New Jersey governor’s race tests the staying power of Democrats’ county machines

The counties in which Sherrill has won support account for nearly 60% of all registered Democrats in the state. They include the county in which her 11th Congressional District is based, Morris, and the two others that it touches, Passaic and Essex. Gottheimer, whose 5th District is based in Bergen, also represents part of Passaic and Sussex. And Ras Baraka is the mayor of Newark, the largest city in Essex (and the state). Sweeney, the only candidate from South Jersey, has largely swept that region, where the county organizations typically act as a bloc.

What has traditionally made these endorsements so meaningful is the preferred ballot position that came with them. An endorsed candidate would run at the top of the Democratic county organization’s official line, an official-looking and impossible-to-miss column that would also include a host of familiar local names running for lower offices. Names of the other candidates would be listed by themselves, often in the far reaches of the ballot.

The results were predictable: Candidates running off the line almost never won and generally got blown out. The last open Democratic gubernatorial prim was essentially settled a year before any votes were cast, when the largest county organizations threw their support to now-Gov. Phil Murphy.

But a successful lawsuit last year and a new law signed by Murphy in March have changed the game. The line is gone and county parties can no longer list all of their endorsed candidates in a special column. Prim ballots now list candidates by the office they are seeking. One of the questions heading into June’s prim is how much this has diminished the power of county endorsements.

Sherrill has stuck with the traditional approach, aggressively cultivating them. Since her election to the House in 2018, when she flipped a Republican-held seat, she’s been seen as a statewide prospect and developed relationships with party leaders and insiders. She won’t enjoy the traditional benefits of running on the line, but the county organizations are still free to work on her behalf — no small matter in a state where machine politics are still practiced. And she’ll get to display the slogan of each organization that is backing her next to her name on the ballot.

But others are playing it differently, either only targeting specific counties (as Gottheimer, Sweeney and Baraka have) or skipping the entire process altogether, as Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop is.

Some of this, of course, is simply a nod to the advantage Sherrill already had. Gottheimer found this out the hard way, when the organization in Hudson County, one of the biggest in the state, switched its allegiance from him to Sherrill. But Baraka and Fulop have tried to turn their lack of organizational support into a plus, hoping to tap into popular frustration with the machine style.

This has all added up to an unusually muddled prim contest — at least until the past week, when two polls showed Sherrill separating herself from the pack. It could mean her heavy spending on television ads is paying off. But New Jersey’s Democratic machines, no doubt, hope it’s a sign that the old ways still work.