as the race heats up most political analysts are expecting highly competitive primaries for both parties with a lot at stake New Jersey has one of the most powerful governorships in the country wielding line item veto power over the budget and future laws among other things but the candidates in both parties face a challenging political climate not to mention the first primary fully without the so-called Party line ballot so what's the path to a victory Micah Rasmussen director of The rebovich Institute for New Jersey politics joins us to discuss Micah good to see you it feels like you were just here for election night so why is it that we see so many candidates jumping into to this governor's race well I think the first thing is that the seat has not been open in eight years so you mentioned that it's the most powerful governorship in the country and um it has been a long time since it's been up for grabs and so um all of our top figures on the Republican side and the Democratic side are finding this an irresistible race to jump at the members of Congress who are running see an open opportunity they don't have to give up their seats to run for it because we have these odd year elections so there's just a lot of reasons why everybody has jumped into this race we saw a little bit little preview of this with um Congressman Payne's uh successor about 10 candidates jumped into this lineless primary and this may now be what we see going forward is that more people are willing to jump in and take things on if they don't see the party is stacked against so then what's at risk in terms of getting lost in the shuffle of all of the names I mean these are all pretty major candidates when it comes to those who are in political circles but there was a Rutgers Eagleton poll recently that found most New Jersey voters don't have any opinion uh of these folks nor do they have name recognition yeah so in order to get name recognition between now and the primary which is about 200 days away not a long time all of us are still focused on the presidential race that just ended but we've got a big one coming up very quickly and um the the thing that they're going to have to do is they're going to have to spend money to build name recognition they're going to have to put ads on TV on the radio and in the mailbox and so that that is something that I'm confident that with these A-list candidates that we have um they will all be in a position to do that I don't think fundraising is going to be an issue for many of them I think that um all of them have the basis for taking what they're known in an area they're known in a in a congressional district or in their city and building that Statewide but it takes time it takes money so which candidates then would you say as far as uh maybe they won't have a county line on the ballot but definitely the apparatus and the money behind them are there candidates who are already emerging as top contenders yeah so that's a really good question and and the reason why it's so good is because in an Ideal World we might have between 6 800,000 maybe a million voters at the absolute most who participate in the Democratic primary and less than that on the Republican primary side so that means that with so many candidates in the field you could win this race with 200,000 votes maybe even a little bit less on the Republican side so the path is very different for how they get to that 200,000 votes Fulop says he can do it as an outsider he doesn't need these County organizations and we are thinking in the old way when we're thinking in terms of Who's got what counties uh Baraka is going to try and get it uh through uh voters of color around the state he's not going to be limited by County organizations either um but uh clearly Mikie Sherrill has a lead when comes to those four big counties that she has support in Passaic and Essex and Middlesex and Morris and that is about 175,000 of the votes that voted last time in the primary were in those four counties for Democrats just a little bit behind her is Steve Sweeney who thinks he's got the south back locked up with about 125,000 of the votes from the last time and Gottheimer who's got Bergen County about 50,000 votes and he thinks he's making a real strong play in Hudson so that puts him in the pack as well although he's not going to get a clear shot out of Hudson because Fulop is going to be there too but I wonder Micah just based off of you know the national political trends that we saw in this last election could that upend any of this thinking any of this conventional wisdom you know if Mikie's got the Middlesex and even just Middlesex and Essex right typically we would say that gives her an edge but could we be in for a surprise oh absolutely I mean the biggest question I think is how many of those Trump voters stay and participate this year typically they only participate in presidential level elections but um Ciattarelli and and Bramnick and Spadea are going to be making a play for keeping them out keeping them participating this time how many of those people will participate again and if they do Republicans certainly feel like they have a case to be made for a competitive fall season very quickly affordability do you expect that to be the top issue that emerges it seems to be the lesson that everybody got out of the presidential election we're going to have a New Jersey play on it New Jersey Transit we're going to see um you know all those issues that relate specifically to affordability in New Jersey property taxes Micah we'll be talking a lot more over the next seven months thanks so much for coming in thank you [Music]