SJ Advance Election Reflections: Making Sense of the Governor’s Race
It was like Hillary Clinton all over again. Polls, press all predicted a decisive victory for Phil Murphy. Then he barely limped across the finish line. Why? Five hypotheses seem to dominate the public debate about Murphy’s close call.They go like this:
- According to conservatives, a public appearance with Bernie Sanders scared people into voting red.This made me chuckle. Was it because he was missing his iconic mittens?
- According to data minded liberals, this was no narrow victory at all but a triumph against historic odds stacked against a Dem Governor winning re-election. This one got me thinking of the Curse of Billy Penn. Hey, we beat that one too. (Go, Birds!)
- Most major news outlets have been analyzing this as a bellwether election, a forecast on whether voters will support Dems in 2022 or turn away from a party of stalemates and unfulfilled promises. Given that people tend to follow national politics and ignore every level below, I’m sure there’s plenty of hard truth there.
- To some insiders and others closely following Jersey politics, the fault lies with county parties, especially in South Jersey where only two counties went blue.
- To the SJ progressives with whom I spend so much time, this is yet another instance of watching Dems struggle while knowing intimately to what lengths the party will go to exclude left leaning and independent voices.
From my vantage point in South Jersey, specifically in Camden County, I see some truth in all these theories (except blaming Uncle Bernie). If the Democratic party wants to have a viable future in SJ, in NJ, it needs to break out of its insular culture. It needs to call out corruption, unequivocally, with courage it can learn from the SJ grassroots who have been doing it on their own all this time. It needs to give younger voters a reason to show up at the polls, a feeling that they are casting a vote for change, not just more of the same. The Dems need to learn how to talk — and to listen! — to the working class.
Combat Machine Corruption; Invest in New Voices
Murphy only netted 348,529 votes from South Jersey according to most recent reporting. In Camden County where Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one, the results for Murphy did not reflect that party dominance. Why? Maybe because the county party was busy campaigning for a nonpartisan Camden City school board. The Democratic machine was also busy attacking a reformer candidate running for local office in Gloucester Township. When I was at the Camden County Board of Elections on Election Day acting as a challenger, those two towns (Camden and Gloucester Township) were the first ones counted. The Camden County Dems spent thousands on social media ads but they were for board of ed, their incumbent state pols and Donald Norcross.
Their lackluster GOTV performance for Murphy did not surprise me. After all, the Camden County Dems did heckle Murphy as “phony Phil” and told him to stay out of Camden. Murphy has claimed he has no memory of any of those machine hostilities but SJ Progressives remember it all too well. When Collingswood Progressive Democrats won seats on the Camden County Democratic Committee in 2019, we worked hard to advance transparency and fair process in the party. We participated in issue advocacy, engaged with local Dems, GOTV in 2020. When we ran for re-election in 2021, we were kicked off the line for disloyalty to the Norcross machine. Murphy bracketed with the machine backed candidates who rode his down ballot coattails to a win.
In a way, our experiences mirror those of India Walton who won the Democratic primary fair and square but was denied party support. I spent the election season and election night with candidates trying to make good government changes and advance people-centered policies locally, fellow SJ Dems who by virtue of being independent minded question askers can’t get a foothold in the party. What price does the state party pay by turning a blind eye to SJ Dem machine’s attempts to keep out new voices via running fake candidates, cancelling elections and a host of other tricks? That SJ sea of red on the election map might be part of the answer.
It’s essential to note that in South Jersey, especially in Camden County, individuals are ousted or attacked by the machine establishment, not because of ideology but because of loyalties. Political machines are about power and money, not ideology. The people they work to aggressively keep out are the individuals who want to serve the public, not the party boss. They ask questions that upset the machine, questions about how contracts are awarded, how dollars are allocated, how candidates are endorsed. This strict insider/outsider divide in South Jersey means a routine loss of talent and diversity from various points along the political spectrum. At election time, it may just mean a loss of votes.
Connect with Younger Voters; Get Local
The turnout for this Governor’s race was one of the lowest in a century, sources say. Only 37% of eligible voters showed up to vote. Whenever low turnout is an issue, younger voters are generally blamed. There’s no data available yet on who turned out and who stayed home. Certainly though, the Dems should be focused on capturing the youth vote.
If young voters didn’t turn out, it’s likely because they don’t see any movement on the priorities that are central for them. Campaign time means big promises for the Dems. Once they are in office though, then begins the gridlock we are seeing now.
Younger voters are staring down a future of staggering student debt just to get started in life. The younger generation is leading on climate change, not surprisingly since it’s a problem they’ve inherited. Polls show that younger voters overwhelmingly support Medicare for All.
If Dems want the support of younger voters then they cannot ask younger voters to hold their nose and vote. Is it any wonder that younger voters are put off by a national political establishment that is immensely wealthy as a rule and decades older than them? The so-called progressive policies that are debated to death would make life easier for many, including those just starting out.
But wait, you say, hasn’t Murphy enacted many progressive policies? Wasn’t there an article about that even? Yes though throughout his campaign Murphy often reached out to national political narratives to try and connect with voters. This is problematic, this movement towards focusing solely on national politics. As people obsessively consume national news, they become less and less engaged with state and local politics to the point where they aren’t even capable of naming their state, county or local officials. This disconnect erodes accountability and meaningful participation in government on all levels.
Research shows that as we become more exclusively focused on national politics, we also become more partisan. As we become more partisan and polarized we become more acrimonious and less likely to work together for change, even in our communities.
In my experience, the people who get into political organizing because of national issues or a national election seldom remain engaged for long. However, those who get involved because of local issues may continue to examine how power operates on other political levels and spaces. (Ask me how I know this!)
Overcome Class Cluelessness
Compared to North Jersey, South Jersey is far more working class. This is apparently a demographic that Dems are willing to concede. As the product of a blue collar environment, I find this enormously distressing.
Though Dems and progressives talk a lot about the working class and working families, most of the time those conversations are really about the poor. Dems seem to have a hard time seeing the working class as a distinct group between those in poverty and the professional middle class. Too often, Dems seem to view the working class simply as underachievers, as people living failed versions of their own lives. They do this, I believe, because they do not see the working class as having its own culture and values.
In her book Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America, Barbara Jensen succinctly summarizes a key cultural difference between the working class and professional middle class as the difference between belonging and becoming. Professional middle class becoming is individualistic, future oriented, focused on achievements whereas working class belonging is communalistic, character focused, rooted in the past and present. Understanding what motivates both groups can help Dems and the working class come together to make societal changes. For folks interested, I would enthusiastically recommend Betsy Leondar-Wright’s Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle Class Activists.
Of course the working class wants to talk about economics. They will cast their vote for the party they think understands the realities of their lives. If the Democratic party comes across as a hermetically sealed space for elite connected insiders, the working class will not see themselves reflected and will look to Republicans for hope and change. This ought to be a wake up call for Dems, the irony of the working class looking to the conservatives for change because they don’t trust Dems to understand the change needed in their lives and communities. In my experience, a conversation that easily translates across class lines and even party lines is good government, ethics in leadership, an end to machine corruption. In South Jersey, it’s not hard to find the waste built into machine politics.
A Final Word: Keep Working
The unexpected election loss of George Norcross’s right hand man, Senate President Steve Sweeney, has prompted a twitterstorm of speculation about who will take his place, what the shift of power will look like behind doors. Speculating about who’s in and who’s out has a place in understanding power but all that happens far away from the lives of the average person. Insider intrigue is not organizing. Democratic organizers need to remain focused on connecting with citizens, working on the ground level. If NJ is ever going to overcome it’s long history of bossism — and I think it has a chance now, in this post-civil rights, information age — it will not happen via political musical chairs. It will require real work with citizens, reaching out in new directions. For South Jersey folks who want to do that work, my door is always open.
