New Jersey Primary Preview
First, some quick ground rules. Due to a now-obsolete and all-powerful quirk of New Jersey primary ballot design known simply as “the line,” formal alliances between candidates for different offices are common, and I will note whenever such an alliance exists. (For the most part, those alliances will be between reform-oriented challengers and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop.) Each legislative district elects one senator and two assemblymembers; senators are not up for reelection until 2027, while assemblymembers are elected every two years and run on the same ballot. When candidates run as a slate for the same Assembly seat, I will list them together, separated by an “and” rather than a “vs.” as I usually do. And I will focus a fair amount on ballot position, which is the closest approximation we have left to the power of The Line.
I’ll be tracking all of the legislative races on election night in this linked spreadsheet, and I’ll also be live-tweeting results on Bluesky.
Now, here we go.
Governor
Ras Baraka vs. Steven Fulop vs. Josh Gottheimer vs. Mikie Sherrill vs. Sean Spiller vs. Steve Sweeney
Here’s how I introduced the gubernatorial race in the first issue of the reincarnated Primary School:
New Jersey’s gubernatorial race is the wildest of my lifetime. The only New Jersey election in recent memory that could be said to have rivaled this one in both importance and rancor was the pivotal Senate primary between Andy Kim and Tammy Murphy, which ended in Murphy’s shocking withdrawal right before the filing deadline. And this one is a lot more complicated than what was basically a two-candidate race (no disrespect to Patricia Campos-Medina and Larry Hamm, but they trailed quite significantly in the polls and in fundraising.) Rather than give you a play-by-play of what’s gone down over the past few months, I’ll give you an overview of who the candidates are, what they’re aiming to do, and where they stand with just over three weeks left until primary day.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill is the candidate to beat. A centrist Democrat from Montclair, Sherrill was anointed by Essex County Democratic boss LeRoy Jones as the party’s standard-bearer in the then-swingy 11th congressional district in 2017. Rather than face Sherrill’s Democratic machine support, army of grassroots volunteers, and seemingly infinite war chest, Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen—whose family has been active in New Jersey politics since the days of the American Revolution—called it quits, and Sherrill strolled into office in 2018, flipping a seat without having to try very hard to beat anyone. Ever since then, Sherrill, and Jones, have been eyeing higher office; a former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, Sherrill’s biography can seem at times like the congresswoman was grown in a lab to appeal to swing voters. Sherrill is the closest thing there is to a machine consensus candidate; county parties across northern and central Jersey, where most Democratic voters reside, have largely lined up behind her (with the exceptions of Somerset County, where every candidate but one is sharing the county party’s endorsement, and Bergen County, where a native son has the party’s support.) She’s running a campaign that determinedly avoids the issue of corruption altogether and only vaguely touches on state issues; her unfamiliarity with state issues is apparent on a debate stage, where she often reverts to federal-oriented rhetoric about Donald Trump and Congress. She’s also running a campaign so lackadaisical that machine operatives who assumed she was a safe bet are starting to sweat. While name recognition is keeping her ahead in what little polling there is, here on the ground the sense is that Sherrill may need to worry about not one but two progressive mayors nipping at her heels. Her base is machine loyalists, lower-info voters who vote on name recognition, and antsy electability voters.
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop is directly challenging the entire system of machine politics that still reigns supreme in New Jersey, Andy Kim’s victory aside. Fulop embraced the anti-machine lane early in 2024, switching his endorsement from Tammy Murphy to Andy Kim and adopting a relentless focus on trashing the machine. He’s followed through on the rhetoric by recruiting a slate of downballot candidates to challenge machine-chosen Democrats across the state, particularly in the state Assembly; rolling out a generally progressive platform with a focus on good government; making a tactical alliance with local bosses in Hudson County to wage a full-on civil war with the dominant Hudson County Democratic Organization led by state Sen. and Union City Mayor Brian Stack; eschewing county party conventions altogether; and lending his endorsement to insurgents challenging machine Democrats in populous municipalities including Camden, Bloomfield, and Edison. While Fulop is hardly a perfect messenger—he made a truce with the HCDO as mayor and aligned with them when convenient—nobody in the race has committed the kind of time, money, or rhetorical energy Fulop has committed to his crusade against the machine, and the machine hates him right back. His base is high-info white liberals and progressives; he could very well embarrass Sherrill in her own congressional district, which contains the hyper-liberal suburbs of Montclair, Bloomfield, Maplewood, and South Orange.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has been running a shrewd inside-outside strategy, appealing to Black voters and politicians who feel taken for granted by the machine. The clear choice of a strong plurality of Black voters in polls, Baraka has been able to poach the endorsements of dozens of normally machine-loyalist Black Democratic elected officials across the state as well as two of the state’s Black members of Congress, Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and LaMonica McIver. He has also appealed to more ideological liberals and progressives, winning the endorsement of a coalition of progressive groups including the New Jersey Working Families Party. Baraka and Fulop were also the only two candidates to receive positive marks from the statewide arm of Indivisible, which screened Fulop, Baraka, Sherrill, and a fourth candidate, NJEA President Sean Spiller, for their endorsement. While he is decidedly a progressive, Baraka is not hated or feared by the Democratic machine the way Fulop is; the Newark mayor’s participation in the county conventions and more measured rhetoric on good government and transparency have gone a long way to defuse the machine’s natural skepticism of a candidate running outwardly as a progressive like Baraka. Baraka may also be propelled further by his recent arrest at the hands of ICE; Trump’s deportation force claims Baraka trespassed during a protest at Delaney Hall, a privately-owned ICE detention facility currently operating in Newark without the proper city permits, but video from the scene contradicts their claims and backs up the claims of Baraka and Reps. Watson Coleman, McIver, and Rob Menendez, who accompanied the mayor to protest at Delaney Hall. The Trump Justice Department is now aiming to criminally prosecute Baraka, and possibly the three representatives as well, giving Baraka plenty of free airtime on the national news. Baraka’s base is a combination of Black voters and progressives.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer is running hard to the right, defending his vote for the Laken Riley Act and obsessively focusing on tax cuts as his message. While New Jersey is a high-tax, high-income state where anti-tax messaging is potent, a Democratic primary under a second Trump administration is just about the worst place and time for anti-tax conservatism. Gottheimer’s legendary personal abrasiveness has also prevented the congressman from winning over much establishment support beyond his home of Bergen County, where the prolific fundraiser has long funded the county party. As a result, he’s been stuck in the high single digits or low teens, always trailing Sherrill and usually behind Baraka and Fulop too. Gottheimer's base is richer, older voters worried about their tax bills, as well as single-issue Israel voters and the congressman's Bergen County constituents.
Sean Spiller is an oddity: the NJEA President has almost no organic support and is running most of his campaign through a super PAC funded by the teachers’ union, which he controls as president. He has basically hijacked the state teachers’ union for a vanity campaign that nobody is bothering to take seriously anymore; while his cookie-cutter mailers have been inescapable for about a year now if you’re a high-propensity Democratic voter like myself, Spiller has been mired in the single digits in the polls, and he’s failed to make the debate stage owing to his lack of actual campaign donations once you stop counting the super PAC funds siphoned from NJEA’s coffers. It’s all very strange, and his base is a combination of NJEA members and ultra-low-info voters who just get his mailers. And he’s still not the most doomed candidate.
The candidate with the least chance of winning is former Senate President Steve Sweeney. The conservative Democrat’s partnership with Republican Chris Christie on fiscal policy over the latter’s years as governor left a lingering bad taste in the mouths of many Democratic voters, who continue to view him negatively years after he left the spotlight due to his unexpected loss to Republican trucker Ed Durr in 2021. And Sweeney is a purely regional candidate: South Jersey often goes its own way, and that tendency is only being exaggerated this year, as South Jersey Democratic boss George Norcross, a longtime friend and patron of Sweeney, throws everything into ensuring Sweeney wins South Jersey. Sweeney has little chance of winning, but he’ll do well in South Jersey, particularly in the affluent Camden County and Gloucester County suburbs where the Norcross machine is strongest.
I’d like to revise this somewhat: Sweeney is less doomed than Spiller. And there have been developments since I wrote that summary: Baraka, Fulop, and a PAC tied to Fulop have all paid to promote attacks on Sherrill for her personal wealth and acceptance of a large donation from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, attacks which have clearly rattled Sherrill to the point that her campaign successfully begged its allied super PAC to begin airing rebuttal ads, a decision I highly question. Baraka also seemingly failed to capitalize on the ICE arrest, allowing Fulop to keep his apparent place as the likeliest candidate to upset Sherrill. Gottheimer won the endorsement of Orthodox Jewish leaders in Lakewood and Passaic. And Sherrill began calling in last-minute endorsements from unions and politicians up north. Sherrill remains favored, but there’s a persistent sense that she doesn’t quite have this in the bag. One way or the other, we’ll find out tomorrow night.
LD-01 (Cape May, Vineland, Millville; Trump+11)
Carol Sabo vs. Carolyn Rush and Brandon Saffold
Like several districts on the map, this is a red district where Fulop’s anti-machine recruitment efforts yielded a full slate while the machine could only muster up one candidate, guaranteeing a Fulop-backed candidate a place in the general election. Here, Fulop is backing good-government activist Carolyn Rush and Coast Guard veteran Brandon Saffold, while the only candidate backed by the local county Democrats is Carol Sabo. Rush, a former congressional candidate, probably has more name recognition than Saffold or Sabo, and I tentatively expect her to take first place.
LD-02 (Atlantic City area; Harris+1.6)
Joanne Famularo and Maureen Rowan vs. Lisa Bonanno and Bruce Weekes
This is a competitive district held by Republicans Don Guardian and Claire Swift, but there’s a battle for the right to take them on between the local Democratic machine and a slate recruited by Fulop. Poor turnout and high crossover voting have cost Democrats this seat in recent years, but it’s blue enough that you can’t entirely count out the Democratic ticket. Fulop has made an alliance with local power brokers in Atlantic City who are backing his ticket, nurse and activist Lisa Bonanno and former Atlantic City Councilman Bruce Weekes; the Atlantic County Democrats are backing Pleasantville councilwoman Joanne Famularo and retired attorney Maureen Rowan. This race hasn’t attracted much outside spending, as New Jersey Democrats don’t see this seat as a high priority despite the presidential toplines, but late in the game the Atlantic County Democrats did shell out $50,000 for paid canvassing from the DC firm Donohoe Partners, a popular vendor with New Jersey machine candidates; while that was not allocated to specific races, most of Atlantic County is in this district, the rest of it is split between three other legislative districts where Fulop is running candidates, and primaries for countywide office are uncontested.
LD-04 (Philadelphia suburbs and southern Pine Barrens; Harris+1.6)
Dan Hutchison (i) and Cody Miller (i) vs. Brian Everett and Vonetta Hawkins
Union activist and academic advisor Brian Everett and financial consultant Vonetta Hawkins are running a no-budget challenge to Dan Hutchison and Cody Miller, two assemblymen who are foot soldiers of the powerful South Jersey Democratic machine headed by legendary party boss George Norcross. Everett and Hawkins are running with the support of Fulop and a handful of progressive/good-government groups—and they have the good fortune of first ballot position in two of the district’s three counties, accounting for a solid majority of the primary electorate. Norcross is taking them seriously, even going so far as to send glossy attack mailers highlighting Everett and Hawkins’s ties to Fulop and engaging in your standard left-bashing, but in fairness, Norcross is the rare party boss who took primaries seriously before the downfall of the line; there’s a very good chance he’d be spending like this even if the landscape in New Jersey hadn’t changed one bit since 2023.
LD-06 (Philadelphia suburbs incl. Cherry Hill, Lindenwold; Harris+27)
Lou Greenwald (i) and Melinda Kane (i) vs. Rebecca Holloway and Kevin Ryan
Longtime Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald has a very new running mate in Melinda Kane, a former Camden County Commissioner who was selected to succeed Pamela Lampitt in the Assembly upon the latter’s election as county clerk. This district includes the mostly affluent inner suburbs of Philadelphia directly east of the city of Camden, and the largest source of votes is the affluent, extremely pro-Norcross suburb of Cherry Hill. If the Camden County Democratic machine has a glaring weak spot, it’s not here, and yet Rebecca Holloway and Kevin Ryan are trying anyway. Holloway, a former Clementon school board member, is not a first-time candidate; she also ran for county clerk against Lampitt last year, getting a respectable 40% of the vote and narrowly carrying the city of Camden on a limited budget with the support of a network of grassroots activists who have been a persistent thorn in the Norcross machine’s side for years. Holloway and Ryan are backed by Fulop and a number of progressive groups including the Working Families Party, and like Everett and Hawkins, Norcross is going negative with expensive mailers—but he’s also going lower, digging into Holloway’s personal life and publicizing the fact that she once had an OnlyFans-type side gig. I would say this is evidence of nervousness, but the Norcross machine fights hard and dirty all the time; they may just be doing this for fun. Holloway and Ryan did snag top ballot position in both of the district’s two counties, though, so it’s plausible that low-info voters brought to the polls by the governor’s race just vote for the first two names they see.
LD-07 (Philadelphia suburbs along the Delaware River; Harris+29)
Carol Murphy (i) and Balvir Singh (i) vs. Eric Holliday
Like Melinda Kane, Balvir Singh is barely an incumbent; the former Burlington County Commissioner was selected to replace Herb Conaway upon his swearing in to Congress. He is taking his primary reasonably seriously, raising six figures and paying for multiple rounds of mailers, and so is his running mate, Assembly Majority Whip Carol Murphy (who lost that congressional race to Conaway.) It’s not hard to understand why: Fulop landed a strong recruit on paper, Bordentown Mayor Eric Holliday. Holliday has been raising and spending little compared to Murphy and Singh, but he’s not completely without money, he did snag first ballot position, and he has name recognition in Bordentown, a part of the district near Trenton which neither of his opponents hail from.
LD-08 (Philadelphia suburbs and central Pine Barrens; Harris+1.1)
Andrea Katz (i) and Anthony Angelozzi vs. Eddie Freeman III
Andrea Katz flipped one of LD-08’s two Assembly seats in 2023, unseating Republican incumbent Brandon Umba. Democrats didn’t do quite well enough to win the other Assembly seat, as Republican incumbent Michael Torrissi placed first, ahead of Katz and her running mate Anthony Angelozzi (who placed third and lost, alongside Umba.) Katz and Angelozzi are running again, but they’ll have to defeat Evesham Councilman Eddie Freeman III, who’s running with Fulop. Because this is a purple district expected to be targeted by Republicans in 2025, Katz and Angelozzi are stockpiling cash for the general election, and they lucked out with first ballot position, but they’ve paid for some mailers and billboards anyway just to be safe. Freeman, as you might expect, has a lot less money but has had enough to pay for canvassing literature and some online ads, and he’s from a more geographically advantageous part of the district: Evesham is the most populous municipality in LD-08 and the largest source of Democratic votes, while Katz and Angelozzi both hail from smaller, redder towns.
LD-09 (Jersey Shore - Manchester to Long Beach Island; Trump+29)
Rosalee Keech and Donald Campbell vs. Lisa Bennett
This district is completely hopeless for Democrats in a general election, but it still has an Assembly primary between two candidates running with Fulop, women’s rights activist Rosalee Keech and disability activist Donald Campbell, and Ocean County Democrats’ sole pick, Lisa Bennett. At least one of the Fulop candidates will advance to November, if not both—and Fulop paid for joint literature for all of his Assembly candidates, so Keech and Campbell may have been helping multiply his campaign’s presence in a part of the state where Democrats rarely go.
LD-10 (Jersey Shore - Spring Lake to Seaside Heights, Toms River; Trump+28)
Debra Di Donato and Phil Nufrio vs. Janine Bauer
The situation here is almost identical to LD-09. The only difference is Fulop’s candidates here, Debra Di Donato and Phil Nufrio, are each local Democratic municipal chairs in tiny Shore towns—Di Donato in the working-class borough of South Toms River and Nufrio in the beach town of Seaside Park. Environmental attorney Janine Bauer is the party choice, but like in LD-09, at least one Fulop candidate will be carrying the Democratic banner in November, if not both of them.
LD-16 (Princeton area to Hunterdon County; Harris+14)
Mitchelle Drulis (i) and Roy Freiman (i) vs. Mahmoud Desouky
In surprisingly recent times, this district was held by Republicans. The GOP’s likely gubernatorial nominee, Jack Ciattarelli, used to hold the seat now held by Roy Freiman before retiring in 2017. Freiman and his running mate, freshman Mitchelle Drulis, should be fine, but they do face long-shot challenger Mahmoud Desouky, a former intern for area Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman—and for whatever reason they’re spending like they’re concerned. Desouky is running independent of any gubernatorial candidate and has been largely ignored by the progressive groups that are trying to get involved in Assembly primaries, so his campaign might serve as a good barometer for pure protest voting.
LD-17 (New Brunswick area; Harris+32)
Joe Danielsen (i) and Kevin Egan (i) vs. Loretta Rivers
New Jersey’s public records law was recently overhauled, shifting the costs of public records request to requesters and even allowing agencies to sue requesters if they allege the requests “substantially impair” their operations. The author of that bill, Assemblyman Joe Danielsen, represents one of the most left-leaning districts in the state—a 26% white, lopsidedly Democratic stretch of Central Jersey that takes in Rutgers campuses in New Brunswick and Piscataway, where the average Democratic voter is a college-educated professional and cracks have already appeared in the armor of the local Democratic Party machine in past primaries. Danielsen, however, is taking his primary incredibly seriously. Based on his ELEC reports, Danielsen has been running a full paid canvassing operation and sending multiple rounds of mailers starting in mid-April, two months ahead of the primary. His running mate, first-term Assemblyman Kevin Egan, does not appear to be taking his primary quite as seriously; his reported expenses on printed materials are lower than Danielsen’s and he lists no expenses related to canvassing. He does list a total of $135,000 mysteriously labeled “Media - Mixed,” but if there was a TV or radio component to this ad buy, it would be registered with the FCC (which tracks all political advertising on TV and radio, including for state and local candidates.) Nothing associated with Egan appears in a search of FCC records, which indicates this buy is digital—as some longtime readers may remember, I am very skeptical of digital advertising coming before TV, radio, mail, or canvassing. Egan and Danielsen both have a massive financial advantage over Piscataway Board of Education member Loretta Rivers, whose low-budget campaign is backed by Steven Fulop’s gubernatorial campaign, the Working Families Party, and the Piscataway Progressive Democratic Organization, a local reform club that won two at-large seats on the Piscataway council last year. However, only Danielsen is putting his money to good use—and Rivers has her own small team of volunteer canvassers fanning out across the district. Danielsen and Egan should win and win comfortably, but some of the ingredients for a low-budget upset are present here. (Another potential ingredient for an upset: Rivers has first ballot position in Somerset County, which punches above its weight in turnout.)
LD-18 (Edison, South Plainfield, East Brunswick; Harris+10)
Robert Karabinchak (i) and Sterley Stanley (i) vs. Christopher Binetti
Incumbents Robert Karabinchak and Sterley Stanley should win in a landslide, because their only opponent is Italian rights activist (I’m not kidding) Christopher Binetti. I’m told his mailers are in the colors of the Italian flag, which is honestly a great bit.
LD-19 (Woodbridge, Perth Amboy, Sayreville; Harris+0.7)
Craig Coughlin (i) and Yvonne Lopez (i) vs. Michelle Burwell
Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin and his running mate Assemb. Yvonne Lopez face a no-budget challenge from social worker Michelle Burwell, but the incumbents are paying for the campaign basics anyway. Presumably, Coughlin is trying to set an example for his lazier members about the importance of at least half-assing your primaries instead of doing literally nothing like they’re accustomed to.
LD-20 (Elizabeth, Union, Roselle; Harris+24)
Annette Quijano (i) and Sergio Granados vs. Ed Rodriguez and Walter Wimbush
Incumbent Reginald Atkins decided to retire, and the Union County Democratic Committee chose County Commissioner Sergio Granados as his replacement to run alongside returning incumbent Annette Quijano. Simple enough, the kind of back-room musical chairs that happens all the time in New Jersey politics—except an independent, self-funded slate is throwing a wrench in the UCDC’s orderly succession plans.
Ed Rodriguez, the former director of the planning department in the city of Elizabeth (pop. 135,000, a majority of LD-20), has loaned $250,000 to his campaign, which has in turn loaned $257,000 to the joint campaign committee shared by himself and Walter Wimbush, a community leader in the small city of Roselle (and possibly related to Roselle Board of Education member Angela Alvey-Wimbush, who ran an unsuccessful primary challenge for state Senate in this district two years ago.) Rodriguez and Wimbush have some professionals on board—they’ve been paying New Jersey operative Justin Shoham, who’s worked for Beto O’Rourke and Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes, for months, and they’ve been paying for local newspaper and web ads as well as various services from national political firms, including sleekly-produced digital advertising with partial Spanish narration for good measure. (This is a heavily Spanish-speaking district; Elizabeth is majority Latino.) Quijano and Granados have responded with outright panic, shelling out six figures to the DC firm Donohoe Partners for paid canvassing work and hastily recording their own, considerably less polished digital ads; the UCDC has also been lending a hand to the pair. This race had racked up a price tag of over half a million dollars by the time 11-day pre-election reports were due—and the spending has only accelerated since then, as both sides report flurries of late donations and expenditures. The race has also turned negative, with Rodriguez and Wimbush attacking Granados for his ties to former New Jersey political consultant Sean Caddle, who infamously pleaded guilty in 2022 to a murder-for-hire plot in the brutal 2014 stabbing death of a rival political operative. According to Politico NJ’s Matt Friedman, Granados co-founded a nonprofit, Moving New Jersey Forward, with Caddle and another controversial operative, Gianni Donates, and reported financial ties to the organization long after its nonprofit status was revoked by the IRS in 2018.
As for the policy stakes, Rodriguez and Wimbush are framing themselves as fighters—criticizing Union County’s apparent plans to open an ICE detention center (though Granados was one of three votes against a plan to look into selling the old Union County Jail, a facility which would only make sense to buyers like ICE), hinting at using the state’s budget surplus to make up for federal funding cuts to social programs like Medicaid, and excoriating state government for allowing NJTransit’s continual decay.
LD-27 (Millburn to Clifton; Harris+31)
Rosy Bagolie (i) and Alixon Collazos-Gill (i) vs. Rohit Dave vs. Blake Michael
This district is a bit of a mess—it connects ultra-rich southwestern Essex County to diverse, working-class Clifton by way of the trendy, diverse upscale suburbs of Montclair and West Orange. Because of high-turnout, left-leaning Montclair, it’s an obvious target for a progressive or reform-oriented primary, which is why I’m so surprised that one only sort of seems to have materialized. Incumbents Rosy Bagolie and Alixon Collazos-Gill are both inviting targets—Bagolie briefly cosponsored a bill that would have brought school vouchers to New Jersey, and Collazos-Gill was installed by the machine without a primary in a game of musical chairs that Collazos-Gill only won because her husband, Brendan Gill, is a county commissioner and close ally of Gov. Murphy (and because activists freaked when word got out that Brendan himself was looking at the seat.) Bafflingly, WFP is backing Collazos-Gill and nobody else in this race. Meanwhile, Fulop is running tech executive Rohit Dave, who is running a relatively low-budget campaign but is at least in the same ballpark as Collazos-Gill financially, though she still has a large advantage. Bagolie has the most money and is clearly running her own reelection independent of Collazos-Gill, because she’s also spent way more than her running mate and the pair do not share a joint candidate committee like most slates do. (Bagolie has also called in help from the state party.) Collazos-Gill and teacher Blake Michael, who is running a shoestring campaign focused on school funding, have the first two ballot positions in Essex County, which makes up most of this district; in Passaic County, it’s Dave followed by Collazos-Gill in first and second.
LD-28 (Maplewood/South Orange, Newark’s South and West Wards, Irvington, Hillside; Harris+77)
Cleopatra Tucker (i) and Chigozie Onyema vs. Garnet Hall (i)
LD-28 is uniquely unfriendly to the regular Democratic machine this year for a simple reason: Ras Baraka is going to sweep the Black neighborhoods in Irvington and Newark that traditionally anchor the machine in this part of Essex County, and the diverse liberal suburbs that make up the rest of the district are historically hostile to the machine. As a result, Essex Democratic boss LeRoy Jones decided on a smart play: make peace with the Baraka team and offer up a progressive candidate to run alongside a Baraka ally in this district. That progressive is Chigozie Onyema, the Democratic chairman in Newark’s West Ward and a former DSA-backed candidate for the Newark City Council; Onyema entered this Assembly primary with the unified support of the Essex and Union Democratic machines as well as the WFP, appearing to be a strong favorite from the get-go. That left the district’s two incumbents, Garnet Hall and Baraka ally Cleopatra Tucker, fighting for one spot on a slate. Hall, a first-term legislator from Maplewood not particularly aligned with any one machine or faction, initially won that fight in Union County, but lost it in Essex, which makes up the vast majority of the district—so she withdrew from the race and allowed the Union County Democrats to back Tucker. Then, she abruptly reversed course, announcing that she would run for reelection after all on Fulop’s ticket, taking on the machine that had just unceremoniously discarded her as quickly as it made her a legislator two years ago.
Hall is counting on high suburban turnout and low urban turnout, and there’s reason to believe she’ll get it: districtwide turnout in LD-28 is quite poor, indicating that the lower-turnout urban eastern half is not showing up in force the way the suburban western half does in every election. Additionally, running with Fulop has extra benefits in this district: his running mate is popular South Orange Mayor Sheena Collum, and the progressive South Orange/Maplewood grassroots group SOMA Action voted overwhelmingly to back Fulop and Hall, as well as Onyema, in this year’s primaries. The alliance with Fulop also means an alliance with Fulop-supporting Hillside Mayor Dahlia Vertreese, an independent Democrat who has beaten the UCDC before; Vertreese is supporting Hall and promoting her campaign. Hall’s hometown of Maplewood is also apparently ready to back her for another term, with prominent Maplewood Democrats including Mayor Nancy Adams bucking the Essex County Democratic Committee to endorse Hall for reelection. Onyema and Tucker have first ballot position throughout the district, but Hall is counting on highly-engaged suburban voters to save her.
LD-31 (Jersey City, Bayonne, Kearny; Harris+27.5)
William Sampson (i) and Jerry Walker vs. Barbara McCann Stamato (i) and Jacqueline Weimmer
This race is the first front in the broader Hudson County Democratic civil war, discussed in more detail in the LD-33 item. It should be noted, however, that the faction of the Hudson County Democratic Organization that dominates machine politics in Jersey City and Bayonne is different from (and considerably weaker than) the dominant North Hudson faction run by Brian Stack; the power players here are Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis and Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker, one of the two candidates running on the HCDO ticket in LD-31. The other candidate, incumbent William Sampson, is a Davis proxy and notorious absentee assemblyman (and erstwhile absentee crane operator at the Bayonne docks.) Walker is the HCDO’s candidate to take down Assemblywoman Barbara McCann Stamato, a Fulop ally who’s begun voting independent of Assembly leadership once it became clear they were gunning for her. Stamato’s nominal running mate is Bayonne Councilwoman Jacqueline Weimmer, but based on ELEC reports, neither Stamato nor Weimmer is running much of a campaign anymore, and the two may have had a falling out. However, a PAC aligned with Fulop, Coalition for Progress, has dropped six figures in advertising for Stamato, and the HCDO has spent even more backing Sampson and Walker with field work, digital advertising, and printed literature; even if Stamato and Weimmer aren’t running much of a campaign anymore, neither side’s organizational backers seem to think this race is totally wrapped up. (Indeed, Sampson and Walker even called in the endorsement of Gov. Murphy, and Walker has quietly allied himself with Ras Baraka, who is likely to do well in the Jersey City portion of this district.) The district combines the working-class, Trump-curious cities of Bayonne and Kearny with Jersey City’s majority-Black neighborhoods of Greenville and Bergen-Lafayette plus the diverse West Side, and it's not particularly reliable for either the machine or reformers in contested primaries.
LD-32 (Hoboken and Jersey City; Harris+43)
Jessica Ramirez (i) and Yousef Saleh vs. Crystal Fonseca and Jennie Pu vs. Katie Brennan and Ravi Bhalla
Deeply Democratic and fond of voting for progressives in local elections, Legislative District 32 is one of the most left-leaning places in the entire state—which creates the conditions for an unusual primary. Katie Brennan and Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla running as progressive reformers—but without the Fulop branding or alliance, which has different connotations in Jersey City and Hoboken, where he's a known quantity. Bhalla also has name recognition from his primary challenge to Rep. Rob Menendez last year; he lost handily, but comfortably carried LD-32.
Fulop’s long tenure as Jersey City Mayor makes him an establishment choice in this part of the state—not as establishment as the Hudson County Democratic Organization, which is running Crystal Fonseca and Jennie Pu, but the most progressive voters, much like progressive organizations, are likely to favor Brennan and Bhalla over Fulop’s running mates, Assemblywoman Jessica Ramirez and Ward D Jersey City Councilman Yousef Saleh. Saleh’s campaign is fairly last-minute; he had been expected to seek reelection in this year’s nonpartisan municipal elections, but abruptly switched races after finding himself left off the major mayoral candidates’ council slates, so his heart may not exactly be in this. However, he and Ramirez are nevertheless making a strong play to win here. This race is interesting because two independent-minded progressives, backed by popular local politicians like Jersey City mayoral candidate and Ward E Councilman James Solomon, seem favored to win seats in a body that currently has none of them—and because the candidates who seem to have the best shot at upsetting them are tied to Fulop, and like him have fallen out of favor with the machine (which is not treating Fonseca and Pu as sacrificial candidates, though they are the two least likely candidates to win.)
LD-33 (North Hudson County; Harris+13)
Gabe Rodriguez (i) and Larry Wainstein vs. Tony Hector and Frank Alonso
Brian Stack is a singular figure. The 59-year-old has served as the mayor of Union City since 2000 and the state senator for parts of Hudson County since 2008 (holding multiple offices has since been outlawed, but current dual-officeholders were grandfathered in)—but that massively understates his influence. Stack feels like a holdover from another century, an old-school machine boss like Tammany Hall (or, for a New Jersey example, Frank Hague.) Before Stack, the Union City Democratic machine answered to its most famous member: future senator Bob Menendez. But Stack’s power to deliver favorable election results for candidates other than himself was seriously called into question by the entire Democratic ticket’s double-digit collapse in north Hudson County in 2024, and now his capabilities will be tested in a primary that happens to be one front in a larger war.
Stack is currently embroiled in a war to consolidate his control over Hudson County, and one of the fronts in that war is the 33rd District Assembly race. The 33rd is Stack’s own Senate district, and one of its incumbents, Julio Marenco, chose to retire after losing Stack’s support. To replace him, Stack tapped local gadfly Larry Wainstein to run with incumbent Gabe Rodriguez. Why Wainstein? Because Wainstein is a perennial electoral opponent of North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco, a rival boss who’s fighting to keep Stack in check (though he’s just as dirty as Stack is.) Sacco has tactically allied himself with Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop and other anti-Stack forces and recruited two candidates of his own: former North Bergen Board of Education member Tony Hector and former Union City GOP chairman Frank Alonso, who switched his party registration to challenge Stack. (Why do the two North Hudson bosses hate one another so much? Stack and Sacco used to both serve as state senators—New Jersey banned concurrent holding of multiple elected offices in 2008 but grandfathered in incumbents, and Sacco, like Stack, had been both mayor and senator for decades—until redistricting put them in the same district after the 2020 Census. Stack won the seat over Sacco, and the two have had a bitter rivalry ever since.) Hector has loaned the Hector-Alonso campaign six figures, which has allowed the slate to blanket northern Hudson County with signs and even bilingual TV ads—but, not to be outdone, the Stack slate has responded in kind, throwing down $104,200 on Univision TV ads and buying up physical ad space all over northern Hudson County, from billboards to buses. (More questionably, the Stack slate has also paid Trump’s notoriously terrible pollster McLaughlin—I didn’t even know they did work for Democrats, but apparently they’re also working for Stack’s preferred Jersey City mayoral candidate, Jim McGreevey.)
LD-34 (Northeastern Essex County; Harris+40)
Michael Venezia (i) and Carmen Morales (i) vs. Brittany Claybrooks and Frank Vélez III
LD-34 connects the working-class, majority-Black cities of Orange and East Orange to the deep-blue suburbs of Bloomfield and Glen Ridge and the swingier towns of Belleville and Nutley. Located on multiple train lines, the district is the kind of place you’d expect cracks to start showing in the machine’s armor, as growth here has been rapid and has come disproportionately in the forms of upscale NYC commuters and Latino immigrants, neither of which are as reliable for the machine as longtime residents are. Compounding the machine’s potential vulnerability here is a pair of freshman legislators who’ve had little time to build up a brand in the district: Michael Venezia, a former mayor of Bloomfield, and Carmen Morales, a Belleville resident and educational administrator. Venezia and Morales are facing former East Orange Councilwoman Brittany Claybrooks and Belleville Councilman Frank Vélez III, who are running with Fulop as well as a Bloomfield council slate. Claybrooks and Vélez don’t have much money, but they’ve been canvassing the district since February, and Venezia and Morales are running scared. The incumbents have shelled out more than $50,000 to that expensive DC canvassing firm, Donohoe Partners, and called in a Murphy endorsement; they’ve also been sending mailers and advertising online. Venezia and Morales lucked out by winning first ballot position, which should protect them somewhat.
LD-35 (Paterson area; Harris+12)
Alaa “Al” Abdelaziz (i) and Orlando Cruz vs. Kenyatta Stewart vs. Romi Herrera
After the election of state Sen. Nellie Pou to Congress in 2024, a game of musical chairs ensued, resulting in Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly being promoted to the state Senate and Paterson Councilman Alaa “Al” Abdelaziz promoted to the Assembly. And after losing out on multiple opportunities for a promotion, including the Senate seat won by Wimberly, Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter called it quits, opening up her Paterson-area Assembly seat and leaving Abdelaziz as the only (appointed) incumbent on the ballot for Assembly here. Abdelaziz, a skilled politician and the first Palestinian member of the New Jersey Legislature, is taking his primary seriously despite having the unified support of the local Democratic machines, and even has the WFP’s support. The same can’t be said of his running mate, Passaic County Commissioner Orlando Cruz, who is barely spending any money of his own and mostly coasting on the efforts of the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, which routinely backs machine-backed non-incumbents as well as machine-backed incumbents. That might be fine if Cruz was unopposed or close to it, but he’s not—far from it.
Fulop is running a candidate here, former Garfield councilman Romi Herrera; Herrera, a Peruvian immigrant, may be able to appeal to the district’s large Peruvian community, and he has a team of volunteers canvassing the district in both English and Spanish. The real threat to Cruz and Abdelaziz, however, is Kenyatta Stewart, the Newark Corporation Counsel and a close ally of the Baraka camp. Stewart has raised an easy six figures for his upstart Assembly bid, which has allowed him to outspend Cruz by a wide margin—and when you look under the hood at his campaign’s expenditures, they all make sense (office rent, canvassing supplies, etc.), whereas a lot of high-spending machine campaigns will blow large sums on overpriced paid canvassing or nebulous consulting fees. (Cruz, though, is raising little and spending even less.) A PAC aligned with the Barakas has funneled some last-minute cash to Stewart’s campaign, as have a number of Newark politicos, and Cruz doesn’t seem to be panicking like he should be, even though the ballot draws also went badly for the machine: the ballot order in Passaic County, which will cast about 80% of the vote in LD-35, is Stewart-Herrera-Abdelaziz-Cruz, and in Bergen County it’s Stewart-Abdelaziz-Cruz-Herrera. This district veered right in 2024 as Latino and Arab voters defected en masse, and this primary may serve as a test of how angry those same voters are—or aren’t—with their own local Democrats.
LD-37 (Eastern Bergen County; Harris+23)
Ellen Park (i) and Shama Haider (i) vs. Emil Stern and Rosemary Hernandez-Carroll vs. Dan Park and Tamar Warburg
LD-37 also lurched right in 2024, as large numbers of the district’s significant Latino and Korean populations switched sides, allowing Bergen County overall to nearly flip to Trump. Bergen Democrats found themselves even more rattled and humiliated than their Hudson counterparts by the 2024 results, and LD-37 is now the first of two primaries that has the Bergen Democrats playing frantic defense in 2025.
Tenafly Councilman Dan Park is the first Korean-American elected to the Tenafly council, and Teaneck attorney Tamar Warburg serves as General Counsel to the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater MetroWest NJ. The two are running on Fulop’s slate, and Park is additionally backed by the Working Families Party. They’re not the only challengers giving Assemblywomen Shama Haider and Ellen Park a tough time, however; Teaneck Mayor Mark Schwartz and some local Jewish leaders are backing former Teaneck Deputy Mayor Emil “Yitz” Stern and small business owner Rosemary Hernandez-Carroll. Like in LD-33, the incumbents are panicked enough to go on TV here—but unlike in LD-33, that wasn’t provoked by the challengers going up on TV. Haider and Park are just nervous enough that they felt the need to spend on TV late in the game.
LD-38 (Western and central Bergen County; Trump+0.1)
Lisa Swain (i) and Chris Tully (i) vs. Damali Robinson and Donald Bonomo
Assembs. Lisa Swain and Chris Tully actually have some practice running campaigns, because Republicans made a serious play for this purple Bergen County district in 2023. However, Swain and Tully have practice running general election campaigns—a primary is new to them, and there’s signs of late-breaking panic. Fulop has recruited military veteran and Glen Rock Board of Education President Damali Robinson and consumer protection attorney Donald Bonomo, and Robinson is raising decent money—about $50,000 in the first quarter of 2025. She’s also won the endorsement of the Working Families Party, and is maintaining a schedule of in-person events and canvassing in conjunction with both Fulop and the WFP. Swain and Tully, meanwhile, have poured at least $119,000 into cable TV advertising and another $20,000 into polling—neither of which is a sign of confidence from an incumbent, especially when the TV spending started over a month before the primary. Robinson and Bonomo also had the good fortune of winning top placement on the ballot, an especially powerful advantage in low-salience elections.
LD-39 (Northern Bergen County; Trump+2.2)
Donna Abene and Damon Englese vs. Andrew LaBruno and David Jiang
The action in this district is mostly on the Republican side, as former congressional candidate Frank Pallotta takes on incumbent assemblymen Robert Auth and John Azzariti, but there’s also a Democratic primary—and in a district that narrowly voted for Joe Biden in 2020, I can’t totally write off the chances of a Democratic victory, though it’s unlikely and this area is redder downballot. The Bergen County Democrats are running former Woodcliff Lake councilwoman Donna Abene and educational administrator Damon Englese, while Fulop’s slate consists of former Dumont mayor Andrew LaBruno and Demarest councilman David Jiang. Neither slate has raised or spent much, and this seat is clearly a low priority for the Bergen County Democrats (who have multiple Trump districts to defend in November), but this is the kind of leafy suburban district where either Fulop or Sherrill would likely need to break through on their way to victory—and, though Republican-held, the kind of district where reformers would need to win Democratic primaries to change state government for the better.
Bergen County Commission
Mary Amoroso (i), Germaine Ortiz (i), and Thomas Sullivan (i) vs. Chris Chung, John Vitale, and Dolores Witko
County commissioners Mary Amoroso, Germaine Ortiz, and Thomas Sullivan have no real reason to worry about a primary in the abstract. They’re normie Democrats backed by one of the state’s most powerful county machines. However, your average person doesn’t know who their county commissioners are, which is cause for concern if you’re one of those county commissioners and you happened to lose first ballot position to a slate of challengers—which is exactly what happened to our three Bergen commissioners, facing a slate backed by Fulop. On Fulop’s ticket are former Palisades Park mayor Chris Chung, former Closter councilwoman Dolores Witko, and local business owner and former LD-39 Assembly candidate John Vitale, all of whom have some sort of name recognition in a different part of the county. Chung served as mayor of the heavily Korean enclave near the Hudson River for a single four-year term before the local machine ousted him in 2022, and Witko served alongside Fulop campaign co-lead Jannie Chung on the Closter council. The Chung-Witko-Vitale slate has first ballot position, as mentioned above.
Hudson County Sheriff
Frank X. Schillari (i) vs. Jimmy Davis
Frank Schillari isn’t anyone’s idea of an anti-machine crusader; the four-term sheriff of Hudson County used to be aligned with the HCDO, and, well, he’s a New Jersey county sheriff, that’s a very machine-y job. Nevertheless, Schillari finds himself awkwardly on the reformers’ side this year; back when Fulop had the uneasy support of Hudson County Democrats, Schillari threw in with the Jersey City mayor for 2025, and he stuck with him after the HCDO pulled its support of Fulop, which meant that the HCDO also pulled its support of Schillari. Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis is their pick to take down Schillari, despite (or perhaps because of) Davis’s deeply checkered past, which includes sexual harassment claims and multiple gender discrimination suits against the city of Bayonne. (Nevertheless, Davis has Gov. Murphy’s endorsement.) To some extent this race will also serve as a barometer for Jersey City’s mayoral race; the first round of that race, in which the HCDO is backing disgraced ex-Gov. Jim McGreevey, will take place in November, concurrent with the regular general election.
Bloomfield Council At-Large
Monica Charris-Tabares (i), Widney Polynice (i) and Jill Fischman vs. Satenik Margaryan and Tracy Toler-Phillips
The liberal suburb of Bloomfield played host to a nasty battle between reformers and the machine in 2024, as interim Mayor Ted Gamble lost renomination to party-backed challenger Jenny Mundell, and Mundell’s team now has to gear up for Round Two. On Mundell’s slate are incumbents Monica Charris-Tabares and Widney Polynice, as well as school board member Jill Fischman; on the reform side are professor Satenik Margaryan and photographer Tracy Toler-Phillips, running with Gamble’s backing. Margaryan and Toler-Phillips (as well as Ward 1 candidate Stefanie Santiago) are running with Fulop and his legislative slate in LD-34, and the various Fulop-aligned campaigns in Bloomfield have been working together and canvassing since February.
Camden Mayor and Council
For Mayor: Vic Carstarphen (i) vs. Theo Spencer
For Council: Angel Fuentes (i), Nohemi Soria-Perez (i), and Nurah Muhammad vs. Sheila Davis (i), Tyann La’Shae Harris and Corinne Powers
As mentioned way above in the LD-06 item, Camden proper actually voted against the machine in 2024’s county clerk primary, which makes me wonder whether the Norcross machine’s grip on the city is loosening. Running to test whether that’s true is a scrappy slate of reformers backed by Fulop and, partially, by the WFP (they’re backing one council candidate out of three, which strikes me as unhelpful, but WFP’s entire approach to this NJ primary cycle has been deeply unserious and you can quote me on that.) Mayor Vic Carstarphen is backing Ras Baraka for governor rather than South Jersey machine favorite Steve Sweeney, a sign of the Newark mayor’s likely strength with Black voters, but he’s otherwise running a traditional Norcross machine campaign—complete with harsh negative attacks on the challengers and plenty of slightly tone-deaf left-bashing, paid for by the county and city Democratic committees so Carstarphen gets to keep his own hands clean. Theo Spencer and his allies, incumbent Sheila Davis and challengers La’Shae Harris and Corinne Powers, face long odds, but I’ll be watching this one on election night.
Edison Mayor
Samip Joshi (i) vs. Lav Patel vs. Richard Brescher
New Jersey’s sixth-largest municipality, Edison is a sprawling suburb midway between Newark and Trenton home to more than 100,000 residents and the bulk of one of the largest South Asian enclaves in North America (the Oak Tree Road/Inman Ave corridor is split between Edison and the neighborhood of Iselin in next-door Woodbridge.) Mayor Sam Joshi won office in a bitter 2021 primary battle with the then-chairman of the Edison Democrats, Mahesh Bhagia, that saw county and state Democrats intervening on Joshi’s behalf. Joshi is now up for reelection, somewhat hobbled by controversies including a school board flip-flop on protecting trans students, crumbling municipal infrastructure, and a boneheaded, later-reversed decision by the town council to ban all props (including the American flag) from council meetings and public comment periods. Councilman Richard Brescher faults Joshi for alleged mismanagement of all of the aforementioned issues, and also claims crime has skyrocketed on Joshi’s watch. Businessman Lav Patel also faults Joshi for a rise in crime and mismanagement of the municipal budget, as well as alleged self-dealing in the awarding of cannabis retail licenses. Patel is running with Fulop, who grew up here in Edison; both Patel and Brescher also have council slates to match Joshi’s. Joshi has called in lots of financial and organizational help from the Middlesex County Democrats, who run a professional operation that puts most county parties to shame, as well as from the state party; there is clearly some worry about an upset here.
Plainfield Mayor
Adrian Mapp (i) vs. Richard Wyatt
Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp had a close call against Councilman Richard Wyatt four years ago, and the mayor is leaving nothing to chance in their rematch. In 2021, Wyatt held Mapp to a plurality in this majority-minority city of 55,000 in western Union County; this time around, Mapp and his allies with the UCDC are fighting hard, dumping tens of thousands into Donohoe Partners field expenditures and even forking over the cash for a cable TV buy, while Wyatt can now hope to win over Plainfield’s liberal white minority, which voted for a third candidate in 2021 but must now choose between Wyatt and Mapp. Development is a flashpoint in this race; Plainfield, which is a popular destination for Latin American immigrants as well as an increasingly popular bedroom community of NYC thanks to a pair of NJTransit rail stations, has seen a population boom in recent years, accompanied by a development boom, and both have rankled longtime residents.