The future of New Jersey politics is on the line

Sen. Bob Menendez was the quintessential New Jersey Democratic machine politician. Now he may have inadvertently become the biggest reformer Garden State politics has ever known.

Menendez’s scathing federal corruption indictment in September unleashed a chain of events that’s led to state leaders talking about sweeping ballot reform and a federal judge weighing whether to force wholesale election changes. New Jersey may be on the cusp of fundamentally rewriting the way state politics has been played for a century.

“I’m struggling to think of any state in the country that’s experienced anything like the political earthquake of what I would think this would be,” said Scott Salmon, a Democratic election attorney.

It was all unthinkable six months ago.

The Menendez indictment landed — with its claims of favors exchanged for gifts, wads of cash and gold bars — and touched off a scramble for his seat among fellow Democrats. Three-term Rep. Andy Kim immediately jumped into the primary. New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy followed. Then all hell broke loose.

Grassroots Democrats revolted against Murphy and the state’s party boss system. Kim effectively took the party establishment to court. The state attorney general, one of Gov. Phil Murphy’s longtime closest allies, shockingly denounced the very political system that Tammy Murphy is pinning her Senate hopes on. And now New Jersey’s legislative leaders say they may overhaul the unusual ballot system that’s given a handful of local leaders the power to sway elections.

Kim’s outsider campaign has spurred the possible demise of a uniquely New Jersey ballot structure known as “the county line” that’s underpinned state politics for generations and allowed its powerful county bosses to give their candidates a distinct advantage on the primary ballot — while pushing opponents into its obscure corners.

While the allegations against Menendez shocked even the most jaded political veterans in a state famous for corruption, nobody predicted this kind of fallout.

“Without the Menendez indictment, there’s no Andy Kim,” said Democratic State Committee Chair LeRoy Jones.

Kim announced his run off-the-cuff the day after Menendez was indicted. Murphy went the traditional route, calling leaders to line up support for her run, which she would officially announce two months later.

Even before Murphy announced her candidacy in November, party chairs and power brokers began putting their support for her on record, telegraphing that their political organizations would formally back her while raising groans from Democratic activists.

With that backing in almost all cases comes “the line,” in which party-endorsed primary candidates are placed in the same row or column of the ballot, from president to local council member and even the neighborhood Democratic committee member. Some county parties have a secret ballot in which dozens or hundreds of county committee candidates vote to award the line. In others, the decision is effectively driven by the county chair. Those out of favor with the party are elsewhere on the ballot, sometimes pushed into an obscure place that’s come to be known as “ballot Siberia.”

New Jersey is the only state in the country to design ballots this way.

The line, used by the leadership of both parties in a state Democrats dominate, has long been a sore spot with progressives. But a lawsuit they filed alleging its unconstitutionality in 2021 has moved at a glacial pace — until just weeks ago, when Kim filed his own lawsuit that largely mirrored that one, even using the same lawyers. But this one was placed on the fast track.

Nineteen of the state’s 21 counties use the line, and its effect on elections has long been debated in New Jersey political circles. But Rutgers University professor Julia Sass Rubin studied it, using historical election results. She found that statewide primary candidates over the last 20 years who had the line in some counties and did not in others performed an average of 12 percent better in counties where they had it. For incumbents, the advantage shot up to 17 percent.

“The data is just overwhelming that being on the line provided a substantial advantage,” Sass Rubin said.

While Kim’s race has brought the line into the spotlight, even attracting national attention, its most profound impact may be in more local elections, Salmon said. That’s where it enables party bosses to have the most influence electing county and municipal officials who can award contracts to political donors — who in turn fuel the party with more donations, creating a cycle of increasing power.

“From the roots to the top of the tree, it really affects everything,” Salmon, who twice unsuccessfully ran for office and withdrew before the primary after failing to get enough Democratic county party support, said of the line.

The case has moved rapidly. U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi held a marathon hearing on Monday and is expected to rule on the line’s constitutionality as soon as next week. But New Jersey officials aren’t waiting for him.

Several lawmakers who have long been beneficiaries of the line — as Kim was in his three past elections for his House seat — issued statements calling for New Jersey to instead adopt the “block voting” ballots used in other states, in which candidates are grouped on the ballot by office, not party backing.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who launched his 2025 candidacy for governor last year, was one of the first major Democratic elected officials to call for ending organization lines. In February, Democratic state Sen. Troy Singleton also called for the line’s end, and a near avalanche of elected officials followed, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who’s also running for governor.

On the other side, elected and officials party leaders who employ the line put out statements, some disavowing it altogether and others seeking a middle path. Jones, the Democratic state chair who also chairs the party in heavily-Democratic Essex County, called for “ballot uniformity” — one type of ballot design for all of New Jersey’s counties — but stopped short of ending the county line.

Jones said he believes party organizations have a constitutional right to associate with candidates “of like interest” and that the state “can’t” make sweeping changes just for this primary.

“Each county does something different. So if there’s a rush to change this right now just for the sake of changing it, you’re taking away the opportunity for voters to be educated as to what they’re going to be looking at when they come into a polling site,” said Jones, whose son was just backed to be sheriff by the county organization he leads.

On Sunday, state Attorney General Matt Platkin, long a member of the Murphys’ inner sanctum, said in a letter to Quraishi that the county line is unconstitutional and he would not intervene in Kim’s lawsuit to defend it. Platkins’ letter drew a sharp response from the Murphy administration and privately infuriated the Murphys’ inner circle, who saw it as a sign of Platkin’s own political ambition.

With the line imperiled, all four New Jersey state legislative leaders — Democrats and Republicans — are attempting to stanch the bleeding. In a statement, they said the authority to overhaul New Jersey’s balloting system belongs in the Legislature, not the courts, and pledged to begin a “public process on ballot design in New Jersey.”

The events have even the most ardent defenders of the line acknowledging its days are numbered, at least in its current form. Whether it remains as-is for the June primary is up to Quarishi. County clerks argued in court that ballot changes this close to the primary could cause chaos.

Some party operatives have raised concerns that discarding the line will lead to less vetting by party leaders, resulting in more extreme candidates winning their party’s nominations. Opponents think it will lead to officials becoming more hesitant to go along with party bosses' wishes when it comes time for them to vote.

“You’re going to start seeing a lot more bravery by legislators and you’re going to see primary challengers that are more successful,” said Sass Rubin, the Rutgers professor. “So you’re going to have more accountability.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated Steven Fulop’s order among high-profile Democratic politicians seeking to end the county line.