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Promoted from the diaries - - Rosi
When you look at the configuration of New Jersey Congressional and Legislative districts the most apparent characteristic is fairly straightforward: the district either heavily favors a Democrat or Republican, and the latter usually has little chance of winning. Most elections are uneventful, unwinnable, and inherently bad for a representative democracy.
As a Democrat I look at the legislative map and think, this is great, there is probably not one feasible electoral scenario that will give Assembly Republicans the opportunity to control a majority. They have to run the electoral board, holding every potentially vulnerable seat and performing well in LD1, LD14, LD36, and one of LD4 & LD38 in order to take back a majority. All on limited resources with a broken party infrastructure.
Out of 40 Legislative Districts in New Jersey any politically savvy person will tell you that there is probably only 2 battleground elections. In LD1 Assemblymen Nelson Albano and Matthew Milam will fight to be reelected with Senator Jeff Van Drew not at the top of the ticket. In LD36 Gary Schaer and Frederick Scalera are facing 2 candidates who came very close to unseating them in 2007 due to a series of local issues, mainly the Encap fiasco. I would put Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo higher on the list of potentially vulnerable Democrats, but the Republican recruiting effort there was just embarrassing, especially in what could be a very competitive. election in LD14 where alienated State workers are a large portion of the electorate.
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