For Steve Sweeney, primary election night may have been the onetime South Jersey Democratic power broker’s swan song

And in the end, Steve Sweeney, the once all-powerful union worker turned longest-serving New Jersey Senate president, a lifelong friend to political boss George E. Norcross III, a onetime cross-the-aisle ally of Gov. Chris Christie, and the politician who got knocked out of office in 2021 by a MAGA truck driver, lost Tuesday in his attempt to secure the Democratic nomination for governor of New Jersey.

In a uniquely expensive and competitive field of six Democratic candidates where U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill was the winner, it wasn’t even close. Sweeney was trailing all candidates as the race was called, according to Associated Press projections, with Gloucester and Salem Counties firmly in his corner.

Going into primary election day, Sweeney, a symbol of the fallen Democratic machine in South Jersey, an erstwhile remnant of a faded Camden County political force, faced a field of opponents from the northern part of the state. He spent the final day before the election touring South Jersey diners, but did not invite the media. His election night party was also closed to media as other candidates encouraged reporters to join them on the ground and at their parties.

On primary night, Sweeney was in a back room at the Gloucester County Democratic headquarters on South Broad Street in Woodbury, Gloucester County, as polls began to close. “He’s superstitious,” said spokesperson Kerry Lyons. “He has a ritual.”

He was joined at 8:07 p.m. by Norcross and his brother, U.S. Rep Donald Norcross (D., N.J.), who left without comment at 8:43 p.m., four minutes after the race was called, and were driven off in separate cars.

The burly ironworker who never went to college has often said his politics were motivated in part by his daughter, Lauren, who was born with Down syndrome.

Sweeney, 66, had a good run. He was powerful yet approachable, funny, even. He was fiercely partisan yet transactional. Growing up in South Jersey, he lucked into a powerful childhood friend in Norcross, and went on to wield outsize power statewide in his day. He made South Jersey matter in Trenton, or seem to.

While some progressives viewed him as “clogging” up the works for their goals during his time in office, others, like retired State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, credited him with pushing through some of the state’s most progressive laws, like paid family leave and sick time, and funding for Planned Parenthood.

The only candidate from South Jersey in the crowded 2025 primary, Sweeney campaigned on issues both to the right and the left of his opponents. He was the only candidate in the Democratic field to say he wants to end the Immigrant Trust Directive, known as the state’s so-called sanctuary policy, and also proposed a public healthcare option for the state.

He touted his clean energy efforts in the legislature but also said the state needs to embrace oil.

He argued that he already knew the ropes in New Jersey and would not have to learn on the job, while other candidates made the case that Garden State voters want something completely new.

But on Tuesday, the anti-machine vote was palpable in South Jersey, following fellow South Jersey Democrat Andy Kim’s successful lawsuit against the entrenched “county line” system on his way to a U.S. Senate seat.

In Sea Isle City, Ryan Myers, the grandson of the late Palmyra Mayor Roy “Bill” Myers, said the old hold on voters of career politicians like Sweeney and the Democratic machine had loosened.

“Norcross and Sweeney and all those guys out there, we’ve known them all and they’ve soured a bit, I think,” he said.

Sweeney was endorsed by most South Jersey county Democratic parties and 25 different union locals, from longshoremen to electrical workers to bricklayers to boilermakers to casino hospitality workers.

But his attempt to regain power may have also crystalized support for more progressive candidates like Steve Fulop and Ras Baraka — mayors of Jersey City and Newark, respectively — who both made frequent trips to South Jersey.

Fulop particularly appealed to some progressives in Cape May and Atlantic Counties, still stung by a Democratic machine that sold them on Democratic congressional candidate Jeff Van Drew in 2018, famously now a Republican. (Fulop’s continued alliance with Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small, under indictment for allegedly physically abusing his daughter, may have repelled some voters. Fulop attended a fundraiser at Small’s home, raising some local eyebrows). Still, on Tuesday, it was Sherrill who prevailed in both counties.

Sweeney tried to make the case that he was not just a washed-up politician, at least a decade older than the other candidates. He was the original! But his many accomplishments as a legislator and statewide policy enactor seemed to get lost in the conversation, even as he ran ads on 6abc and other Philly media quoting his opponents agreeing with him.

He tried to remind South Jersey voters in particular that he would have their backs, that he was the master legislator who raised minimum wage, fought for pension reform, and backed unions, and was a moderate with a progressive’s heart. Wasn’t that what everyone was looking for?

Apparently not.

On primary night, as the clock edged toward his 66th birthday, it was, at times, hard to remember what a larger-than-life figure Sweeney was in his day, especially in the heyday of the Christie-Norcross-Sweeney buddy movie years. It was a potent alliance: At one time, Christie thought he could ride this bipartisan story all the way to the White House. But when Sweeney got knocked out of office by Gloucester County truck driver Ed Durr, who spent $153 on his campaign in 2021, it was a blow from which he did not fully recover. (Durr himself mounted a brief bid in the 2025 governor’s race but dropped out, citing insufficient fundraising.)

Norcross, though, was not giving up on Sweeney, telling The Inquirer days after his loss he hoped that his friend would run for governor in 2025.

Sweeney served in the New Jersey Senate from 2002 to 2022, and held the powerful position of Senate president from 2010 to 2022, making him the longest-serving president in the state’s history.

New Jersey voters last elected a governor hailing from the southern part of the state in 1989, when Democrat James Florio successfully coalesced support from the region while support for candidates in the north was split. And political observers wondered if Sweeney could do the same with the South Jersey machine behind him.

But he went into primary night with polls showing relatively high unfavorable ratings, unable to shake his association with the machine that New Jersey had unseated when it got rid of the county line ballot design that put endorsed candidates at an advantage.

On Tuesday, the Sweeney voters were not hard to find in South Jersey: an Atlantic City union casino housekeeper who remembered his advocacy of a panic button for hotel rooms, a mother with a child who is blind who said she valued Sweeney’s commitment to those with disabilities, a Woolwich voter who said Sweeney would keep South Jersey paramount.

“He’s entrenched in South Jersey,” said voter Shelly Mack, 56, of the candidate from West Deptford. “That makes him part of the community, looking out for the community’s interests.”

In Jersey, the powerful county Democratic parties long wielded outsize power, deciding which candidate to endorse and place in a coveted ballot position. In South Jersey, Norcross, an unelected power broker from Camden County, epitomized the party machine, with Sweeney his elected counterpart. Norcross spent much of the last year defending himself against a racketeering indictment, ultimately thrown out by a judge in February.

Kim’s successful challenge of the ballot system known as “the line” took aim at the idea that the local party machine could put its finger on the primary scale.

Alyssa Maurice, director of research at the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University, said much of the energy behind the South Jersey political machine had evaporated in the wake of the region’s relative embrace of President Donald Trump.

Trump lost New Jersey, once reliably blue in presidential contests, by only 6 percentage points in the 2024 election, a 10-point gain from 2020, as Republican registration numbers in the state have climbed. South Jersey counties that went for former President Joe Biden in 2020 flipped red for Trump in 2024, including Cumberland, Atlantic, and Sweeney’s native Gloucester.

“I think that operation has lost its juice since Trump has made such gains in South Jersey,” said Maurice, who manages Stockton’s polling. “Ever since Trump, Republicans have gained such ground in South Jersey, it’s undermined the Democratic South Jersey machine. They’re not as impactful in the region.”

Van Drew is the embodiment of this trend: the candidate pitched as the moderate Democrat who could unite the region and got himself elected with support from deep red Cape May County, where Trump won in 2024 by a 20-point margin, only to become an ultra-loyalist supporter of Trump and a MAGA Republican.

For Sweeney, Maurice said, the energy did not appear to be there among Democratic voters to embrace a machine candidate, one who stressed pragmatic victories in a long legislative career.

“For someone like Steve Sweeney, associated with the political machine, that’s not in style right now,” Maurice said.

A poor showing from Sweeney, she said, would be “another big blow to the South Jersey machine and the political bosses that people have been rejecting.”

And while Tuesday seemed possibly to spell the end of Sweeney’s political career, you never known in New Jersey.

Is this the true finale? Will there be a third act? In South Jersey, there were rumors prior to the election that maybe he was in the running to be the next lieutenant governor come November. On Tuesday, that seemed maybe more wishful thinking, a last gasp for relevancy, from a region of the state in a contest mostly fought out among two North Jersey mayors and two North Jersey congressional reps.

Still, to the end, Sweeney’s people were loyal. Voter Joy Johnson, 61, of Woolwich, Gloucester County, said she felt a kinship with the South Jersey politician.

“He made people with disabilities a priority over his 30-year career,“ said Johnson, whose son is blind. ”You don’t forget that.”

In the end, with the Norcrosses gone and the race called, the historically gregarious Sweeney declined a request to talk through his spokesperson. He called Sherrill, put out a statement vowing to continue fighting for New Jersey, and left out the back of his headquarters. On Broad Street, it was lights out.

Staff writer Alfred Lubrano contributed to this article.