We're nearing the end of a hectic month of county party nominating conventions with the candidates for U.S. Senate primary, securing endorsements up and down the state.

Last night was another landslide victory for GOP contender Curtis Bashaw, easily winning the Middlesex County Republican Convention with 67% of the vote, making Bashaw the front runner in the GOP race.

First Lady Tammy Murphy also locked in a win with Middlesex County Democrats who voted by a show of hands to give her the organizational line over rival Congressman Andy Kim.

Both the process of how county committees vote and what's known as the party line on ballots have garnered national attention this year because of the hotly contested race to replace embattled senior Senator Bob Menendez.

Well, this week, a coalition of 40 female elected officials and former candidates issued a letter calling to abolish the line, a system many argue gives party backed candidates an advantage.

Among them, two former lawmakers, including former assemblywoman Sadaf Jaffer, who joins me now.

Well, thank you so much for joining me on the show.

Let me ask you, aside from the obvious that the letter is calling for the line to be abolished, what's specifically are you saying about the challenges it creates for candidates and why round up this pretty long list of past and current elected officials?

Well, you know, I think for myself and a lot of women who go into politics, we do it because we want to represent the needs of our diverse communities, but certainly of women in our state.

And in my time, I've seen the ways that this system really prevents and creates a glass ceiling for women to move ahead.

There might be some representation.

So we're at around a third of the legislature.

But when it comes to state and local government, it's even lower.

And in terms of getting true leadership roles, those somehow seem to keep eluding women.

And so, you know, as I was reflecting on my experience and starting to talk about it a bit more, and with so much attention being drawn to the line and I think maybe even some hope that we might be able to get rid of the system and have a fairer ballot.

You know, I think in any political system, if you are with a political party, you would face some some pressures or some opinions from others in your party or others in this political universe.

But those people don't usually also control the ballot.

Are there examples that that that come to mind where you had a bill, you were ready to vote a certain way on, but the pressure of the party influenced that?

Yeah.

So I think, you know, two of the big pieces of legislation that I was opposed to last year were the Election Transparency Act, which doubled the contribution limits for campaigns.

And, you know, I spoke about it.

But as much as some of my colleagues might have thought that, yeah, we don't need more money in politics, this was something that was a priority for a lot of people.

And so it did go through.

Similarly, I had a lot of critiques of the State NJ program that it gave the biggest benefit to wealthy older property owners.

Let me get your take very quickly on the Essex County Democratic chairman, Leroy Jones, who wrote an op ed this week calling for a uniform ballot.

What are your stand on that and would that solve some of the problems that we just talked about?

I think that there's a lot of work that the party could and should have done a long time ago.

You know, I, I only knew my context, which is that we do have a convention, whatever the critiques of the convention might be, to figure out our endorse candidates in my county.

But other counties don't even have a convention or the votes in the convention are only advisory, and the chair makes the unilateral decision on who to endorse.

So that is certainly a problem, a problem within the party.

I think that if we are going to have a fair primary, we should start this year instead of pushing it to the legislature, which I'm very skeptical we would be able to make this change because everyone who puts them on the line doesn't want to see force change because it takes away from their power.

Former Assemblywoman Sadaf Jaffer, thanks so much.

Appreciate your time.

Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.