The New Yorker:

In his bid for the Senate, the third-term congressman had to overcome a challenge from the state’s First Lady—and a Democratic Party system that favors the powers that be.

By E. Tammy Kim

Last September, when Bob Menendez, the senior senator from New Jersey, was indicted—along with his wife, Nadine—in a garish bribery scheme involving gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz, one of the first elected officials to call for his resignation was Andy Kim, a congressman who represents the state’s Third District. The next day, Kim announced that he was running to replace Menendez in the U.S. Senate, anticipating a head-to-head challenge in the Democratic primary. But then, several weeks later, Tammy Murphy, the wife of Governor Phil Murphy and the most powerful woman in the state, announced her own candidacy for Senate. Elected officials, Party bureaucrats, and labor unions endorsed her right away. “When the First Lady came into the race,” Kim told me, “I had several senior Democratic leaders in the state call me and encourage me to drop out.”

Murphy has never held elected office, and was a registered Republican until about a decade ago. In most places, this would make Murphy, not Kim, who’s in his third term, the underdog. New Jersey is different. On primary day, June 4th, Democratic voters in most of the state will see ballots with a prominent column—a gatekeeping artifact, called the “the county line”—topped by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Below those names will be a single candidate for Senate. This coveted spot is bestowed by county Democratic committees—to which Murphy, owing in large part to her husband, is deeply connected. Other candidates are harder to vote for, sloughed off to ballot Siberia, in columns far to the right. The county line has shaped New Jersey politics for decades, and it was clear to Kim that it would operate in Murphy’s favor.

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