IT’S ‘THE END OF THE LINE’
But not (yet) the end of The Machine
From “The End of the Line” by the Traveling Wilburys.
This is the second of two articles in The New Jersey Democrat on machine politics in New Jersey’s 2025 election. In the first, we reported on how the traditional, boss-driven politics in the state may yet prosper even after the elimination of the ‘county line.’ In today’s piece, we look at the growth of independent candidates and challengers, many of whom will face an uphill battle against county-endorsed candidates and incumbents.
It’s the “Traveling Wilburys election.” Why? Just listen.
Yes, it’s “The End of the Line.” Finally, now is your chance to throw the bums out. Or, on the other hand, to make sure that the other bums don’t get in.
That’s because on June 10, the entire New Jersey state assembly, all 80 seats, is up for grabs, and there are more primary challengers and more contested races than ever before. (At least in recent memory.) According to records at the Election Law Enforcement Commission, there are 120 Democratic candidates competing for 80 spots. And, according to Ballotpedia, the Wikipedia of elections and voting, fully 33 assembly incumbents (29 Democratic incumbents) will face contested races in 2025, the most since Ballotpedia started counting things. For comparison, in 2015 only 7 assembly members were involved in contested races.
What’s different this year, of course – thanks, Andy Kim! – is that not a single one of those 120 candidates gets to hog a spot at the top of a rigged, county-endorsed ballot. Instead, in a healthy, mix-and-match ballot, all the candidates, incumbents and challengers, party-endorsed candidates and insurgents, sit cheek to jowl in a randomly arranged pattern.
It’s a free-for-all, and if you’re unhappy with the moribund, boss-connected, do-nothing state legislature, then 2025 is your chance to fix it.
“It’s really the Wild West out here,” said Lou DiPaolo, a political consultant in Jersey City. “I don't think that anyone can say with any certainty what's going to happen on election day. But what is true across the state is that it’s much more likely that the chances of beating an incumbent are better than they ever have been, probably in the last hundred years. These really are the first competitive primary elections that we've had in our lifetimes.”
In that sense, for many voters it’s a chance to let the assemblymen and women know how they feel. Are they upset that the state legislature didn’t pass the Immigrant Trust Act? Were they annoyed when the legislature voted to “gut access to public records” via the Open Public Records Act (OPRA)? Did it disturb them when the state legislature passed a bill (vetoed by Governor Murphy) that “could be used to stifle political dissent and labor protests,” according to the ACLU?
Lots of people are weighing in. Groups as diverse as the firefighters union, the NJ Working Families Party, NJ Citizen Action, the League of Conservation Voters, the NJ Business and Industry Association’s New Jobs PAC, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have all endorsed various slates of assembly candidates. And Steve Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City and a gubernatorial candidate, is backing dozens of assembly candidates as part of his “Democrats for Change” slate.
For this article, The New Jersey Democrat spoke to a number of candidates around the state, both incumbents and challengers, along with a few political insiders and consultants, to get a sense of what the end of the line means for assembly races this year.
There’s no doubt that the power of the 21 Democratic party county organizations is still being felt, and that the challengers running against them are at a disadvantage.
But Antoinette Miles, New Jersey state director at the Working Families Party, told TNJD that outside groups such as hers can help level the playing field. “We see ourselves, the Working Families Party, as being pivotal on infrastructure. We are not just giving our endorsement. In a lot of these races, in a majority of them, we are trying to make our endorsement mean something, whether that’s phone banking, knocking on doors, we’re backing these candidates with the strength of our organization. We’re competing to win.”
Maura Collinsgru, director of policy and advocacy for Citizen Action, said that her organization has endorsed 17 candidates in assembly races, both challengers and incumbents, in part based on their opposition to the evisceration of OPRA earlier this year. And many of those running against county-endorsed candidates, she told TNJD, still face long odds.
“One factor that’s difficult to overcome is money, because the machine has the money,” said Collinsgru. “Even though they’re not in ballot Siberia anymore, the big nut to crack is fundraising. And kudos to many of them who have launched pretty aggressive, grassroots campaigns.”
Statewide there are dozens of candidates challenging the establishment. Even in South Jersey, the stronghold of the George Norcross machine that’s backing Steve Sweeney, the conservative former state senate president, for governor, there are a number of candidates running against Norcross’s empire. In the 4th legislative district (LD 4), there’s Vonetta Hawkins and Brian Everett, both part of the Fulop team. And in LD 6, two more Fulop-tied candidates, Becky Holloway and Kevin Ryan, are vying against two county-backed incumbents, including Louis Greenwald, the assembly majority leader.
Everett, Holloway and Ryan are backed by Citizen Action and the Working Families Party.
One candidate endorsed by Citizen Action – and by the Working Families Party, CWA, and others – is a newcomer, Chigozie Onyema, running for assembly in LD 28 that includes parts of Essex and Union counties. Though he’s not an incumbent, Onyema won the endorsement of the Democratic party committees in both counties, and he’s widely believed to have been backed by LeRoy Jones, the lobbyist and chairman of both the Essex County Democratic Committee (ECDC) and the New Jersey Democratic State Committee.
Onyema, an “attorney, community organizer, and activist” from Newark, according to his website, agrees that the county endorsement helps him a great deal with name recognition, funding, and field organizing by district leaders and others. But he insists that if he’s elected, he’ll be independent of the machine. “I’m opposed to machine politics,” he told TNJD. His goal, he said, is to “shift the political center to the left,” adding, “How do we distribute power and wealth in this country? That’s the core of what we’re trying to figure out.”
“We endorsed him first, before LeRoy did,” WFP’s Miles told TNJD.
Collinsgru said that Citizen Action was impressed with Onyema’s forthright opposition to the legislature’s undermining of OPRA, and she noted that one of Onyema’s opponents in the race is Assemblywoman Garnet Hall, who voted in favor of weakening OPRA earlier this year. Hall, however, has since said that she regrets that vote. Hall, despite being an incumbent, failed to win the backing of the ECDC, which instead voted to support Onyema and Assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker. It was widely understood then that the LeRoy Jones machine supported Onyema, while the apparatus around Ras Baraka, gubernatorial candidate and mayor of Newark, backed Tucker. Thus, Hall was frozen out. She’s since joined up with Fulop’s Democrats for Change, though she’s had difficulty raising funds.
Nearby, in LD 32 – in Hudson County, including the cities of Jersey City and Hoboken – there’s another tangle of machine politics. It’s a complicated race. There are six candidates: two candidates, Jennie Pu and Crystal Fonseca, have the support of the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO). Two other candidates, Assemblywoman Jessica Ramirez and Yousef Saleh, are running as part the Fulop-linked slate. And two more candidates, as an independent slate, are Katie Brennan and Ravi Bhalla, the mayor of Hoboken. All six are formidable, but the HCDO-backed candidates have the advantage of money and organizational support.
Ramirez, an incumbent, ordinarily would have been expected to win the backing of the HCDO. But because she is from Jersey City and connected to Fulop, and because the HCDO decided to endorse Rep. Mikie Sherrill, well, the machine gets what it wants. And it didn’t want Fulop or Ramirez.
“This is my first time holding political office ever,” Ramirez told TNJD. She’d worked with the public defender’s office, worked with Catholic Charities, and served as an attorney dealing with sexual assault cases, she said. The first time around, she had the party organization’s support. “But now I’ve had to raise my own money and hire my own people,” said Ramirez. “I had to set up my own grassroots machine, that I created for myself, so it’s been difficult for sure. I see how much money the machine has, right, but you just have to focus on your own campaign and know that you’re in it for the right reasons.”
Brennan, another candidate running outside the county organization’s support system, has a master’s degree in Urban Planning. She’s a former chief of staff at the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, and she’s been a longtime Jersey City activist on housing policy. Brennan has also worked for protections for survivors of sexual assault, and in 2017 she brought high-profile charges of sexual assault against a Phil Murphy campaign staffer.
“In places like Jersey City and Hoboken, it’s good to have challengers,” Brennan told TNJD. “But it’s an uphill climb. The line is gone, but we as individuals, as progressives, have a lot of work to do to build infrastructure. We have a fraction of the money, a fraction of the infrastructure.” But, unlike the county-backed team, which gets most of its campaign cash from the HCDO’s coffers, she’s got more than a thousand individual contributors, she said. “They’re going to great lengths to hold on to the power that they have.”
Asked what can be done about the entrenched county machines, Brennan had a ready answer.
“I am radically optimistic,” she said. “What can we do? We can win.”