The pitch could have been made for tourists to vacation in New Jersey, or for businesses to settle here. And Gov. Phil Murphy was a chief salesman.
But this was a presentation to a purely political audience — the Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws committee — as Murphy and state Democratic Chair LeRoy Jones Jr. on Thursday made their case to add New Jersey to 2024′s early presidential primary states.
New Jersey, they said, has urban areas, suburban areas and rural areas, farms and mountains. It has one of the most diverse populations of any state in the country. Donors here are donors eager to open their checkbooks, and there are two major media markets that can carry a political party’s message beyond the state’s borders.
“If you can run in New Jersey, you can run anywhere,” Murphy said at the end of a videotape that began the state’s presentation.
Right now, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina occupy the first four positions on the Democrats’ presidential political calendar, and party leaders are deciding whether to add early states replace some of the existing ones, or go for the status quo.
New Jersey is one of 16 states aiming for an early spot, including the four states that now go first.
Murphy and Jones took turns highlighting how New Jersey checks all the boxes, from the Jersey Shore to rural areas to big cities to the suburban women whose turn to the Democrats in 2018 helped the party capture four Republican-held House seats.
There are even Reagan Democrats and non-Trump Republicans in New Jersey for Democratic presidential candidates to develop the arguments needed to win over, they said.
“Uniqueness is our competitive advantage,” Jones said. “Our state mirrors the country as a whole.”
Since the governor appoints most statewide officials, New Jersey will have a Democratic attorney general and a Democratic secretary of state in place for 2024 to make sure the elections run smoothly and bogus claims of voter fraud are swatted away, they said.
And New Jersey Democrats, including donors that help fund the party and the various presidential candidates, really want this, said Murphy, a former Democratic National Committee finance chair. New Jerseyans contributed more than $62 million to 2020 presidential candidates, according to the research group OpenSecrets.
“We’ve got pride. We’ve got attitude,” Murphy said. “We will not let you down.”
Even some of the problems highlighted by committee members could be seen as strengths, officials said. For example, Murphy and Jones both highlighted road construction and improvements to NJ Transit that could help alleviate the state’s noted congestion. Expanded vote by mail and in-person early voting make it easier to cast ballots without having to sit in traffic on Election Day, they said.
And while New Jersey sits between two expensive media markets, television ads would carry the party’s message to neighboring states as well, including the battleground of Pennsylvania. In addition, there is lower-cost cable and digital advertising plus hyperlocal media for the state’s various ethnic enclaves.
The Garden State went early in 2008, scheduling its primary for Super Tuesday, then Feb. 5. New Jersey Democrats picked Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama, the eventual nominee. Four years later, the presidential primary returned to June.
The rules and bylaws committee is scheduled to review the requests and make a recommendation in August and the full DNC is to vote at its September meeting.
Should the DNC pick New Jersey, Murphy said at the end of the presentation, “I believe you will look back and say, ‘That’s the best decision this committee has ever made.’”
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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.
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