Some Assembly primaries won’t see a winner until next week

A handful of New Jersey’s Assembly primaries remained too close to call early Friday afternoon, and counts for some races were poised to stretch until provisional ballots are tallied next week.

Most of the state’s races were decided on or shortly after Election Night due to a 2022 law that allowed election officials to prepare mail ballots for counting ahead of Election Day. But candidates in a handful of contests were separated by fewer than 200 votes, leaving final tallies up to provisional ballots that won’t be counted until next week.

“The legislature and the Governor saw a problem, and they saw a need to fix it, and apparently they have fixed it because now we seem to be a fast-counting state, or at least we were this time,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics.

In the 31st District, where voters gave Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker the Democratic nomination, Assemblyman William Sampson’s (D-Hudson) lead over Assemblywoman Barbara McCann Stamato (D-Hudson) narrowed somewhat after county election officials updated vote tallies Thursday.

Sampson leads his onetime running mate, who sought reelection under gubernatorial hopeful and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop’s slogan, by 194 votes, down from 308 on Wednesday.

Hudson officials on Thursday reported there were 101 vote-by-mail ballots and 698 provisional ballots yet uncounted. Those could be enough to bring McCann Stamato back to second place in the district’s primary. They’re unlikely to save her running mate, Jacqueline Weimmer, who lags Sampson by 403 votes.

Election officials will continue receiving late-arriving mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day until 8 p.m. Monday, though those ballots are typically small in number. Provisional ballots can only be counted after the end of the mail-voting grace period. In some counties, officials aren’t counting more ballots until next week.

Not all outstanding ballots will have been cast in Democratic primaries, and some mail and some provisional ballots won’t be counted because the voters who cast them were ineligible to vote, among other deficiencies. Voters whose mail ballots are rejected have until June 18 to cure them.

The contest for a second seat in the 20th District remained tight Friday morning. There, independent Democrat Ed Rodriguez leads party-backed Union County Commissioner Sergio Granados by 105 votes with Assemblywoman Annette Quijano (D-Union) in a distant first place.

There were 543 mail ballots and 707 provisional ballots left uncounted in the Union County-based district late Thursday. The race remains too close to call and will likely be decided by provisional ballots. The uncounted ballots won’t be enough to bring Walter Wimbush, Rodriguez’s running mate, into contention for the seat.

Rodriguez is among the independent Democrats who performed well in races that featured opponents on competing slates backed by party organizations and Fulop.

“When you get a one-on-one, you can say, ‘Well, the other guy stinks,’” Rasmussen said. “But when you’ve got six candidates — as we did in the gubernatorial field and as we did in some of these Assembly races — it’s not enough to say the other guy stinks. You’ve got to say, ‘No, this is why I’m the best and I deserve your first or your second vote.’”

Outstanding ballots in the 35th District appear to favor Assemblyman Al Abdelaziz (D-Passaic), who leads his party-backed running mate, Passaic County Commissioner Orlando Cruz, by 261 votes for second place.

Nearly all votes are counted in the Bergen County portion of the district, where only 18 mail ballots and 44 provisional ballots remain untallied. Passaic has more outstanding votes: 1,195 between both categories, and Abdelaziz ran ahead of Cruz in the county.

Newark Corporation Counsel Kenyatta Stewart, who ran on an independent ticket, leads the assemblyman by 1,301 votes — more than the number of ballots currently outstanding — and will go on to face Republicans Nelvin Mercado-Duran and Rawell Perez-Muñoz in November. The district has not had a Republican member in three decades.

A second-place race between Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla and Assemblywoman Jessica Ramirez (D-Hudson) in the 32nd District remained tight. Bhalla leads the incumbent, who ran on Fulop’s slate, by 194 votes with 717 mostly provisional ballots left uncounted as of Thursday afternoon.

Former New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency chief of staff Katie Brennan leads Ramirez by 497 votes and is virtually certain to be one of the district’s Democratic nominees. Brennan, whose accusations of sexual assault against a 2017 Murphy campaign staffer roiled Trenton, ran with Bhalla on an independent ticket.

“This was a district where voters were paying attention and had really good choices, and I think the result of picking Katie Brennan at the top of the field is really a remarkable outcome for a housing advocate and a planner and somebody who we know about, given her experience with the Murphy campaign in the early days of the Murphy administration,” Rasmussen said.

The three remaining candidates, Jersey City Councilman Yousef Saleh, Crystal Fonseca, and Jennie Pu, are not in contention for either seat.

Some other contests remain close.

In the Democratic primary in the 2nd District, Fulop-aligned Bruce Weeks trails Joanne Famularo, who has party backing, by just 82 votes with 1,026 ballots uncounted. The district is held by Republican Assembly members Don Guardian and Claire Swift, who were unopposed in the GOP primary.