When Sen. Bob Menendez voted yesterday, he probably didn’t anticipate Lisa McCormick, a small newspaper owner from Rahway. She reported spending no money on her campaign and got no media coverage.
And yet last night in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, she got nearly four of every ten Democratic votes.
In a campaign video McCormick put together she said, “we need to make the changes that we want to see in our world, and it’s not about money, it’s about our life on this planet and the time that we’re here.”
Menendez made no mention of her in a video he released Tuesday night from Washington D.C.
“I want to thank people all across New Jersey for this victory, but our next challenge matters even more. Every campaign is a choice, but I believe the one this November is pretty clear, because the stakes have never been higher,” he said.
Menendez talked about his record and attacked the man who won Tuesday’s Republican primary: “My opponent, greedy drug company CEO Bob Hugin, is going to have to answer for his record of driving up prices for cancer patients, while making millions for himself.”
In Mountainside, Hugin gave his victory speech in a roomful of Republicans.
“Bob Menendez thinks that New Jersey voters will blindly vote for him just because he’s a Democrat — wrong, Bob. And he’s the wrong Bob.”
The former CEO of Celgene Corporation said that company’s drug pricing policies are entirely defensible.
“Frankly, Celgene has done more good for people in the last 25 minutes than Bob Menendez has done in Washington for 25 years.”
Tuesday night’s numbers showed a certain weakness in Democratic support for Menendez, says pollster Patrick Murray.
“The fact that Bob Menendez barely broke 60 percent against a candidate who, for the vast majority of people who supported her was just simply a name on a piece of paper, they had no idea who Lisa McCormick was. It says a lot about how unhappy some Democrats are with the choice they were presented with.”
In Congressional races, Mikie Sherrill prevailed in District 11. The former Navy pilot racked up 76 percent of the vote in a five-person Democratic field.
“I am so honored to be your candidate and I am so proud to declare that we are ready here in New Jersey to flip this seat and turn the 11th District blue,” said Mikie Sherrill as she addressed a cheering crowd of supporters.
On the Republican side, Assemblyman Jay Webber won with 39 percent of the vote to a surprisingly high 30 percent for Peter De Neufville and only 21 percent for Tony Ghee.
NJTV News asked Webber how he plans to go up against Mikie Sherrill in the general election.
“We do what we’ve done all spring, and that is talk about issues people care about: maintaining and creating an opportunity society, creating jobs for Americans, keeping taxes low, cutting spending, talking about immigration in a common sense way, talking about health care a common sense way, empowering students and parents in our education system. These are the issues that are on people’s minds, it’s what they talk about at the kitchen table. We’ll keep talking about those issues, and we’ll be fine in the fall,” said Webber.
In District 2, on the Democratic side, state Sen. Jeff Van Drew of Cape May County won with 55 percent in a four-person field.
He reeled off a long list of goals after clinching his party’s nomination: “We know we have challenges with our economy and that while some parts of our country are doing better, still in South Jersey we are challenged, still in South Jersey we know that we need more opportunity for the men, the women, the children, the future.”
Van Drew will be favored in the fall against the surprise winner of the Republican primary, conservative Seth Grossman who beat Hirsh Singh.
In District 5, Bergen County attorney John McCann narrowly defeated well-known conservative Steve Lonegan and will take on Democratic incumbent Josh Gottheimer in the fall.
In District 7, Democrat Tom Malinowski won easily and will take on incumbent Republican Leonard Lance in the fall.
And in District 4, Democrat Josh Welle won the right to go up against Republican incumbent Chris Smith in the fall.
Nationally, the Democrats need to pick up 24 seats to win back the House. Analysts are looking at Tuesday night’s results here and elsewhere for clues as to whether that will happen.
“It’s still early days. The results from yesterday’s primary suggest Democrats are enthused, about two-thirds of the primary vote was on the Democratic side. That’s a number that we’ve seen in the last couple of years, so it’s an increasing Democratic enthusiasm, particularly in the three Republican-held districts where there were contested primaries on both sides in the 2nd, 7th and the 11th. We actually saw more Democrats show up in those three districts than Republicans to vote and I think that’s an all-time first,” said Murray.
There is energy on the Democratic side in New Jersey right now, but the questionable showing by Sen. Menendez against an unknown gives Republicans something to crow about as well.
