Credit: (NJ Spotlight News)The large turnover in the New Jersey Legislature is not likely to mean more women will become lawmakers in a state where more than half of the state’s population are women.
Of the 258 Democrats and Republicans who filed to run in the June primary elections for state Senate and Assembly seats — all 120 are on the ballot this year — just 96, or 37%, are women. That’s only slightly larger than the 35% of current lawmakers who are female. And it’s unlikely that all the candidates who are women will win, particularly given some of them will likely face each other in the November election and some are likely to be in districts where it will be nearly impossible for them to win given their party affiliation and the political leaning of voters.
All 120 seats in the Legislature are up for election this year. And 22 lawmakers have decided to quit; five others are seeking higher office. That means dozens of newcomers are hoping for a shot at a seat in the state Assembly or Senate.
The Democratic Party did a better job of fielding female candidates than Republicans did, with 61% of the women on the ballot being Democrats. Roughly 44% of all Democratic filers, incumbents and challengers, are women, which is essentially the same number of Democratic women that serve currently in the Legislature. Just 3 in 10 Republican filers are women, while a third of sitting Republicans are women.
Filing petitions to seek office is just the first step to appearing on the June primary ballot. Opponents, political parties or any individual can file an objection to a candidate’s petitions; this year’s deadline to do that is Friday. Secretary of State Tahesha Way will decide all challenges by April 5. Then a candidate must win the primary to make it onto the November ballot and 25 of 240 spots are contested. A candidate must win in the November general election to get a seat in the Legislature.
Once all the votes are counted, it’s possible women could hold about the same number of seats in the Senate and Assembly — or perhaps fewer — than they do now.
New Jersey currently ranks 21st in the nation in terms of the percentage of women in the Legislature, down from 15th in 2022, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. In only two states have women reached or exceeded parity with men in their state legislatures: Nevada has ranked first for the last five years; currently 62% of its lawmakers are women, and Colorado is second with a 50-50 split between men and women.
