Steve Kornacki: New Jersey governor's race tests the staying power of Democrats' county machines

In the New Jersey governor's race, Rep. Mikie Sherrill has racked up endorsements from county Democratic organizations, but their influence may be diminished.

One metric has traditionally been all but definitive when it comes to New Jersey Democratic contests: the county line. And by that metric, one candidate is running circles around the others ahead of the June 10 gubernatorial primary: Rep. Mikie Sherrill.

Sherrill has won endorsements from 10 of the state’s 21 county Democratic organizations, including three of the four largest. Only two of the other five candidates in the race, Rep. Josh Gottheimer and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney, have notched any county endorsements.

The counties in which Sherrill has won support account for nearly 60% of all registered Democrats in the state. They include the county in which her 11th Congressional District is based, Morris, and the two others that it touches, Passaic and Essex. Gottheimer, whose 5th District is based in Bergen, also represents part of Passaic and Sussex. And Ras Baraka is the mayor of Newark, the largest city in Essex (and the state). Sweeney, the only candidate from South Jersey, has largely swept that region, where the county organizations typically act as a bloc.

What has traditionally made these endorsements so meaningful is the preferred ballot position that came with them. An endorsed candidate would run at the top of the Democratic county organization’s official line, an official-looking and impossible-to-miss column that would also include a host of familiar local names running for lower offices. Names of the other candidates would be listed by themselves, often in the far reaches of the ballot.

The results were predictable: Candidates running off the line almost never won and generally got blown out. The last open Democratic gubernatorial primary was essentially settled a year before any votes were cast, when the largest county organizations threw their support to now-Gov. Phil Murphy.