The November election now gives New Jersey voters a chance to elect a new person to the U.S. Senate for the first time in more than a decade.
Tuesday’s primary vote provided New Jersey with its first opportunity to observe elections without the “party line” ballot, a design that grouped candidates favored by party leaders. This system, unique to New Jersey, had been criticized for years as unfair. After Senate candidate Andy Kim sued, a federal judge agreed with his position. Kim won the Democratic primary decisively, with The Associated Press calling the race for him shortly after polls closed.
“Our win today is a stunning victory for a people-powered movement that mobilized against corruption and stood up to the machine politics of New Jersey,” Kim said in a statement. “I took the chance to run for Senate eight months ago on the belief that people are fed up with our broken politics and are ready for a new generation of leadership fighting for change. What I found is that there is a deep hunger across the political spectrum for a different kind of politics grounded in integrity and public service that aims to rebuild trust.”
Kim is set to face Curtis Bashaw, who was declared the winner of the Republican primary by AP.
With more mail-in ballots left to count, it remains too early to determine what impact suspending the party line may have had on Democratic candidates. This year's change—resulting from the judge's ruling due to Rep. Kim’s lawsuit—allowed Democrats not to use the line while Republicans could. This situation offers researchers like Rutgers University professor Julia Sass Rubin, who authored a study on the impact of the line, an opportunity to examine its effect in an election.
