The game of politics can be a dirty sport.

But there's growing pushback against a process that plays out here in New Jersey called The Party Line.

It's the closed door backroom endorsement of a candidate by county leaders in the state that ends up giving that candidate priority placement on election ballots.

Senior political correspondent David Cruz takes a look at a new report that shows just how undemocratic those county lines can be, like the traffic jug handle and not being able to pump your own gas.

The party line is a uniquely Jersey thing.

It's awarded to primary candidates favored by the ruling political organization and gives them favorite ballot position and usually comes with that organization's money and human resources.

No other state does it like Jersey because no other state does it.

It's not just that you have good ballot position, which you do on the county line.

It's also that everyone else has pretty much bad ballot position, and there may be multiple blank spaces away from you, and they're not running with a whole slate of candidates.

So all of these things contribute to the power of the county line, and there is no other state who does those things.

Rutgers Professor Julia Sass Rubin is something of an authority on this.

She's got a new study due out soon for the Seton Hall Law Review that looked at the power of the line in congressional and U.S. Senate races in Jersey over the past two decades.

So there were 45 instances where either a U.S. House or a U.S. Senate primary candidate split the endorsements.

And in every one of those 45, the person on the county line won and decisively.

The average difference between being on the county line and having your opponent on the county line was 35 excuse me, 38 percentage points.

Progressives are challenging the line in court, claiming that the sometimes Byzantine Jersey ballot represents blatant voter suppression and keeps many good candidates from even running because they know the deal.

But the issue has gotten hot again because of this.

I'm running for the United States Senate.

Within days of her announcement, Tammy Murphy, married to Governor Phil Murphy, head of the state's Democratic Party, got the endorsement of the five most powerful counties in the state.

Bergen, Essex, Middlesex, Hudson and Camden, which collectively accounted for more than 50% of primary votes in the last election, putting her main opponent, Congressman Andy Kim, at a big disadvantage.

Henal Patel coauthored this op ed saying this is no way to elect a U.S. senator.

These are the facts here.

The first lady has announced she wants to be the US, US senator and the governor who happens to be the head of the party.

Between that power they should have now locked up the support of the five biggest counties and that means they're going to get she's going to get the line That's that's absurd in terms of what a real democracy should look like.

It simply is.

And everyone should be willing to say that and everyone should acknowledge that we deserve better.

But Micah Rassmussen of the Rebovich Institute, who teaches politics and government at Rider University, says the Murphy Kim race, featuring two well-funded candidates will be a big test for the power of the line.

That said, he thinks we shouldn't be so quick to dump the line, which in the end, he says, represents the will of the party's elected leaders.

Ultimately, these are these are elected officials of the party.

And it's up to them what they go along with and what they don't go along with.

That is entirely their choice.

If they didn't want to go along with the recommendations of the county chair or the endorsement of the county chair, then they don't have to do that.

So that to Hector Oseguera, who ran unsuccessfully in the congressional primary in Hudson County in 2020, he notes that party chairs can override committee votes, essentially leaving it to five guys in big counties to pick winners and losers.

What it really does is it makes a candidate running for one office have to recruit candidates for every other office that you're going to appear on that ballot or else you're going to be put in column G where nobody is going to see you.

And, you know, this is not theory.

And you can see that for the way that the elected officials themselves tightly guard the line.

Having the cash and the bodies is always going to give the organization pick a leg up.

But everyone we talk to today said a good first step towards leveling the playing field would be to simplify the ballot so that everyone running for a U.S. Senate is listed together and forcing them maybe to articulate a rationale for their candidacy.

Beyond the bosses say it's okay.

I'm David Cruz.

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