The Fallout in Passaic County

by: Matthew Jordan

Sat Nov 07, 2009 at 12:55:26 AM EST

The biggest upset in New Jersey on Election Day did not happen when Jon Corzine was defeated by Chris Christie.  It happened in Passaic County where Democrats Keith Kazmark, Tahesha Way, Domenick Stampone, and Evangeline Gomez were defeated for the County Clerk and Freeholder race by Republicans Kristin Corrado, Michael Marotta, Deborah Ciambrone and Ed O'Connell.  

The question on everyone's mind after Tuesday was how did this happen?  How can the Democrats lose in a county where they have a nearly 2-1 registration advantage?  The most puzzling part of Election Day is how does Governor Corzine out perform the Democrats highest vote getter (Way) by over 12,000 votes?  

These questions do not have clear cut answers.  

To start, I agree with Chairman John Currie that we need to re-engage the suburbs. I said that back in February.  

But what does "re-engage the suburbs" mean?

If I was advising the Chairman I would suggest some reforms for next years local and county races.  To start, we need more money infused into local municipal races. I can guarantee that every local candidate in 2009 could have used more money for another direct mail piece, more advertisements in local papers, maybe even an Election Day GOTV program.  Second, there needs to be more coordination between the local candidates and the county candidates. We're all on the same team, why aren't we working together?  Every local candidate should carry county literature and every county candidate should have local literature.  It's not efficient to run fragmented operations - if we work together we can ID more voters - if we ID more voters we can win more elections.        

We can't rely on Passaic and Paterson to win us every countywide election - 2009 exposed that 2-town theory to be politically unsound.  However, the proposition now becomes more difficult.  2010 now becomes a battle for control of the Freeholder Board - with incumbents Terry Duffy of West Milford and Pat Lepore of Woodland Park up for reelection.  With Chris Christie as Governor and 4 newly minted Republican countywide officials, the Republicans are no longer floundering.  They'll be able to raise money at the same pace as the Democrats and be able to recruit more viable candidates into running because suddenly the seats look winnable.  

Losing happens, it's life.  But if we don't learn from our mistakes they will happen again.  Passaic County is in play for the Republicans and we need to adjust.  If we continue on this same path I'll be writing a year from now about how the Republicans managed to take control of county government because we didn't learn from our mistakes.