Democratic county committee members in New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District will choose a candidate to replace U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. who died Wednesday.
Pascrell is on the November ballot and he had been seeking his 15th term in Congress representing the north Jersey district.
It’s the second time this year that party committee members get to wield this rarely exercised power to fill a ballot opening for a congressional seat. Typically, committee members choose which candidates get endorsements, but voters choose the candidate. It’s unusual for the state to have one congressional seat open in the middle of a term, never mind two such vacancies.
The chairpersons of the Democratic Party in the three counties with municipalities in the district — Bergen, Hudson and Passaic — will need to act quickly, as the deadline for filling a ballot vacancy is a week away. It’s unclear when that decision might happen, as a number of Democratic leaders are in Chicago, attending the Democratic National Convention.
Should there be a delay past the Aug. 29 deadline, Democrats could go to court to have their choice placed on the ballot. Superior Court judges have allowed this in the past. But given the popularity of mail-in voting — more than a quarter of those who voted in last year’s election voted by mail — Democrats would need to act as quickly as possible to meet ballot printing deadlines. Ballots are scheduled to be mailed out Sept. 21.
Different process after death of Rep. Payne Jr.
The process for replacing Rep. Donald Payne Jr., who represented the 10th District, was somewhat different. He died after the deadline to remove his name from the primary ballot. But he was unopposed in that primary and won. In July, Democratic committee members chose Newark Council President LaMonica McIver to succeed him on the general election ballot.
Credit: (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)Several Democratic leaders declined to discuss replacing Payne until after a proper period of mourning. He died April 24 and his funeral was May 2. But the timing of Pascrell’s death does not allow for a similar process, said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
“There simply isn’t enough time to wait on getting his replacement safely onto the ballot,” he said, adding, “I don’t doubt for a second that Congressman Pascrell would be telling his party, ‘just win, baby.’”
Pascrell was facing Republican Billy Prempeh, for the third time, as well as two independent candidates. Pascrell has won easily over the years — by more than 30 percentage points in 2020, when the presidential race also topped the ballot. The 9th District is considered safely Democratic, with 40% of registered voters Democrats, 20% Republicans and most of the rest unaffiliated.
What state law mandates
Under state law, open slots on the ballot are filled by the county committee members in the U.S. House or state legislative district where the vacancy occurred. The members meet and vote for the replacement. The winner becomes the candidate and voters get their say at the ballot box.
In the case of the 10th District opening, the Democratic county party leaders chose to wait until after a special primary election to fill the remainder of Payne’s term before holding a convention to choose the candidate for a full two-year term beginning Jan. 3. They chose McIver, who had been endorsed by Democrats in Essex and Union counties and who had won the primary. McIver is heavily favored to win both the special election on Sept. 18 to replace Payne through the end of the year and the general election for a full two-year term, given the 10th is a majority Democratic district.
But residents in the 9th District will not have anyone representing them through the end of the year. State law specifies timelines for the calling of a special election for an unexpired term, but they only apply to vacancies of at least six months. There are fewer than five months left in Pascrell’s term.
