NJ Governor’s Special Election Trick Is ‘Blatant Political Corruption’

As legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi was fond of saying, winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. Lombardi didn’t invent that declaration of excellence, nor did he believe that everything included rigging the rules to one team’s advantage. 

The Democratic Party on the other hand has taken the mantra to mean doing everything — and anything — to win. Victory at all costs includes rigging primary timelines to benefit the preferred candidates of party bosses, Republicans allege. 

Special Leftists

While most pols have turned the page from this month’s blue state liberal wins to next year’s pivotal midterms, there’s still some electoral business to finish before the close of 2025. 

Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District is in the homestretch of a special election slated for Tuesday. The race pits Republican and military vet Matt Van Epps against state Rep. Aftyn Behn, a Nashville Democrat, to fill the seat vacated by former Rep. Mark Green. 

Van Epps is running with the endorsement of President Donald Trump, who won the sprawling congressional district by more than 22 percentage points last year. Behn, known as the “AOC of Tennessee” in no small part because of her stated belief that men can have babies, has the backing of a long list of big-name leftists.

And then there’s New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District special election to fill the seat vacated by Democrat Rep. Mikie Sherrill by virtue of her victory earlier this month in the Garden State’s gubernatorial race. Following Sherrill’s resignation from the congressional seat she’s held for nearly seven years, outgoing New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy set a rather hasty special election timeline. 

‘Blatant Political Corruption’

Last week, the devout leftist issued a writ of election, scheduling the contest for April 16. The primary is slated for Feb. 5. Nomination petitions are due by Dec. 1 — giving candidates just 10 days notice, much of it over the Thanksgiving weekend, to grab their papers and get their signatures. 

Murphy’s tight filing timeline carries the stink of political manipulation, aimed at blocking every Republican and freezing out non-establishment Democrats, GOP officials tell The Federalist. It’s about greasing the skids for Dem machine favorites like former 7th Congressional District Rep. Tom Malinowski and staunch Murphy ally Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way, but more so, Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill, who has Murphy’s blessing and an endorsement from club Obama, to battle it out in the primary. 

“Governor Murphy’s rushed special-election timeline is blatant political corruption designed to protect the Democrat establishment and disenfranchise voters,” Maureen O’Toole, Eastern Regional Press Secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in an email to The Federalist. “By setting a ballot qualifying deadline just days after Thanksgiving, he’s working overtime to ensure only machine-approved Democrats can qualify, denying New Jersey families any real choice at the ballot box.” 

The district includes portions of northern New Jersey’s Essex, Morris, and Passaic counties. Once a reliable Republican enclave, the 11th Congressional District has shifted blue over the past eight years. Sherrill won by nearly 15 percentage points in 2024. The last Republican elected to represent the 11th was in 2016.

More than a dozen Democrats have jumped into the race, with just one Republican, Randolph Mayor Joe Hathaway, throwing his hat into the ring, according to NJ.com.

Former Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello entered the crowded Democratic primary field on Monday and immediately filed a lawsuit accusing Murphy of rigging the system to favor the candidate he backs. Cresitello asserts the tight timeline is “arbitrary, unreasonable, and discriminatory as applied,” according to the New Jersey Globe. 

“The December 1 deadline provides no meaningful transition period or opportunity for non-machine candidates to mobilize the volunteers or field operations required to collect 500 signatures,” the lawsuit alleges. 

‘Political Engineering’

Murphy’s meddling is the latest example of the Democratic Party — the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy — twisting the democratic process, GOP officials say. 

History will long remember how the Dem machine crowned village idiot and then-Vice President Kamala Harris the party’s presidential nominee after pushing the cognitively collapsing President Joe Biden off the nomination train. In doing so, the Democratic National Committee disregarded and disenfranchised party voters and the 14.4 million ballots cast in the primary for Biden. 

It wasn’t the first time.

The DNC and Hillary Clinton rigged the primary against rival and grumpy old socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016. Ask Hillary’s dear friend and fellow Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who agreed the contest was fixed for Clinton.

Similar accusations dogged Democrat congressional races in 2018, when the party machine was accused of interfering in several House races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee published opposition research on Dem candidate Laura Moser in Texas’ 7th Congressional District primary, ABC News reported at the time. 

“There is intense pressure on the DCCC and local party officials to ensure a Democratic victory” in taking back the House, the news outlet insisted in defending the left’s desperation to get Trump. 

And don’t forget Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Illinois’ 4th Congressional District representative, telling his constituents he wouldn’t seek reelection — the day after the state’s filing deadline. The scheming Democrat, as Chris Saam wrote in the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forrest, privately informed his chief of staff “well in advance of his public message, giving her time to quietly collect signatures.”

“Even more brazen, Chuy Garcia was the first signer on Patty Garcia’s petition,” Saam reports. “This is not a savvy political strategy. This is ballot manipulation, executed out of public view to engineer a successor and shield the seat from competition.” 

“For a party that purports to ‘defend democracy,’ this is stunning hypocrisy.” 

It was so bad in fact that even some Democrats — more than two dozen — voted for a resolution “disapproving” of Garcia’s behavior. The measure was introduced by fellow Democrat Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, who said it was important to call out “election subversion.” 

“My responsibility as an elected representative of my community is to say loudly and consistently, humbly and with love that no one has the right to subvert the right of the people to choose their elected representatives,” Perez, who is facing a tough reelection bid next year, said in her floor speech. 

The left’s Trump Derangement Syndrome fever is running hotter than it did in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. Expect anything and everything from a win-at-all-cost party. 

“When Democrats fear a real primary or a competitive election, they change the rules, change the timing, or clear the field,” one GOP official told The Federalist. “It’s political engineering masquerading as process, and New Jersey is their latest test case. This is what the Democratic Party looks like when it’s afraid of voters.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.