in N.J. Senate race against Tammy Murphy
New Jersey primaries group candidates for all races who got the county party's endorsement together rather than grouping candidates who are running for the same position.
U.S. Rep. Andy Kim filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging New Jersey’s use of “the line” in determining ballot position in his Democratic primary race against New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy in the race to replace U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez.
New Jersey is the only state in the country that allows county parties to endorse a candidate and run them on a slate that bunches all the endorsed candidates in various races together on the primary ballot, rather than grouping together candidates for each position.
Capturing the line has been shown to give a substantial edge in primary battles, sending non-endorsed candidates off to “ballot Siberia.”
The lawsuit asks that New Jersey’s primary election “bracketing and ballot placement system” be declared unconstitutional, and cites several studies that estimated anywhere from a 7% to 18.9% advantage from winning the preferred ballot position.
While Kim has won the three open Democratic county conventions thus far, in which committee members can vote on an endorsement, some counties in New Jersey have their Democratic chair choose which candidate to endorse. Murphy was endorsed within the first week of her campaign by the chairs of counties comprising more than 50% of the state’s Democratic voters, Kim’s lawsuit states.
Kim and Murphy are the two leading candidates in the June 4 primary to replace Menendez, who is under federal indictment on sweeping corruption charges for allegedly accepting gold bars, a luxury car, and envelopes stuffed with tens of thousands in cash as bribes. Menendez has brushed off calls to resign but has not entered the race as a candidate.
“The line” has dominated the Democratic primary battle so far, as 19 of the 21 counties make their endorsements, sometimes by holding conventions, with varying rules and voting procedures, some secret, some not, and sometimes no votes at all, but a decision made by the county’s political elites.
“It shows how broken our democracy is in New Jersey,” Kim said in an interview Saturday. “The ballot positions in is something that really skews the results. We should be a state that lets the people decide, not a handful of chairs.”
Alex Altman, a spokesperson for Murphy, called the lawsuit a “sad, hypocritical stunt.”
“Andy Kim doesn’t have a problem with the county line system, he has a problem with the idea of losing county lines,” Altman said in a statement.
This past weekend, Burlington County held a secret election-style ballot on the campus of Rowan University in Mount Laurel, and Kim defeated Murphy, 245-21.
On Sunday, the convention in Hunterdon County was thrust into near chaos as the party chair, Arlene Quiñones Perez, made a last-minute proposal to allow any candidate with 30% of the vote to share the ballot position. That proposal was then shouted down in a voice vote.
Kim went on to capture 62% of the votes to Murphy’s 33% (120-64 votes), with labor activist Patricia Campos-Medina receiving nine votes.
Afterward, Kim called the process “insane.”
He has called for secret ballots in the county conventions, and so far has won three of them, including Murphy’s home county of Monmouth. But he has also said he believes the Murphy camp is trying to privately influence county chairs and win preferential treatment.
On Monday, his team filed the lawsuit against the state’s county clerks, seeking to bar the use of the county line-style ballots in the upcoming primary.
Also named as plaintiffs are two South Jersey candidates: Sarah Schoengood, a candidate for Congress in the 3rd Congressional District (Kim’s district), and Carolyn Rush, who lost in the Democratic primary in 2022 in the 2nd Congressional District and is running again.
The lawsuit suggested the court direct the use of an “office-block” system “to bring it in line with common sense democracy measures in place in all other states in the nation.”
Murphy has said she’s just following the process and dismissed any suggestion that she and her husband, Gov. Phil Murphy, are trying to leverage their power to influence county decisions.
“I am sure there are going to be reforms,” Murphy told reporters Saturday. “I’m all for that. I am day in and day out running. I’m just playing according to the rules as everyone is.”
Kim said Monday that he decided there would be no way to change the system absent the lawsuit. “This is not power people are going to give up voluntarily. This is so entrenched in our politics in New Jersey.”