TRENTON, N.J. (CN) — Two years after the Blue Wave swept through New Jersey in 2018, Garden State Republicans now hope to recapture some of the seats they lost in the House as voters go to the polls Tuesday.
The Covid-19 pandemic has added wrinkles to the process, however, and could keep voters in the dark on who won until the end of the month. Earlier this year, Governor Phil Murphy announced the election originally scheduled for May 12 would be held primarily by mail-in ballot, with a handful of polling places offering provisional ballots.
Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday, but they may be received by election officials for up to a week afterward.
“The odds are very unlikely that Wednesday morning we will have results,” said John Weingart, associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics. “A candidate that seems to be very far behind on election night might hold back from conceding. They will likely want to see all the votes counted.”
Races look tighter than they did at the same point in 2018. According to an April poll by Monmouth University, 50% of voters said they would likely back their Democratic candidate versus 38% leaning to supporting their Republican candidate. The margin is closer than it was in April 2018.
“In New Jersey, we’ve never had a primary where the entire election was going to be conducted via the mail,” said Republican consultant Chris Russell of Checkmate Strategies. “Whoever picked this year to run picked a heck of a year.”
The most closely watched of the races is the 2nd District, where Democrat-turned-Republican Jeff Van Drew is sure to coast past the primaries to face off against members of his former party in November.
Van Drew, a conservative member of the Democrats, switched parties last year after rebuking his colleagues’ impeachment of the president. After joining the GOP, Van Drew declared his “undying support” for President Trump.
The switch allowed Democrats to try to usher in a candidate more in line with the party’s views. After she slammed Van Drew in an op-ed on his vote against Trump’s impeachment, Democratic stalwart Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, was initially a shoo-in for the nomination.
“New Jersey’s party system is set up in such a way to make it almost impossible for a progressive to win without support,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “Our system is stacked against challengers.”
Harrison now faces serious competition, however, from Amy Kennedy, the wife of Rhode Island’s U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy. A former public school teacher and mental health advocate, Kennedy has a harder path to the nomination, but she has made some in-roads.
Drawing national attention, Harrison has nabbed endorsements from both of the state’s U.S. senators, as well as New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney. But Kennedy has a slew of high-profile endorsements of her own, from U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to Governor Phil Murphy.
“It’s an extension of the Democratic civil war going on in the state,” said Russell, citing political in-fighting between Sweeney and Murphy. “You have the makings of an exciting race.”
While Van Drew faces former Trump administration official Bob Patterson —who has called out Van Drew for previously voting against the president more than 90% of the time — the nomination is almost certainly his.
In 2012, Patterson had to resign from working for Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett after it was revealed he believed women should stay at home and raise children, that birth control weakened women’s attraction to men, and that “semen-exposed” women have better concentration and cognitive skills. He has reportedly condemned contraception, gay marriage, abortion, day care and no-fault divorce.