This isn’t the first challenge to the county line system, Save Jerseyans, but it may be the most serious and certainly the most high profile to date.
On Monday, The New York Times reported that U.S. Senate candidate Andy Kim (D) and two other congressional candidates have filed suit to ditch “the line,” the system by which local county parties decide which candidate has the advantage of bracketing with other endorsed party candidates in the June primary.
Kim and his co-plaintiffs want the court to rule lines unconstitutional as violative of the 14th Amendment.
“No state interest in New Jersey’s bracketing and ballot placement system can justify the burdens it places on Plaintiffs’ rights,” the plaintiffs argue in their 79-page complaint. “[New Jersey’s election ballots] are radically different and affect candidates like Plaintiffs in a way that is above and beyond what the other states allow on their ballots.”
A separate 2020 lawsuit – filed by the same lead attorneys – is still pending in federal court. The judge in that matter permitted the case to proceed after ruling that the plaintiffs had standing to press their cause of action.
Notwithstanding his purported issues with the line, Kim has won three in a row in his primary contest with First Lady Tammy Murphy: Hunterdon, Burlington, and Monmouth counties. He nevertheless faces tougher odds in the populous, vote-rich blue counties of North Jersey where Murphy is expected to run stronger. Kim hasn’t declined any of the lines he’s won, something which has drawn charges of hypocrisy from some quarters.
No Republican has won a U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey post-Watergate making the Democrat primary the decisive stage in Garden State federal contests.
