GOP seizes on culture issues in hope of regaining grip of NJ Legislature on Election Day
Voters who haven’t mailed in their ballots or cast them at early voting locations will go to the polls in person Tuesday for races that could determine the partisan composition of the New Jersey Legislature.
All 120 seats in the state Senate and Assembly are up for grabs. Democrats are spending heavily to maintain the party's two-decade grip on both houses, while Republicans are hoping to build on momentum from two years ago by hammering away at a slew of hot-button cultural issues.
Here are some of the themes and issues that both parties are hoping will drive their core supporters to the polls in what is expected to be a low-turnout election.
More: Our guide to New Jersey's 2023 elections for Legislature, local offices and school boards
Suburban sprawl
The issue has largely stayed under the radar, but in some districts Republicans are trying to exploit the issue of explosive suburban growth by garishly depicting the clogged roads, vanishing open space and rising property taxes that come with it.
“Our communities are being overrun with overdevelopment,’’ reads a campaign mailer promoting Assembly Republican candidates Ross Traphagen of Clinton Township and Grace Zhang of Princeton in the 16th Legislative District, which includes parts of Mercer, Somerset, Hunterdon and Middlesex counties. The district is one of about six that are considered toss-ups.
The mailer pledges that the duo will protect farmland and fight against “greedy developer interest in Trenton."
Sprawl could be one of those sleepy, hard-to-track issues that could sting Democrats. Sprawl has also been framed as another excess of Democratic one-party rule.
“It’s time for a check and balance against one-party rule that is destroying our communities,” the Traphagen-Zhang mailer says.
Abortion
As Republicans have spent much of the race embracing grassroots anger over State Board of Education policy, which limits the ability of school officials to notify parents when a child is signaling a switch in genders, Democrats have been pushing back by warning that Republicans will roll back long-held abortion rights if they take control of the Trenton agenda.
The most searing of the attacks was a television spot featuring former Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg of Teaneck taking aim at Republican Sen. Ed Durr of the 3rd Legislative District in Gloucester, Salem and Cumberland counties in South Jersey. Durr, you might recall, was the truck driver with no political experience and a shoestring budget who dethroned Senate President Stephen Sweeney in 2021 in a shocker that drew national attention.
Democrats didn’t take Durr seriously last time, nor did they unearth some of his lurid social media posts from the past. This time, Democrats are making sure that voters are aware of some of his misogynistic rantings — “A woman does have a choice: keep her legs closed!” he wrote on Facebook.
In her television spot, Weinberg recalls having been sexually assaulted at age 13, and then notes, “my legs were closed, but I had no choice.”
The ad concludes with: “My generation fought for Roe v. Wade, and now men like Ed Durr, Vince Polistina [Republican Senator from the 2nd District, including Atlantic City] and Chris Del Borrello [Senate candidate for the 4th District in Gloucester and Camden counties] want to turn back the clock? We won’t let them.”
Democrats are hoping to corral the anger seen among suburban women and center-left Democrats generally since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established a constitutional right to an abortion more than 50 years ago. The party is hoping it will generate enough angry base voters amid a depressed electorate.
Trump and Biden
Hovering over the race are the unpopular specter of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. Trump is broadly unpopular in New Jersey (but not in his core base counties in South Jersey and in the northwest). He twice failed to carry the state.
Biden did win New Jersey in 2020, but his popularity has eroded, especially among independent voters, according to a Monmouth University poll in August. That survey found that 41% approve of the president compared with 52% who disapprove. That represented an 8-point drop in his approval rating from the year before.
Inflation, high interest rates and the struggles of overseeing U.S. support of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict have clearly harmed Biden's standing. But hovering over it all is Biden’s age. He’ll soon be 82, and the perception is hardening that he’ll lack the stamina and acuity for a second term.
John Burzichelli, the former assemblyman who is seeking to dislodge Durr in the 3rd District, says Biden’s declining approval remains a challenge. He noted that Durr has sent out a mailer attacking Burzichelli that includes a photo of Biden.
“I’m not upset about it, because my picture next to Biden, I feel youthful,’’ Burzichelli quipped.
In the 16th District, Democratic Sen. Andrew Zwicker, D-South Brunswick, Assemblyman Roy Frieman, D-Hillsborough, and candidate Mitchelle Drulis, D-Raritan Township, have made Trump a frequent target. Their GOP opponents “will bring Trump-style politics to New Jersey,’’ reads one of their attacks.
“Are you sick of extreme politicians and their toxic rantings?’’ said the narrator of one ad, produced by Prosperity Rising NJ, an independent expenditure group aligned with Democratic Senate President Nicholas Scutari. The ad targeted Republican candidates in the 11th Legislative District in Monmouth County, one of the most closely watched battlegrounds on Tuesday.
Wind power
Danish energy giant Ørsted's decision to pull the plug on two massive wind farms planned off the South Jersey coast was a major setback for Gov. Phil Murphy’s ambitious clean energy plans.
But Republicans have spent much of the past year hammering away at the issue, saying the early work on the project was killing whales and the future “industrialization” of the ocean would destroy marine life and the state’s tourism economy.
The news may have come too late to make a difference in the race, but the South Jersey Republicans are certainly trying, hitting the Philadelphia media market last weekend with a hard-hitting (and misleading) ad targeting Democratic Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, who is seeking to succeed retiring Sen. Fred Madden in the 4th District.
“Remember that time Paul Moriarty and his pals took one billion of your money to bail out a foreign wind company?” the narrator sneers. “Ørsted just bolted from New Jersey after building nothing. A billion dollars and we get nothing.”
The truth is, Ørsted did not receive any taxpayer money for the project — the $1 billion was in tax incentives that could be awarded to the company in the future if it builds, operates and expanded in New Jersey. Yet the hardball distortion illustrates the GOP's hope of delivering an impact in the closing hours of the race.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ election: Abortion, wind power, sprawl dominate campaigns
