New Jersey Democrats have reached a tentative agreement that would end a yearlong fight over the state party chairmanship, POLITICO has learned.
According to two sources with knowledge of the discussions, the compromise includes having incumbent Democratic State Committee Chairman John Currie stay on for a full term that will end after the 2021 Democratic primary. Challenger LeRoy Jones, the Essex County Democratic chairman, would be Currie’s heir apparent, assuming state committee members agree, the sources said.
Jones has the backing of a coalition of Democrats led by party leaders from Essex and Middlesex counties, as well as from South Jersey. Currie has the support of Gov. Phil Murphy and his public sector union and progressive allies.
Jones’ camp has claimed he has enough votes among the 100-plus Democratic state committee members to oust Currie, but Murphy and Currie have worked over the last few weeks to flip individual members.
Having his choice for state chair rejected would be a huge blow to Murphy, both practically and symbolically. Typically, the governor’s choice for party chair is merely ratified by the state committee, but the intraparty fights that have riven the Murphy administration’s first term threatened to upend that tradition. The defeat would also come just after Murphy assumed a national party leadership role as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.
The biggest practical problem for Murphy would have been the loss of control over the state legislative redistricting process in 2021. Under New Jersey’s Constitution, the state’s Democratic and Republican chairs each name five members to the commission that redraws state legislative boundaries. The state‘s chief justice selects a tie-breaking member.
The redistricting picks have been the driving force behind the chairmanship fight. Murphy’s political rivals — especially those in the state Legislature — did not like the idea of a close ally of the governor selecting the commissioners who will decide what their district boundaries will look like.
Under the proposed compromise, the sources said, the Currie and Jones camps would split the picks, with the governor making two directly and one in consultation with Essex County leaders. The state’s two Democratic legislative leaders would each get one selection.
According to the sources, Peg Schaffer would continue to serve as vice chair when Jones assumes the chairmanship. Jones is running with former Lakewood Mayor Marta Harrison.
If the deal is finalized, it will be a breakthrough in New Jersey’s fractious Democratic politics. Though the party controls all three branches of state government, it has been locked in a two-year battle between two factions: Murphy, progressive activists and public sector unions on one side, and Senate President Steve Sweeney, South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross and the Building Trades unions on the other.
The sources said the compromise was struck between the Murphy-Currie camp and Democratic leaders in Essex and Middlesex counties. South Jersey Democrats were not at the table, they said. While South Jersey Democrats provided the biggest single voting bloc for Jones, their alliance with Essex and Middlesex counties were crucial to getting a majority.
In 2018, prior to Jones’ unofficial candidacy, legislative Democrats who later aligned with him proposed a constitutional amendment that would overhaul the redistricting process. The amendment would have diluted the power of the state chairman by expanding the number of commissioners and splitting the picks evenly between each party’s state chair and the legislative leaders in the Senate and Assembly.
Shortly after that effort collapsed amid intense opposition from Murphy, progressives, academics and Republicans, Jones’ allies launched an effort to “draft” him to run for chairman.
