After a year of Zoom meetings, some Democratic Party bosses in New Jersey are moving to give themselves additional power and head off challenges from progressives who want more of a voice in the county party organizations.
In Union County, for instance, the Democratic Committee there can now only hold a meeting if it is called for by the chairman, State Senator Nick Scutari, according to the recently approved bylaws. If a member of the committee wants to address the whole body, permission is required from the chair.
Committee members took a single vote to approve all the changes to the bylaws, mostly because they liked the one item in the list: they extended their terms from two to four years.
Linden Mayor and Union County Democratic Committee member Derek Armstead is a longtime political foe of Chairman Scutari. Nonetheless, he was all on board for extending his term on the committee, because he says the pandemic has made voting too difficult this year.
“I really had to look at what the county...was faced with, with regards to these ballots that had to go out, and it was a nightmare,” Armstead said.
Union County is one of at least six county Democratic committees across New Jersey where the elected members voted to extend their terms, citing the pandemic as a pretext.
Not many people pay much attention to party committee bylaws, but these county-based organizations wield a lot of power in determining who gets elected to political office in New Jersey. The committees are made up of local elected officials and district leaders who are voted on by neighborhoods. The committees’ endorsements give candidates preferential placement on the primary ballot by putting candidates on the ballot under the “county line.” That groups candidates for lower office in the same row as big names, like Governor Phil Murphy. Which ends up protecting incumbents, and keeping out challengers and reformers.
Listen to Nancy Solomon's report on WNYC:
Camden County is controlled by the state’s most powerful political boss George Norcorss, and their Democratic Committee is taking the bylaws changes one step further. Leadership wants to give official status to non-elected committee members, and allow them to vote in the endorsement process.
“It's saying, well, progressives can organize and maybe they're going to win elections, but even if they join the ranks, we're just never leaving,” said South Jersey activist Kate Delaney, a rare outsider who won a seat on the Camden County Committee in 2019 to represent Collingswood. “To me, it really seemed like an attempt to make sure that South Jersey progressive Dems could not effectively organize enough to make inroads so that we could potentially vote in a new party chair. “
But party officials say the proposed change would only affect about 40 people in the 500-member committee.
“The idea behind it [is] these folks would be a positive asset to the committee as a whole,” said Mike Porch, executive director of the Camden County Democratic Committee. “I don't think it's undemocratic because the vast majority of the committee is still directly elected and the folks that we’re adding on as these at-large members are ultimately being voted on the ballot.”
The unelected committee members would be made up of elected officials and other party leaders, not unlike superdelegates in the national party’s primaries.
“What it does at the national level is to keep the thumb on the scale on the part of the party organizers and the elected officials,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovitch Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. Even though it’s less democratic, it’s not necessarily a bad idea, he said.
“It's a check on the power of the primaries. It's not putting the power completely in the hands of the primaries or the primary voters. It's keeping your professional Democrats and professional Republicans in charge of the process.”
