The New Jersey State Legislature, Part One: The Senate

“The results of a new study are out this week saying that New Jersey is one of the most livable states in the country. The study has a margin of error of 100 percent.”--Conan O'Brien

What's Going On?

Today, Blue the Nation begins in earnest. All 120 seats in both houses of the New Jersey Legislature will be up for grabs in 2013. Now to be perfectly clear, New Jersey is reliably blue. It has been for awhile. In 2011, the Democrats went in with a 24-16 lead in the Senate and a 47-33 lead in the General Assembly. They came out with the same 24-16 lead in the Senate and a pickup of one seat in the Assembly for a 48-32 lead. 2011 wasn't necessarily a great year for Democrats, coming as it did on the heels of a Republican wave election in 2010. 2013, by contrast, will be the very first chance for the vaunted “new coalition” of Democratic voters to prove that it's just as vital in an off-year election season as it was in 2012.

Democratic voters didn't show up for the 2010 midterms, but I think that was because they were coming to grips with the reality of politics: you don't just elect a guy and then everything's fine. They saw what happened when they stayed home in 2009, 2010, and to an extent 2011. They came out in force in 2012, and I believe--or maybe I just hope--they'll come out again in 2013 and beyond. The New Jersey legislature is already pretty darn blue, and there's very little chance of that changing.

But Democrats have another factor to consider: the gubernatorial race. Chris Christie will be running for re-election. This is a fight Democrats need to win, and it's helpful when the entire slate of candidates in the party looks strong. If the Democrats perform well in the Legislative elections, that can provide some coattails for their gubernatorial nominee, who at this point could very well be rising Democratic Party star Cory Booker, presently the Mayor of Newark. The reverse is also true; if the Democratic nominee for the governor's seat has a strong showing, that could positively impact the party's performance in the Legislative elections.

Cory Booker. The Mayor of my heart.

So the question here is between two possible realities. In the first reality, the Democrats lead 21-19 in the Senate, the Republicans lead 41-39 in the Assembly, and Christie retains the governor's mansion. In the second reality, Democrats lead 25-15 in the Senate and 54-26 in the Assembly, and Booker (or another Democrat) wins the gubernatorial race. There are, of course, various gradations between those two possibilities, but those are the extremes. So how do we avoid the first reality, and how do we achieve the second? We begin with the Senate, but first...

Hey New Jersey Democrats: Make Nice, Dammit.

Let's get this out of the way right now: the rift between South Jersey Democrats and North Jersey Democrats is stupid, childish, and unproductive. Guys, step back and look at the bigger picture. The rest of us out here on the left, we don't care about your internecine squabbles. They don't matter. What does matter is that the party needs to at least hold ground in 2013. So shape up.

A little background may be in order. North Jersey Dems and South Jersey Dems have a longstanding rivalry. Like, stab each other in the back, get the other faction's Senate President deposed and replaced with your guy, that kind of rivalry. And you know what's nuts about it? It doesn't even really seem to have any roots in actual political differences. NJ.com describes it like this: “Northern New Jerseyans affiliate with New York while those to the south feel kinship with Philadelphia.” That is just such a perfectly tragic encapsulation of New Jersey, but more to the point, what kind of basis is that for an intraparty rivalry? It's actually not even limited to the Democrats. In general, while North Jersey folk don't really care much about the split, people down south seem to think they get less government spending directed in their areas.

Inevitably, this rivalry has become increasingly real and serious over the years. South Jersey Democrats feel underrepresented and hamstrung due to lower population density. When Jim McGreevey won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1997 (oh, you'll be hearing more about Jim McGreevey, in case you forgot who he is), South Jersey Dems were incensed. Their guy in the primary, Rob Andrews, was a popular 10-year Congressman with a great record. North Jersey primary voters went with one of their own—a completely unknown quantity—anyway. By the way, spoiler alert, McGreevey won the election but things did not work out well for him in the end. He's almost as far out of politics as Rod Blagojevich now.

But what the North Jersey guys have in electorate strength, the South Jersey guys make up for in the kind of rough-trade political gamesmanship that made Democratic machine politics famous in places like Chicago, New York City, and, of course, New Jersey. If you want an example, check out the January 2010 leadership coup. South Jersey mounted a surprise attack on Senate President Richard Codey. They booted him from his post, which he'd held for eight years, to replace him with one of their own, Stephen Sweeney. Believe me, that created some hostility.

Reading PolitickerNJ's article on a potential Sweeney gubernatorial run—and the intraparty anarchy it would spawn—made my head spin, and I usually feel like I can keep up with another state's political happenings. There are so many players and kingmakers and power brokers in the North vs. South conflict in the New Jersey Democratic Party, it's dizzying. Now I don't know the answer to solving this issue, but it's not like it's Israel and Palestine out there. It's grown men bitching and moaning about who gets to be in which leadership position in a state controlled by Democrats! Shut up and get along. This is bigger than all of us. If you don't beat Christie next year, he might run for President! And he might win! (Personally I think the nation will never again vote for a fat President due to the influence of television, but I could be horrifically wrong. Let's not test the theory.) Now on to vulnerable Senate seats...

Vulnerable Democratic Senate Seats

It's too early to know if anybody is going to be retiring from either chamber in the Legislature, or if anybody is going to die, or if anybody is going to suffer a scandal, or if anybody will suddenly be appointed to some position somewhere else at some level of government. But based on who the current incumbents are, assuming they all run again, I see three vulnerable Democratic-held seats in the New Jersey Senate.

District 1.

Incumbent: Jeff Van Drew.

Why he's weak: Well, the quick version is that he's probably the least vulnerable of the vulnerable Democrats. He's been the underdog, in some ways, in both of his two successful election bids. In 2007, he knocked off incumbent Republican Nicholas Asselta 56-44 in a race that was expected to be competitive, but was also expected to be won by Asselta. At the time, District 1 was seen as traditionally Republican. He won by eight points in 2011, which is huge given that his district was still seen as Republican-leaning, but eight points is not impossible to overcome. In 2013, I'm going to say that Van Drew remains more vulnerable to a GOP challenge than most of his Democratic colleagues. On the other hand, he's definitely the least vulnerable of the three Senators I'm highlighting here.

Why he's strong: See above. Here's a guy who should absolutely not be underestimated. In 2011, the race was again supposed to be competitive, and New Jersey pundits were again giving Republican David DeWeese a good shot at taking the seat. PolitickerNJ noted that District 1 was still a Republican-leaning district on paper, even after Democratic-engineered redistricting.

But Jeff Van Drew didn't steal a Republican seat in 2007 by accident. He won his race by outcampaigning his opponent, by convincing more of his constituents that he was the guy for the job. He did the same thing in 2011, winning 54-46. He was a prominent member of the state Assembly from 2002-2007, and a well-liked Mayor of Dennis Township for nine years. He has a long, strong political history in his district, and that's served him very well.

A long, strong political history. It's unclear
whether it's also down to get the friction on.

The Assembly members from his district are also Democrats. It's clear that the Dems are making strong inroads into this district, and what's more, Van Drew has won both of his elections on the strength of being Jeff Van Drew. He's not winning because of his party, he's winning because he's a good campaigner and a good politician. He appeals to an emerging Democratic electoral coalition by virtue of his party affiliation, but he can also grab Republican voters as a bit of a bipartisan maverick; see his recent vote against raising the minimum wage in the state. He was the only Senate Democrat to break ranks and vote against the measure.

Price Tag: This race doesn't go to the GOP unless Christie scores a massive landslide in the gubernatorial. Still, Democratic interests in New Jersey should look at this race as one they should support strongly. Last time around, Van Drew was outspent about 3-to-1 ($964,412 to $338,525.) Van Drew is never going to need to be a big spender relative to others, but campaign spending is only going to keep ballooning. His campaign, his party, and his allies in the independent expenditure community should expect to spend about a million dollars on his re-election.

District 2.

Incumbent: Jim Whelan.

Why he's weak: Jim Whelan is going to be a target for the Republican Party in 2013. They might make a run at Van Drew's seat, but they will gun hard for Jim Whelan's. Whelan cruised to an even more dominant victory than Van Drew did in 2007, defeating Republican incumbent James McCullough 57-43. But 2007 was a different time, sandwiched between two consecutive Democratic wave elections. Whelan won his first race as much on the strength of the Democratic nationwide sentiment as on the strength of his own candidacy. His margin dropped substantially in 2011, although he still prevailed, 53-47.

District 2 has not shifted to the left the way District 1 has. When Van Drew stormed the First District in 2007, it was a solidly Republican district, and in the last five years it has become a district with 100% Democratic representation in the Legislature. District 2, however, is still represented by Republicans in the Assembly. Whelan is the lone Democrat in the Legislature from his district. And his margin of victory dropped by a lot in his re-election bid.

Why he's strong: He's not. Not from where I sit. I'm not up on the innermost workings of New Jersey politics or the New Jersey Democratic Party, but Jim Whelan looks like one of the easier gets for the Republicans in the entire 2013 electoral landscape. They have more of a shot at flipping this than they do of flipping most of the vulnerable Assembly seats.

Price Tag: 2013 will be the first election in which Whelan has to face not just a Republican opponent, but the coattails of Chris Christie. All things being equal, this seat looks very likely to go to the Republicans, providing they can field a good candidate. Two ways to stop that from happening would be a decisive Democrat win in the governor's race and a heavy influx of cash on behalf of Whelan.

In 2011, the District 2 race set the high-water mark for candidate fundraising in the state for the year, at $3,762,118. $1,547,564 of that was spent by Whelan. His opponent, Vincent Polistina, an incumbent Assembly member, spent $2,214,554. These figures do not take into account any independent expenditures. I'm going to say that the candidate, the various levels of the Democratic Party, and independent expenditure campaigns are going to need to combine to spend a minimum of $5 million to re-elect Jim Whelan.

District 38.

Incumbent: Robert Gordon.

Pictured: Not the incumbent New Jersey
State Senator from the Thirty-Eighth District.

Why he's weak: Gordon is vulnerable in a much more concerning way for the Democratic party. His Democratic predecessor, Joseph Coniglio, held the seat for six years, from 2002-2007. Gordon stormed to a 60-40 victory in 2007. It was a Democratic hold, and of course it was. It was a strongly Democratic district. It still is, in fact. Both of its current Assembly representatives are Democrats. One of them is openly gay. The other is a woman. Both are quite solidly liberal Democrats. So was Coniglio. So is Gordon.

So what's the problem? Hard to say. But in 2011, Gordon's margin of victory dropped drastically, even more drastically than Whelan's. He still won, 53-47, but the race should never have been so close. Again, in this same election, the district voted for an openly gay Assembly member. This is a blue district. And yet, Gordon couldn't make himself the obvious choice for its Senate seat.

This tells us something concerning: Gordon won big in 2007 because he was a Democrat running to replace a Democrat in a Democratic district in an election that took place between two Democratic wave elections. In 2011, with the national sentiment hovering in the general vicinity of “politicians all suck,” running as an incumbent Democrat in a Democratic district that was in the process of sending two very Democratic Democrats to the Assembly, Gordon could barely squeak out a win.

Why he's strong: Well, like I said, he's an incumbent Democrat in a Democratic district that loves its very Democratic Democrats. And he's plenty blue. So are his ticketmates. Someone just teach Gordon how to friggin' campaign. He also might be strengthened by the statewide and national political winds. That's about all I can see. We don't yet know what the national sentiment will be come election time. If the Democrats and the second Obama Administration have a strong first year, the national pro-Democrat sentiment—and the contrails of an enthusiastic 2012 election season—will probably carry Gordon to victory.

At this point, I'd say that looks likely. The lame-duck session of Congress will probably make a short-term deal to avoid the fiscal hillock (I refuse to call it the fiscal cliff), and a longer-term deficit-reduction plan will probably pass in the next Congressional session. Immigration reform is probably more likely to happen than not in 2013, and even if it doesn't, the Republicans will come out looking like major league assholes who didn't learn from their embarrassing performance in 2012. The health care reform law will start phasing in for real. There will probably be some form of financial regulatory reform passed again.

Pictured: American political leaders amble distractedly
away from the not-dangerous fiscal hillock.

The Price Tag: The Middle East situation could throw a monkey wrench into things, of course, as could a billion other never-saw-it-comings. If the Democrats have a bad year in 2013, or if they meet with mixed success, Gordon's on his own. And Gordon on his own doesn't do too well. He also doesn't serve on any of the best bring-home-the-bacon committees. The Republicans will gun hard for his seat, just like they did in 2011. That year, his opponent, John Driscoll, outspent him $2,416,479 to $978,319, a ratio of about 2.5 to 1. District 38 saw the second highest level of spending in the state, behind District 2. But District 2 spending was much less lopsided. The Republicans wanted this seat badly, and they almost got it. They'll be coming hard for it again. The candidate, his party, and his allied independent expenditures should expect to spend a good $6-7 million on this race to secure re-election, and the statewide Democratic Party stars need to do a lot of campaign surrogate work.

Vulnerable Republican Senate Seats:

District 8.

Incumbent: Dawn Addiego.

Why she's strong: There really aren't any Republican seats that can be called truly vulnerable at this point, but you gotta aim high, right? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. So if there's one seat that Democrats could make a run at, it's District 8. The seat is currently occupied by Dawn Addiego. Addiego is something of a rising star in the state Republican party, having been appointed to the seat by the party after serving one term in the Assembly. She then had to immediately gear up for a 2011 re-election fight. She could have had a strong challenge on her hands from decorated former Olympian Carl Lewis, but after a long, drawn-out battle over whether or not he satisfied the residency requirements to run for public office, Lewis was removed from the ballot. Addiego won unopposed.

Pictured: Easier than running for state Senate in New Jersey.
Also pictured: Some Serbian guy with the most calm, stoic expression
in the history of physical exertion. It's because he knows he can wear
those boy-shorts and beat up anyone who questions his manhood.

Why she's weak: What could make Addiego vulnerable is her relative inexperience. She's served just under one term in the Assembly and will have served just over one term in the Senate by the time of the 2013. She really only had to run one competitive campaign for those two terms, since Lewis was disqualified in the 2011 Senate race. Although she achieved relative prominence during her time in the Assembly, she hasn't done so as a Senator. She doesn't have the plum committee assignments, nor does she have any significant stature within the Republican caucus in the chamber. With the right candidate, she could conceivably be picked off, although her district is fairly red.

Who can beat her: What makes her less vulnerable is the question of who that right candidate could/would/should be. District 8 is a much longer shot to be flipped than the three Democratic seats discussed above. The Democrats basically have to try to draft Lewis again. There can't be any questions about his residency this time; he's definitely lived in New Jersey long enough. Celebrity candidates, in my view, are almost always a good idea, for either party. They come with name recognition and a certain degree of public esteem built in. Unless you already have a can't-miss candidate you can run instead, go with the celebrity.

Lewis actually looked like a pretty strong, well-prepared political campaigner, much more so than Al Franken did early in his successful run for Senate in Minnesota. Bring Carl back and see if he can flip a red district. If he can, he has a good chance at making it blue long-term. For the same reason that celebrity candidates have a built-in edge in their initial election, they have a built-in edge in their re-elections. If Lewis wins the seat in 2013, he can probably win it again in 2015 and 2017. So maybe he moves on to something else or retires after that, but if the district goes blue for three straight elections, the Democrats have a good shot at keeping it blue.

Price Tag: This is a long shot, but Carl Lewis can make it winnable. Democrats will have to perform well throughout the state and throughout the nation in 2013 to give him more of a chance. Lewis, his party, and his allies should expect to spend $4 million on this race.

Why The New Jersey Senate Matters:

The short version is that it doesn't matter nearly as much as a lot of the other races in the cycle. There's pretty much no way the Democrats can lose control of the chamber. Other than Districts 1, 2, and 38, their Senators are rock-solid incumbents who won their last elections by margins of 10-30 points. Their worst-case scenario for the 2013 election is that Democrats hold a slim 21-19 majority in the Senate.

That's the worst-case scenario. But that would be a pretty damn bad scenario. If that happens, you assume Chris Christie won, so you're looking at a Republican governor, a slim lead in the Senate, and presumably a slimmer lead in the Assembly (if not an Assembly that has flipped to the GOP entirely.) A big problem here is that some New Jersey Democrats have shown a willingness to reach across the aisle to work with Christie. That sounds nice and fuzzy, but what it actually meant in reality was shit like a vote to prevent public employees from collectively bargaining for benefits and pensions. If you already know you're going to be dealing with some defectors, you want as much of a cushion as possible.

Pictured: Bipartisanship. Not pictured: Bipartisanship isn't automatically good.
Pictured: Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein in happier times,
in case you forgot who these guys were. Not pictured: A decade and a half later
Rumsfeld prosecuted a war on Hussein's regime in Iraq that ended
with the dictator's execution. With friends like these, amirite Saddam?

The current 24-16 advantage is strong. Holding those three vulnerable seats and picking up District 8 for a 25-15 advantage is stronger. 21-19? That's weak. That might as well be a Republican majority with Christie in the governor's mansion. The left needs to focus up hard on these four races. And how about the other races? Aside from these four seats, there are another 36 seats up for grabs. But 15 of them are in solid Republican territory. Godspeed to whoever wants to try for an upset there, but the party and the various progressive groups should not spend a dime in those races unless something dramatic happens. That leaves 21 solid Democratic seats. You definitely want to hold onto these seats; it's not a given, but it is likely. $500,000 per seat should do it easily.

$17M for the four competitive races. $10.5M to preserve what the Democrats have. Another $4.5M to keep in reserve in case some surprise comes up in one of the races. For the low low price of $32 million dollars, New Jersey Democrats and their allies can maintain their advantage in the state Senate and maybe even improve on it. Up next: the New Jersey Assembly.