As he seeks its destruction, Andy Kim must still navigate NJ's county line ballot | Stile

At last Monday’s marathon court hearing over the fate of the county line ballot format, attorneys defending the system sought to undermine the credibility of the person who is trying to dismantle it: Rep. Andy Kim, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

As Kim took the stand in the Clarkson S. Fisher United States Courthouse in Trenton, attorneys tried to paint him as a hypocrite who is seeking to thrive within a campaign system while accusing it of being unfair, constitutional and corrupt.

Kim, who brought the lawsuit in February, is seeking to sweep away a bedrock of New Jersey elections — one in place for nearly 80 years. On the stand, he comfortably parried the questioning with bland, unruffled responses. But it was this rejoinder that spoke volumes about his upstart campaign.

“Well, look," Kim said to Jason Spiro, an attorney representing the Monmouth County clerk’s office, “one can seek reforms to systems while still having to work within it.”

It’s not uncommon to see people seeking office adopt the mantle of the buck-the-establishment candidate. But Kim’s insurgency has a different twist — no one else has gone to these lengths of toggling between playing within the rules and changing them at the same time.

A Rubicon no New Jersey pol has crossed

Kim's chief rival for the party’s nomination was, until Sunday afternoon, first lady Tammy Murphy, who suspended her campaign.

A ruling on his lawsuit by U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi in Trenton could spell the imminent demise of the county line, which critics have called an unconstitutional relic of Tammany Hall-style politics that allows party bosses to hold enormous sway of who gets bracketed on primary ballots and who gets sent packing to “ballot Siberia,” where candidates almost never win.

It is a format that is unique to New Jersey. Kim and his allies want to replace it with a block ballot, widely used in the rest of the country, that lists candidates for the same office together. Quraishi could issue a ruling on the case as early as this week.

Kim and Murphy had been battling for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat held by federally indicted Sen. Bob Menendez, who announced Thursday that he would not run as a Democrat. Menendez may launch a bid as an independent.

But even if Quraishi rules against Kim and allows the old system to remain, Kim’s effort has pushed the establishment over a political Rubicon that few thought possible a few years ago. A growing chorus of legislators are now saying they want to abolish it and replace it with a uniform system. State Attorney General Matthew Platkin took the unusual step of declaring the line legally indefensible and unconstitutional.

And last week, the four top legislative leaders said they are open to ditching the county line and replacing it with something else. (Although I wouldn’t go betting the family farm on it; almost all New Jersey lawmakers owe their careers to the corroded county line system.)

“You know, there are a lot of people that have deep concerns about this. Many of them have never spoken out about this before," Kim said to a group of reporters outside the courthouse last week. “But they feel like this lawsuit is now opening space for people to be more critical.”

And Kim also succeeded in turning the primary battle into a referendum on the future of the line and the old-guard, boss-dominated system that depends on it. He succeeded in framing the race as a battle between himself — a change agent willing to blow up the old system — and Murphy, a defender of the status quo.

Yet one of the ironies of the race is that Kim is aggressively campaigning within the system. He stunned the political establishment in early February when he handily won the Democratic Party convention in Monmouth, where Murphy and Gov. Phil Murphy have lived for 25 years.

It meant that Kim now would be placed on the Monmouth County ballot line on June 4 with other county-endorsed candidates. Kim then went on to win similar conventions in Burlington, Mercer, Hunterdon, Atlantic and Morris counties, turning his long-shot candidacy into a competitive threat — all the while playing within the old rules of the county line system.

To the Murphy campaign's allies, Kim’s effort has been an exercise in high-profile hypocrisy, railing against the old rules when it suits him and celebrating them when he wins.

But to other observers, Kim is a much more polished, savvy politician, belying his image as a bespectacled Rhodes scholar and son of Korean immigrants running a quixotic campaign with a reformer message.

“It’s a very nuanced, very canny argument that he seems to be making," said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. "He seems to be getting away with it — having his cake and eating it, too.”

But Kim's stance is similar to that of candidates of the past who have called for campaign finance reform yet raised enormous sums of money to stay competitive. He was not about to unilaterally disarm and give his opponent a free pass.

Charlie Stile: Now, the NJ Legislature may tackle the line? That's a hollow pledge

'It is very confusing to voters'

Despite his successful pursuit of lines — in counties where county committee members cast them in secret — Kim’s campaign put the focus on the futility of the old line system.

The focus began in November, when Murphy jumped into the race and quickly corralled the endorsements of leaders in the state’s most populous Democratic counties.

She won them by fiat, without competition. Leaders in those counties simply endorsed her without debate. Murphy, a prodigious Democratic Party fundraiser and advocate on climate change and maternal health, had never run for elected office and, until 10 years ago, was a registered Republican.

Still, she was given the prize ballot position in counties representing 60% of the vote. To Kim and some of the New Jersey Democrats supporting him, it demonstrated the anti-democratic unfairness of the system. That swift embrace of institutional support stoked anger among grassroots progressives who saw her candidacy as an exercise in rank nepotism, with her powerful husband lining up the support, and eager-to-please county leaders — several of whom are lobbyists with business before state government — gladly handing her the invaluable ballot position.

“It is very confusing to voters," Kim testified.

Yet he has continued to play ball under the old rules. Kim was considering forming “off-the-line” slates of candidates, which would allow him to appear as more of a viable candidate in major Democratic counties where Murphy won the line. That could change, of course, if Quraishi strikes down the system and calls for a redesign of ballots.

But until then, it's business as usual.

"You know, I just want to run for Senate," Kim said. “But all of a sudden, the system requires me … to associate with all these other candidates, people that in many cases, if if not all of them, I've never even met before this year.”

Charlie Stile is a veteran New Jersey political columnist. For unlimited access to his unique insights into New Jersey’s political power structure and his powerful watchdog work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: stile@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ ballot line: Andy Kim wants to end it, but must navigate it