The late Bob Franks, a former congressman and state party chairman, and one of the great political strategists of his generation, had two ironclad rules for county political conventions:
* Rule #1: County Committee members lie about who they are voting for:
* Rule #2: County Committee members never tell the truth about who they are voting for.
Andy Kim’s outsized 57%-39% victory at the Monmouth County Democratic convention today was a big deal of Goliathan proportions as he attempts to wrestle his party’s nomination for U.S. Senate away from the choice of the most powerful leaders of his party, First Lady Tammy Murphy.
The three-term congressman said his win was evidence that he was “building a movement for change in New Jersey and that movement cannot be stopped,” but his top strategist, Zack Carroll, put the Monmouth vote in terms of a national campaign: “Andy Kim just won the Iowa Caucus of the New Jersey Senate race.”
Both sides thought the race would be closer, and Kim’s 84-vote margin was unforeseen. But here are some takeaways as New Jersey continues through the convention season:
1. Kim is clearly connecting with grassroots and lower-level establishment Democrats, and Murphy is not. Today’s electorate wasn’t made up of outsiders; delegates were county committee members (aka precinct leaders for non-New Jerseyans) and local elected officials. Both candidates had a foothold in Monmouth: Kim has represented ten of its towns in Congress, and Murphy lives there. One certainty is that the guy referred to as “Tickle Me Elmo with a Switchblade” ought not be underestimated. And Democrats are not yet sold on the governor’s wife launching her political career in the United States Senate.
2. People who told the Murphy campaign they would be with them were not; despite the landslide, a roll call vote might have produced a different outcome. Secret ballots benefit Kim, whose big win came even after Gov. Phil Murphy made dozens of phone calls to county committee members seeking votes for his wife. Still, some people considered Murphy voters were overtly backing Kim: for example, Lisa Boyer, a county committeewoman from Asbury Park, attended every Murphy event but was one of the people working the convention floor for Kim today.
3. Despite photographs of lines of Democratic leaders waiting to get inside the convention hall, turnout wasn’t so great: just 466 votes were cast in the Senate race out of 808 possible votes. That means 42% of the electorate didn’t show up, a genuinely crappy number considering that taking part in a convention is among the few things elected county committee members are expected to do every year. And a reminder that the political party that strongly supports early voting and vote-by-mail in elections still requires convention votes to be conducted in-person.
4. The Murphy campaign might have made a strategic error in allowing Monmouth, a Republican county where the electorate doesn’t owe their livelihood to politics, to go first. It might have been better to get one of the coronation counties to lead off the process. While Monmouth is not a big vote producer in a statewide Democratic primary, today’s win undeniably gives Kim momentum that will help him fundraise and get votes at upcoming conventions.
5. If you’ve seen one county, you’ve seen one county. Kim has a shot at winning more organization lines, but the big vote-producing counties – Bergen, Camden, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, and Union – appear solidly with Murphy.
6. A clear winner of today was Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination next year. Fulop has been arguing that he can be competitive even in counties where the establishment is for someone else, and the results in Monmouth County bolster a strategy of relying on mayors and grassroots support.
7. This is a two-way race: Patricia Campos-Medina received just 20 votes (4.3%), falling way short of the 10% she needed to qualify for next week’s Democratic Senate debate; and Larry Hamm did not attend and received zero votes.
8. Tom Moran shouldn’t take credit for Kim’s win; folks in Monmouth County don’t read the Star-Ledger or his column, the same as everywhere else. Indeed, he was a no-show at today’s convention after a party staffer told him he could not approach delegates again in a bid to swing their votes.
9. Today’s convention results validate a straw poll conducted in December that showed Kim with a significant lead in Monmouth County. Kim won that vote 29-13 (52.7% to 23.6%), with another 13 saying they were undecided.