Why most of next week's NJ primaries are uncontested

Plus: NYC budget talks enter the home stretch [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [VIEW IN BROWSER]( [DONATE]( [WNYC Politics Brief] Little competition for NJ Legislative primaries, while ballot gives party favorites an edge [By Nancy Solomon]( [a voter inside the curtain of a voting booth]( Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images [Ad: get tickets to new jersey symphony's season finale june 9 through 11]( Sponsored Content The New Jersey State Legislature now has more open seats — races without an incumbent running — than at any time in the last 12 years. In most states, that would be expected to increase the number of competitive races. But that hasn’t happened in New Jersey, [where most candidates are running uncontested in the June 6 primaries](. "Even when incumbents are stepping away, even when there is a climate that should encourage competition, our system is such that there really is no competition and a lot of ballots have no contested races at all," said Rutgers professor Julia Sass Rubin, who researches the impact of ballot design and party endorsements on New Jersey elections. Political scientists say one of the chief reasons New Jersey has fewer competitive primaries is because the ballots used by most counties give party-endorsed candidates an advantage over outsiders who want to challenge party leadership. County party organizations endorse candidates for each office, with the exception of two lightly populated, rural counties: Salem and Sussex. Those endorsed candidates are then placed in a single column or row, and the top of that "county line" typically includes the names voters might find most familiar, such as the candidates for president and governor. (This year, though, there are no statewide races.) New Jersey is the only state in the country where ballots are organized into lines of endorsed slates. "It's not really how democracy is supposed to work," Sass Rubin said. "The reason we have primaries is because we decided to let individual voters decide who should be their candidate, not the parties." Though both the Democratic and Republican parties use the county line system, it's a more potent tool for the Democrats, who have a more powerful party apparatus, said Seton Hall professor Matt Hale. "The Republicans, you know, they're a little bit less organized overall than Democrats on a county-by-county basis. And that leads to the ability of non-party approved Republicans to take a shot," Hale said. That can be seen in two Republican primary fights in South Jersey, where candidates aligned with former President Donald Trump are battling more moderate Republicans. Political analysts say those races — the 3rd District in Gloucester, Salem and Cumberland counties, as well as the 4th District in Gloucester and Camden — are some of the only competitive primary races in New Jersey, out of the 120 Legislature seats on the ballot. — [Read more about New Jersey's upcoming primaries here.]( [Ad: get tickets to new jersey symphony's season finale june 9 thru 11]( Sponsored Content --------------------------------------------------------------- 🗳️ --------------------------------------------------------------- More political headlines: [Mayor Eric Adams speaks about his budget in the City Hall atrium]( [New York City budget negotiations enter the final stretch]( Libraries, the city's independent police watchdog and services for seniors are all expected to see funding cuts in the final budget agreement due by the start of July. 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