Norcross machine Democrats file suit against Cherry Hill progressives over their election loss

The George Norcross-backed Camden County Democratic Committee Inc. (CCDC), which lost the election for the county party committee in Cherry Hill to a slate of progressive Democrats, filed suit Monday afternoon to dispute the outcome.

The immediate result is that the progressives will be temporarily precluded from conducting business until a hearing on July 11 in Camden County Superior Court.

James Beach, the chairman of the CCDC who also represents Camden County in the New Jersey Senate, joined the suit against the winners of the election, David Stahl, Susan Druckenbrod, and Rena Margulis.

The election had been certified last Thursday.

In an upset, the South Jersey Progressive Democrats defeated the CCDC with 62% of the vote in the primary election on June 10.

» READ MORE: How Cherry Hill progressives upset the Norcross machine

The progressive slate for the 74-person committee was made up of only three people. Progressives say they will be able to make appointments to the 71 other seats.

But the CCDC has argued those vacant seats should go to their slate.

In fact, in the lawsuit, the CCDC is asking the court to direct the three progressive election winners to appoint the 71 committee appointments from the CCDC slate of 74 names that appeared on the ballot.

Not everyone agrees that makes sense.

“I would say that’s ridiculous,” said Jeffrey Land, chairman of the Cherry Hill Republican Committee.

“Remember, the voters said no to those 74. They would be the last people you’d want to appoint because voters spoke and they clearly voted against them.”

The South Jersey Progressive Democrats — a grassroots political organization that runs candidates for office — as well as experts in New Jersey elections have vigorously criticized the CCDC’s stance.

“The voters overwhelmingly chose the progressives,” said Julia Sass Rubin, director of the public policy program at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

“That means the … CDCC-endorsed candidates lost. That’s how democratic elections work. There is no consolation prize.”

Nevertheless, the argument has support from some prominent Democrats in the community, including Assemblywoman Melinda Kane (D., Cherry Hill) who said in a statement, “In sum and substance, they [the progressive] won three seats out of 74 seats.”

Last week, a spokesperson for Beach was sent several questions, but did not respond.

What’s at stake is influence over the direction the county committee will take for the next two years. Until this election, the progressives have tried and failed to have a say on the committee.

Voters in Camden County municipalities elect representatives of the Democratic Party to a countywide party committee of about 522 people.

The number sent from each municipality is proportional to its population. Because Cherry Hill is the largest municipality in the county with more than 78,000 residents, it gets to send the largest contingent — 74 people ― to the party’s countywide committee.

Members of the countywide committee get to make political endorsements on all levels, from local office to president, and to fill vacancies in political jobs.

The primary was the first election after the elimination of the so-called county line.

Until last year, New Jersey ballots would afford preferential treatment to candidates who were endorsed by the county party. The party would be sure to list the names of the preferred candidates in one line, from president down to town council. Meanwhile, the unsupported challengers’ names would be listed “in ballot Siberia,” away from the line, according to Kate Delany, head of the South Jersey progressives.

Voters would respond by simply voting for all candidates down the line. Because the format gave endorsed candidates such an advantage, Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.) sued ahead of last year’s Senate primary and won in court. The New Jersey Legislature subsequently passed a bill eliminating the county line.

But since then, another ballot problem popped up.

In the county committee race in Cherry Hill, South Jersey Progressive Democrats sued Camden County Clerk Pamela Lampitt in April, alleging she was violating a new primary ballot law by not placing ovals next to each of the candidates’ names.

Lampitt’s office said it wasn’t technically possible to do that, because the CCDC was listing 74 names to vote for in one section. The progressives ran three names. That created a ballot that showed the three progressives’ names next to a single oval, and 74 county Democrat names beside their own shared oval.

“Based on that,” Lampitt said last week, “it was imperative for us to provide a vote for one being equal to a vote for all because it was not possible to list all 74 individual [CCDC] names on the ballot itself.”

She added that the decision to do this “was upheld in superior court and endorsed by the judge.”

 The progressives won the primary with around 5,000 votes to the CDCC’s more than 3,000 votes.

But the math did not add up to progressive control of the committee, Beach argued, saying in a statement last week that “over 3,000 Cherry Hill voters voted for 74 qualified candidates that did the hard work of getting their names on the ballot. Three random candidates who could not put together a full slate of qualified candidates cannot disenfranchise over 3,000 voters. In short, we won 71 seats. The South Jersey Progressives won three seats.”

That’s a flawed interpretation, said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.

“On the ballot, voters were asked to ‘Vote for one’ — either the South Jersey Progressive Democrats or the Camden County Democratic Committee, Inc.,” Rasmussen said. “It was clear as day. And the voters voted for the three people, not the 74. They weren’t confused.

“But now the CCDC doesn’t like it because it didn’t work out for them. It’s going to be a really tall order for the organization to win in court.”

There’s no New Jersey statute that requires candidates to put all 74 names of the people who will serve on the county committee on a ballot, an attorney for the progressives said. The three progressive winners get to pick the 71 other people who will serve, added the attorney, Yael Bromberg, a professor of election law American University Washington College of Law.

“That’s right,” said Land, the Republican, whose political group, the Camden County Republican Party, defeated a rival Republican organization called Let’s Build Back Better in last year’s primary to control the county committee.

“In our case, we won with 12 people on the ballot, vs. our opponents with a slate of 37,” he added. “We’re still selecting people to get to our allowed total of 46 for the committee. You don’t have to do it all at once.”

Bromberg said that if the CCDC had strong objections about three progressives squaring off against 74 CCDC members on the ballot, “they could have objected when candidate petitions were first being validated months ago.

“But that didn’t happen. This isn’t an authoritarian state where the rules are changed after the election.”