Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor

Head of state watchdog agency quits amid residency flap after just 5 days

Tiffany Williams Brewer, the CEO of the State Commission of Investigation, announced her resignation Friday just five days after being appointed to the position, after a media report raised questions about her residency.

Williams Brewer, named CEO on Monday, had helmed the commission in an acting capacity since July, when its previous CEO, Chadd Lackey, died in a Hamilton car accident. But Williams Brewer said the controversy about her residency — first reported Thursday by the Asbury Park Press — had become a distraction that threatened to undermine the agency’s crime-fighting mission.

“While I remain dedicated to public service, the recent events, including the revelation of employee-driven mischaracterizations of my actions to the media, have created a toxic climate that dissuades me from continuing in this role. I am disappointed that this environment, which undermines the integrity of the SCI, has necessitated my resignation,” she said in a statement issued Friday.

Asbury Park Press reporters discovered Williams Brewer listed two principal residences, in New Jersey and Maryland, where she bought a home in March. They also found she has two full-time jobs — her commission job and a full-time position at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she’s scheduled to teach three days each week, according to the report.

New Jersey law, though, requires public employees’ primary residence to be in the state within a year of their public employment.

The report spurred calls for her resignation from some lawmakers.

In her statement, Williams Brewer insisted she had not breached the state’s residency requirement.

“My dual residency in Maryland and New Jersey has always been transparent and in full compliance with all relevant regulations. It has never interfered with my duties at the SCI or constituted an ethical lapse,” she said. “Let me be clear — my residency status has never run afoul of the NJ First Act.”

The commission’s three members, Robert J. Burzichelli, Kevin R. Reina, and John P. Lacey, issued a statement Friday praising her “compassionate leadership” after Lackey’s death created “one of the most challenging times in SCI’s history.”

“While we did not choose or request her resignation, we respect her decision and remain deeply grateful for her extraordinary contributions to the SCI and the public we serve,” they said.

Williams Brewer made $175,000 in the job, with a raise effective Jan. 1 that boosted her annual salary to $210,000, said Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), who was among those calling for Williams Brewer to step down.

Lawmakers created the State Commission of Investigation in 1968 to combat mob influence in government, though its investigations in recent decades have covered a range of topics including the flow of illegal firearms, abuses in the used car industry, and public procurement, among numerous others. She testified last month in Trenton to urge lawmakers to tighten oversight of sober-living homes.

Before ascending to the commission’s top post, Williams Brewer was the commission’s chair. She was previously an administrative law judge and a faculty member at Rutgers, Kean, and Seton Hall universities.

Some celebrated her departure.

“I applaud all cooler heads for prevailing. This is an unfortunate situation, but it worked out exactly the way it needed to,” O’Scanlon said.

N.J. Republicans do an about-face on mail-in voting after election drubbing

New Jersey Republicans went into Election Day with high hopes, believing they could end Democratic majorities that have endured for 20 years.

Instead, Democrats flipped five seats in the Assembly, allowing the party to increase its control of that chamber, and reclaimed the 3rd District Senate seat they lost in 2021.

In the aftermath of the GOP’s lackluster showing Tuesday, Republican officials and operatives are stressing the importance of mail-in voting to the GOP’s electoral future, urging the party’s legislative candidates to temper campaign messaging, and sounding the alarm about Democrats’ dramatic fundraising advantages.

“There needs to be some introspection, and we need to shake off this loss and start the fight for the next round,” said Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth).

If anything drove the Democratic victories, it’s mail-in voting. Democratic candidates in the state’s competitive districts built margins of thousands of votes before polls opened on Election Day.

The party has spent decades building out its vote-by-mail operations, particularly in Camden and Middlesex counties. Republicans, by comparison, are vote-by-mail neophytes whose voters still regard the practice with a degree of skepticism borne out of former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud.

The GOP has increasingly sought to convert its voters, who typically cast machine ballots on Election Day, into mail voters in recent years. And though the number of Republicans who returned mail-in ballots before Election Day declined by about 30,000 from 2021, GOP returns rose in most competitive districts.

“We made some small strides in this area, which continues to be our biggest Achilles heel, but they’ve been working on this for 20 years,” said Tom Szymanski, former executive director of the Republican State Committee. “Our people are only just starting to wake up to this in the last year or two, and a lot of people still aren’t getting with the program.”

Some Republicans simply like casting ballots on a voting machine, he said, and others still distrust mail-in and early voting, wrongly believing votes cast before Election Day are less likely to be counted.

The advantages of mail-in voting are numerous and varied. The practice eases Election Day get-out-the-vote operations and, more importantly, pushes some voters to cast ballots in off-year elections they would typically skip.

“Republicans need to understand, especially ones who don’t vote in 100% of the elections: Democrats are not cannibalizing their own voting base by converting them to pre-Election Day voters,” Szymanski said. “What they’ve done is they’ve converted a significantly high portion of their mid- and low-propensity voters into every-year voters.”

Voters who request a mail-in ballot are mailed such a ballot for future elections unless they opt out, and that perpetual vote-by-mail list has successfully driven up turnout. This year’s mail-in and early in-person voting turnout is near what would be seen in a gubernatorial year or during congressional midterms.

Sen. Michael Testa (R-Cumberland), who also serves as the county GOP chairman, said embracing mail-in ballots has boosted Republican voter turnout there. Other counties still are playing catch-up, he said, which could contribute to the lackluster support for Republican candidates statewide. Cumberland County saw big wins for Republicans Tuesday.

“People were very skeptical because they believed the national rhetoric that their vote was not going to be counted. So what we need to do is instill the belief that it’s true that Republican votes will of course be counted,” he said.

On campaign messaging, New Jersey Republicans have sparred for years over whether to moderate their messaging to appeal to independents wearied by the harsh rhetoric and animus that has colored recent elections, or take a more Trump-like approach to winning votes.

Republicans scored local victories in some Democratic towns despite the dismal showing at the state level, and at least some of those local candidates sailed to victory after ignoring the culture-centric messaging adopted by candidates further up the ballot.

Local Republican victories in moderate or Democratic-leaning Union County towns like Summit, Westfield, and possibly Cranford were carried more by local issues than they were by Republicans’ legislative campaign platform, which focused on opposition to wind energy, culture issues in schools, and crime.

“We localized the elections. The areas, even in Union County, that tried to make it about national issues or even state issues at large didn’t fare so well,” said Glenn Mortimer, the Union County Republican chairman.

The local issues included real estate development and homelessness. Wind energy seldom came up on the campaign trail, Mortimer said, and school rules around transgender children and lessons were only slightly more common.

There’s some room for flexibility, Mortimer said, and those issues resonated more in more conservative areas of the state, like its southeast or northwest, than in counties like Union. But some moderates charged Republicans must rein in their messaging and avoid the vitriol that has increasingly colored GOP campaigns.

“Democrats can simply point to Republicans and say, ‘That’s not a brand you want to vote for, right?’” said Sen. Jon Bramnick (R-Union), a moderate who won reelection by just over 5,000 votes. “I think that’s what independent voters saw. They didn’t want to vote for the brand, especially many women.”

The party needs to tone down its messaging and repudiate Trump to win independent voters, Bramnick said, adding he believes the GOP’s focus on slogans like “parental rights” over frank policy discussions also hurt the party.

“You have to actually discuss the issue. It looks like we’re just lashing out and we’re not discussing the underlying issue,” Bramnick said. “The swing voters, then, are going to be concerned about Republicans because there has to be mature, adult conversations on these issues, not just a hostile approach.”

One of this year’s most closely watched races was in the 11th District, where Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth) handily defeated Republican Steve Dnistrian.

Money helped.

The race in the 11th District will be one of the most expensive in state history, and it looks like it was worth it for the Democrats to invest over $6 million there. Gopal held his seat, and Democrats flipped the two Assembly seats.

Statewide, Democrats outspent Republicans by almost three times — $13.8 million versus $5 million, according to numbers released by the Election Law Enforcement Commission in mid-October.

In the 11th District, Democrats outspent Republicans 7-to-1. In the 3rd District, where Democratic former Assemblyman John Burzichelli ousted GOP Sen. Ed Durr, Democrats spent $380,279 while their opponents spent just $132,549.

Testa said Durr won a surprise victory against Democrats in 2021 on a shoestring budget largely because his candidacy was ignored, but his reelection effort stumbled this year because Durr faced fundraising challenges and incessant attacks from Democrats on his abortion stance.

“I think those commercials against him were extremely powerful, and it certainly resonated with the voters in Gloucester County,” Testa said.

In districts without “overwhelming spending,” O’Scanlon said, the Republican agenda resonated with voters, noting his own victory and other GOP races around the state.

Still, he said Tuesday night should be “a warning sign and a wake-up call” for the GOP.

“In New Jersey, we definitely have to up our fundraising game and come up with motivational methods to get the voter base out there,” he said.

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New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com. Follow New Jersey Monitor on Facebook and Twitter.

N.J. judges decline to require that minors consult lawyer before waiving Miranda rights

An appellate panel on Wednesday reversed a lower court decision that found an adolescent facing a potential murder charge knowingly waived his Miranda rights, but the judges declined to establish rules requiring juveniles to consult with an attorney before waiving those rights.

Requiring minors to speak to an attorney before waiving certain rights — a major juvenile justice system policy shift — is a matter for the New Jersey Supreme Court and the Legislature, the three-judge panel said.

Still, the judges reversed the lower court’s decision to allow prosecutors to use the 16-year-old defendant’s statement to police at trial, noting that court did not consider his “intellectual deficits.” The defendant receives special education services, reads at a fifth-grade level, and suffers other mental conditions that limit his cognitive ability, the appellate panel noted.

The Essex County adolescent, identified in the opinion as M.P., faces several delinquency charges that would be upgraded to first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, and other serious crimes if the courts choose to try him as an adult. The charges stem from a December 2019 carjacking that left the victim dead and police say was carried out by M.P. and four others.

The trial court ruled M.P. waived his Miranda rights during a stationhouse interrogation, but the adolescent claims he could not have waived his rights because he did not understand them. He said the statements made during that interrogation, which preceded most of the charges he faces, should not be admitted.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic — both of whom joined the case as friends of the court — and the adolescent argued that the judges should create a hard rule requiring minors to consult with an attorney before waiving their rights against self-incrimination.

They said a growing body of scientific evidence shows juveniles hold a poor understanding of Miranda rights and are more susceptible to adults to police interrogation tactics. They noted at least two other states, Washington and California, require minors to speak with an attorney before waiving their rights to silence and counsel.

But the appellate court declined, saying it has no authority to fill such a request.

“Even accepting for the sake of argument the validity and relevance of the scientific studies M.P. relies on, those research findings do not confer upon us authority to substantially rework our state’s juvenile interrogation jurisprudence, and certainly not to overturn New Jersey Supreme Court precedent,” the panel wrote.

It added: “While the rules and principles announced in those precedents are not immutable, it is for our Supreme Court and the Legislature — not an intermediate appellate court — to weigh the benefits and costs of the major juvenile justice system policy shift M.P. proposes.”

They noted the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to adopt a looser standard that would have required an attorney to be appointed for a minor whose parent had a conflict of interest — in the case of fratricide, for instance.

The judges additionally declined to draft revised Miranda warnings that would be more easily understood by minors.

“We believe the task of revising the familiar Miranda warnings to address the inherent differences between adults and juveniles is beyond our authority, especially considering the limited record before us,” the judges wrote.

The judges said officers failed to administer the Miranda warning to M.P. before he consulted with his mother, violating a requirement set by a 2020 New Jersey Supreme Court decision known as State in Interest of A.A.

The appellate panel also suggested police may have illegally recorded a conversation between the adolescent and his mother but did not determine whether information gleaned from that recording should be suppressed because the adolescent did not raise the issue before the lower court or on appeal.

“We nonetheless expect that the attorney general and county prosecutors will review juvenile interrogation ‘protocols’ to ensure compliance with the Wiretap Act while implementing the guidance provided in A.A.,” the judges wrote.

Acrimony grips GOP primary in New Jersey

Republicans in the 26th Legislative District are headed into an acrimonious primary on Tuesday headlined by former running mates whose tense relationship predates the 2021 race that pushed one of them out of office.

Incumbent Assemblymen Jay Webber and Brian Bergen — Morris County Republicans, and two of the Assembly’s most conservative members — face a challenge from former Parsippany Mayor Robert Peluso and ex-Assemblywoman BettyLou DeCroce, who lost her seat in the Legislature after Morris Republicans backed her challenger in 2021.

In the upper chamber race, Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris) is opposed by longtime Morris County Commissioner Thomas Mastrangelo, who ran alongside DeCroce in 2021’s Assembly race.

The discord in the 26th has so far centered around Bergen and DeCroce and the Senate faceoff, with Webber — the top Assembly vote-getter in the 2021 race — and Peluso keeping their powder relatively dry.

This is a Republican stronghold comprising mostly towns in Morris County, one that GOP gubernatorial challenger Jack Ciattarelli won handily in 2021.

DeCroce’s campaign represents an attempt to reclaim a seat that has been represented by a DeCroce for 32 of the last 34 years, first by her late husband, Alex DeCroce, then by DeCroce herself following his death in 2012.

DeCroce has lodged attacks at Bergen over a pandemic loan he sought for a botany business and his legislative record, one she charged has left little impact on New Jersey law.

Bergen, a former Denville councilman who frequently butts heads with Democratic leadership on the Assembly floor, has railed against the party’s control of Trenton and its legislative committees. He alleges DeCroce is spreading untruths about him.

“The volume of lies that BettyLou DeCroce tries to say about me and my record, it’s really crazy,” he said. “I’ve never been a part of something like this, and I hope I’m never part of something like this again. Primaries are fine and an election is fine, but the lies — it’s just really crazy.”

Bergen has taken aim at DeCroce’s record of voting — or not voting — saying she was an absentee lawmaker who accomplished little while in office.

“He has turned off a lot of people with his demeanor, and he’s attacked me at every club meeting. He’s gone brutally at me, and so be it. That’ll show his character,” DeCroce said.

On the Senate side, Mastrangelo has launched repeated attacks at Pennacchio, running online ads seeking to paint Pennacchio — the 2020 Trump reelection co-chair — as a liberal who wants to cut Social Security, raise IRS funding, and slash U.S. military spending.

As a state senator, Pennacchio has no say over any of those federal issues and, like Bergen, says his challenger is lying about his record.

“I believe absolutely nothing that comes out of his mouth,” Pennacchio said. “The only thing that I’m hoping is that the voters can see past that, and I think they will because this is a very smart electorate that I’ve been given the pleasure of serving as state senator.”

Totaled, the two slates spent just over $260,000 on the primary by May 25, according to reports filed with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission. The incumbents’ $154,794 in spending edged out their challengers.

Webber and Peluso did not return requests seeking comment. Peluso has already signaled his intention to run for county commission next year and for Parsippany-Troy Hills mayor in 2025.

Mastrangelo could not be reached.

Off the line over the line

Bitterness remains over DeCroce losing Morris GOP support in 2021 (Republican Assemblyman Christian Barranco, who ousted her, is seeking reelection in the 25th District under redrawn lines).

That year, Morris County first adopted an organizational line, a change party officials said was needed to combat increasing Democratic strength in Morris County.

Most New Jersey county parties award organizational — or party — lines to their favored candidates, lending them an advantageous ballot position that groups them with party-backed local and county candidates during primaries.

The process of awarding a line varies between counties, with some leaving the endorsement process to the discretion of the county chair. The Morris GOP’s bylaws require the party to award its organizational line based on a vote by the district’s county committee members — party officials elected during primaries.

DeCroce said she and her running mates are bound by opposition to the line.

“The line is no good, that it doesn’t give the public the right to pick who’s going to run in the primary, and everyone should have the chance to run,” DeCroce said. “There’s party favorites out there, and the party has been playing too much to party favorites.”

Pennacchio, who advocated for Morris Republicans to adopt a line in 2021, called that version of events an instance of revisionist history.

“They all campaigned at the convention to get the line — they all did — and they were all buddies,” the senator said. “They were all slapping each others’ backs, especially Mastrangelo. The second they lose, all of a sudden it’s not slapping backs. All of a sudden, we’re a bunch of insiders.”

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Republican Tom Kean Jr. wins House race against Rep. Tom Malinowski in New Jersey

Rep. Tom Malinowski conceded the closely watched House race in the 7th District to former state Sen. Tom Kean Jr. Wednesday, handing New Jersey Republicans a third congressional seat.

Though the contest was too close to call Tuesday night, Kean pulled ahead as ballot counting resumed Wednesday, leading Malinowski by roughly five points and winning all but one of the district’s counties.

Kean had all but declared victory Tuesday just before midnight, and on Wednesday issued a statement thanking Malinowski for his years of public service “and for his vigorous campaign.”

“I am incredibly grateful to the voters of the 7th District for their confidence,” Kean said. “My solemn pledge to you will always be to serve with integrity, to listen, to learn, to earn this responsibility you’ve honored me with to steer this nation towards greater opportunity, security, and prosperity. Thank you to all of our supporters for their time, faith, passion, and trust. Our work has only just begun.”

Rep. Tom Malinowski was first elected to Congress during the anti-Trump Democratic wave of 2018. (Amanda Brown for New Jersey Monitor)

Malinowski had declined to concede Tuesday night in an apparent hope that late-arriving mail-in ballots would be numerous and Democratic enough to carry him to a third term. But such ballots are few, and though they will likely shrink Kean’s margin as counting continues, Malinowski’s path to victory had narrowed to near nothing by the time election officials paused their counts Tuesday evening.

“I am deeply grateful to the people of the 7th District for the honor of representing you, and I congratulate Congressman-Elect Kean,” Malinowski said in a statement.

The Associated Press has yet to call the race.

The 7th District was the only Democratic-held competitive district in the state to grow more Republican after district boundaries were redrawn last year, and Malinowski was broadly viewed as a sacrificial lamb that could — and in fact did — enable New Jersey Democrats to have a 9-3 majority in the state’s House delegation. Reps. Josh Gottheimer, Andy Kim, and Mikie Sherrill, who all saw their districts grow more Democratic after redistricting, won reelection Tuesday.

Kean, the son of former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean Sr., has run for federal office thrice before. He lost a primary for the 7th District’s GOP nod in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate against Sen. Bob Menendez six years later.

He came within a single point of ousting Malinowski in 2020. By Wednesday morning, his lead over Malinowski had grown to about 14,000.

Judge barred from bench over groping incident

The New Jersey Supreme Court ordered a municipal judge accused of groping a woman inside of his law office permanently barred from judicial service Tuesday.

Nino Falcone, who served as a part-time municipal judge in North Bergen, will also be censured. Falcone was suspended on Sept. 12, 2019, after being charged with criminal sexual contact over the incident.

He was accused of groping a woman who entered his law office on behalf of her employer, a physician with whom the judge had a years-long professional relationship.

A complaint filed by a judicial conduct committee alleged Falcone attempted to stop her from leaving his office before offering to pay her. He admitted to inappropriately touching her on a phone call monitored by the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office.

The Supreme Court’s order is in line with recommendations issued by the committee, which in a presentment suggested Falcone be censured and disqualified from judicial service, both for the assault and for “demonstrably false testimony” he delivered to the committee.

The presentment said Falcone claimed he accidentally touched the woman, a claim belied by his recorded admission.

Woman fired for posting anti-Black Lives Matter comments loses appeal

A company that fired an employee after she criticized the Black Lives Matter movement online did not break the law, an appellate panel ruled Friday.

Heather McVey sued the AtlantiCare and Geisinger health systems, alleging the First Amendment did not allow them to fire her because of her Facebook posts. But the appellate judges’ Friday decision rejects her argument, saying federal law stipulates only governments — and not private actors — can be held liable for breaches of constitutional rights.

The court cited a 1998 state Supreme Court decision involving a public employee and employer that held racist remarks are not protected by the First Amendment or the New Jersey Constitution.

“Because a public employee can be terminated for such comments … a private company like AtlantiCare clearly had the authority to fire McVey for making these remarks in a public forum while identifying herself as an AtlantiCare employee,” the decision reads.

In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, who was killed by now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020, McVey wrote on Facebook that she found the Black Lives Matter movement racist, claiming it caused segregation and alleging Black people were “killing themselves.” At the time, she was the corporate director of customer service for the health systems.

The comments, made in response to another user’s public post, came to the attention of an AtlantiCare administrator. McVey was suspended for the posts on June 17, 2020, and fired six days later.

AtlantiCare’s social media policy forbids posts on inflammatory or objectionable topics, “such as politics and religion.” McVey’s Facebook page identified her as an AtlantiCare employee.

The trial court dismissed her case, relying on rulings from other states to decree the First Amendment does not bar a private company from firing an at-will employee.

On appeal, McVey again argued her firing violated free speech provisions in the U.S. and New Jersey constitutions, also charging that right outweighed AtlantiCare’s right to promote an inclusive workspace.

There are no precedential New Jersey cases directly involving private-sector wrongful termination cases hinging on free speech issues. The appellate panel’s decision will set precedent for future cases like this unless it is overturned by the state Supreme Court.

It’s not clear whether McVey will seek to petition the case to the New Jersey Supreme Court. Her attorneys did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

New Jersey Senate president concedes stunning loss to Republican

Senate President Steve Sweeney conceded his loss to Republican Ed Durr Wednesday, admitting a defeat that shocked New Jersey's political world and ended the legislative career of Trenton's most powerful lawmaker.

“All votes have been fairly counted, and I, of course, accept the results," an emotional Sweeney said during a brief press conference at the New Jersey Statehouse Wednesday afternoon. “I want to congratulate Mr. Durr and wish him the best of luck."

Sweeney (D-Gloucester), the longest serving Senate president in New Jersey's history, ran about 2,200 votes behind Durr, a relative political unknown who previously mounted a failed independent campaign for Assembly and is now a celebrity in Republican circles.

Sweeney ruled out seeking a recount. It's exceedingly unlikely such an effort would do much to change the result of the race.

The incumbent blamed his loss on a Republican wave, noting about 11,000 more votes were cast in the 3rd District this year than in 2017, when the Senate president last won re-election. Sweeney's last Republican challenger won more 22,336 votes. Durr's count stands at 33,663.

Margins were tighter than expected in the gubernatorial race and in a handful of competitive districts, with Republican candidates generally exceeding expectations. The GOP captured a few legislative seats from Democrats, besides Sweeney's.

Despite his loss, Sweeney said he will remain active in state politics.

“I will be speaking from a different podium, but I promise you: I will be just as loud and just as forceful a voice for change," he said during the press conference, which lasted for about eight minutes.

Sweeney's tenure saw him become a polarizing force in New Jersey politics, at once hailed by members and observers for his ability to corral the Senate and derided by upstart political forces in the state over a belief that he stood in the way of their progressive policy efforts.

Durr's victory upended the Senate's leadership structure, setting off a brief contest among the chamber's Democrats that already appears resolved. The caucus is set to hold leadership elections on Friday, and Union County Sen. Nicholas Scutari is expected to succeed Sweeney as Senate president.

It's not clear what form Sweeney's continued involvement will take. He will keep his spot on the legislative redistricting commission, a position that could give him the ability to redraw the 3rd District's lines to be more favorable for a repeat campaign in 2023. A collection of towns in Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland counties, the 3rd District has about 16,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, but unaffiliated voters outnumber both.

Sweeney declined to say whether he would seek re-election, but he did not rule out a bid for his seat in 2023. The Senate president has also been raised as a possible gubernatorial candidate in 2025.

“What I said is I'm not going away. I don't say what I'm doing, but I can tell you something: I've been a believer in making New Jersey affordable for a long time," he said. “I've been the one that has been through battles over pension and health care costs for a long time."

The Senate president presented a somber face Wednesday, listing a series of priorities and policy accomplishments that included boosted funding for extraordinary special education aid, a $15 minimum wage, earned sick and family leave, bail reform, and marijuana legalization, among numerous others.

He also repeatedly raised affordability as an issue, promising to advocate for lower costs even after he leaves office on Jan. 11, mentioning specifically the cost of living for young adults, working families, and retirees.

“I plan to remain fully involved in public affairs in New Jersey. I will be speaking out for fiscal responsibility and reform," he said. “I will be a strong voice for unity, for economic opportunity, and for competitiveness and growth."

Democrats saw their worst legislative losses in years last week. They're expected to lose one seat in the Senate (the GOP flipped two seats in that chamber and Democrats flipped one), and between four and six seats in the Assembly, including those held by Sweeney's running mates, Assemblymen Adam Taliaferro and John Burzichelli, who chairs the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Democrats lost both Assembly seats in the 2nd District and Assemblywoman Joann Downey and Assemblyman Eric Houghtaling narrowly trail their Republican challengers in the 11th with few votes left uncounted.

New Jersey's most powerful legislator handed an unexpected defeat at the hands of a virtual unknown

Senate President Steve Sweeney has lost his bid for a seventh term, the Associated Press projected Thursday, ending a 20-year career in the Legislature that saw him become a dominant force in New Jersey politics.

Sweeney, a Gloucester County Democrat, was defeated by Republican Edward Durr, a truck driver from Logan who raised roughly $10,000 for his longshot campaign against the state's most powerful legislator.

Durr beat the Senate president 32,742 to 30,444 in the biggest upset of the year. Durr previously ran unsuccessfully for Assembly and local office in Logan.

There do not appear to be enough uncounted mail-in ballots for Sweeney to bridge the gap, nor are late-arriving mail ballots expected in large enough numbers to change the result of the race.

The incumbent's defeat is a blow to power broker George Norcross, a longtime friend and Sweeney ally, and the South Jersey Democratic bloc, which finds its power in the Senate much diminished. Durr's victory, meanwhile, has made him a celebrity of sorts in New Jersey and nationwide among Republicans, who believe losses like Sweeney's portend trouble for the Democratic Party in 2022 and beyond.

Sweeney, a leader in the Ironworkers Union, is the longest-serving Senate president in state history, his tenure characterized by a control of his caucus that rarely faltered.

Special education programs and funding emerged as a key issue for Sweeney, who has a daughter with a developmental disability. Bills he sponsored shifted the onus of proof in cases over special education issues to districts and, among other things, boosted state special education aid to nearly $1.2 billion.

Progressive Democrats often found a foe in the Senate president, seeing him as an avatar of machine politics they abhor and as a roadblock to their agenda. They have been gloating since late Tuesday, when it became clear Sweeney's political career was in peril.

Their opinion that Sweeney is a roadblock for progressive policies is a view not reflected among many of Sweeney's colleagues.

“Whether you're talking about restoring money for Planned Parenthood or earned sick leave or family leave or the millionaire's tax — you name it — it was Steve Sweeney who got us to 21-plus votes," said Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen). “Most of these were not an easy lift in our caucus."

In more recent years, the Senate president has urged municipal and school district consolidation in an effort to cut down on the ever-growing cost of living in the Garden State.

Those reforms earned support from some Republicans, including newly elected Senate Minority Leader Steve Oroho (R-Sussex), but the so-called Path to Progress never really got on its way. It was variously waylaid by the pandemic and, before that, the Democratic infighting that colored the first two years of Gov. Phil Murphy's term.

Sweeney's tenure as Senate president was characterized by an iron-fisted control of his caucus. Members were expected to cast difficult votes when needed or risk losing committee assignments and leadership money used to bolster legislative staffing.

Still, some votes failed. A push to eliminate oft-abused religious exemptions to public school immunization requirements failed after thousands of anti-vaccine activists assailed the Statehouse for days, and efforts to legalize marijuana legislatively continuously fell to opposition from older Democratic senators.

The race to replace Sweeney as Senate president is still in its nascency, but his successor will have an uphill climb in a Senate with a diminished majority and a greater share of unpredictable Democrats.

“I'm assuming that some of my more liberal and progressive allies are not sorry to see this happening. I think there's going to come a day where they're sorry for what they wish for because they got it," Weinberg said.

Sweeney joined the Senate in 2002 after ousting longtime Republican state Sen. Raymond Zane by about three points. At the time, he had spent five years on the Gloucester County Freeholder Board, a seat he would retain even after joining the Senate.

His margins grew in proceeding years, swelling to their largest in 2017, when Sweeney defeated Republican Fran Grenier by 18 points despite a major push by the New Jersey Education Association to defeat him.

He became Senate majority leader after just six years in office, with his rise to Senate president coming two years later, in 2010.

That ascent left bad blood in its wake. A coalition of Senate Democrats from North and South Jersey, formed through negotiations undertaken out of the public eye, handed Sweeney a leadership victory over then-Senate President Dick Codey (D-Essex).

Asked to comment on Sweeney's election loss, Codey, a frequent foe of the Norcross wing of New Jersey's Democratic Party, wasn't inclined to twist the knife.

“He had a hell of a career," he said of Sweeney. “Who knows, maybe he comes back."

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Phil Murphy and Jack Ciattarelli locked in tight race for New Jersey governorship

The race for governor is too close to call.

Gov. Phil Murphy and former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli were locked in a tight race Thursday night, and it's unclear whether late-reported votes in Democratic counties like Passaic, Somerset, and Mercer will be enough to hand the incumbent a win.

Murphy led his challenger by less than a point with roughly 75% of Election Day vote totals reported.

Ciattarelli took an early but narrow lead after accruing a nearly 74,000-vote lead in Ocean County, the state's staunchest Republican stronghold.

Mail-in ballots tallies in numerous counties were not reported Tuesday night.

The Republican's lead cast a pall on the governor's election party in Asbury Park, where attendees began to filter out as the Republican edged ahead. Murphy addressed the crowd at about 12:30 a.m.

“We're all sorry tonight did not get to be the celebration we all wanted it to be but … when every vote is counted, we hope to have a celebration," Murphy said. “We're going to wait for every vote to be counted and that's how democracy works."

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The mood was jubilant at the Marriott in Bridgewater, where Ciattarelli's supporters gathered.

Around 12:30 a.m., he came out with running mate Diane Allen and his wife, Melinda Castro, to thank supporters and send them home, saying: “We're winning! We're winning! .. I wish I could go out there and give every one of you a hug and a kiss."

He said he and his team would watch the vote tabulation closely to make sure “every vote is counted."

“I love this state. And I realize it's broken. You know it's broken. I'm convinced that together we can fix this state," Ciattarelli said. “Here's what we're going to do, sometime real soon, when we can declare unequivocally a victory, we will begin to fix the state of New Jersey and make this state someplace where everyone feels confident they can live, work, retire, start a business, raise a family."

While Murphy retains a path to victory, his performance will inevitably fall short of public polling that said his margin of victory would range between the high single digits and low teens.

Ciattarelli's better-than-forecasted performance appears to be driven by voter enthusiasm in staunchly Republican counties and suburban counties that broke for Democrats during Donald Trump's term as president.

In Morris County, the Republican led Murphy 97,712 to 72,996. President Joe Biden carried the county by a little more than four points in 2020.

Before Murphy spoke in Asbury Park, Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver urged the thinning crowd of supporters to remain steadfast. Late-reported votes from Democratic counties would bring her and her running mate over the top, she said.

“We know that there are many many votes still waiting to be counted," she said. “We know that, and in some of our key Democratic strongholds, we have thousands and thousands and thousands of votes to put on the ledger."

There are likely thousands more votes remaining in blue counties, but Murphy's leads in such places are thinner than they were in his race against former Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno four years ago.

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Republicans are not worried about mail-in voting fraud in 2021

National politics put New Jersey Republicans in strange position last year.

Former President Donald Trump repeatedly derided mail-in voting — which saw widespread adoption as governments looked to stem the spread of COVID-19 — and a cohort of GOP state lawmakers raised alarms over the practice, alternatively arguing residents did not trust it or urging in-person machine voting be allowed.

Once their efforts to head off Gov. Phil Murphy's order met with little success, the party eventually began urging its members to cast the mail-in ballots sent to every registered voter in the state.

This year's races haven't seen similar GOP pushes against mail-in voting. State Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris), who railed against last year's mostly mail elections, explained that conditions are different this year.

“The polls are open. Not only are they open, but there's early voting, so I think that took a big egg out of it," said Pennacchio.

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Jack Ciattarelli isn't exactly driving constituents toward mail-in voting, but he's not urging them to abandon the practice either.

Ciattarelli campaign manager Eric Arpert said it's “really the voters' choice" this year, with three options: mail-in voting, early in-person voting, and traditional Election Day voting. Urging voters who are on a list to get a mail-in ballot to vote in person instead means they would have to vote by provisional ballot, he noted.

“And certainly that's not as effective as just voting by mail or delivering their ballot to one of their local drop boxes," he said.

The data bears that out. Republicans have, so far, cast vote-by-mail ballots at slightly higher rates than Democrats.

According to vote-by-mail data maintained by Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University's Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, 31.8% of GOP voters who received a mail-in ballot this year have already voted as of Thursday afternoon, compared to 30.9% of Democrats.

“More significant to me than whether or not they've got an edge is that they're in the game at all," Rasmussen said. “These are Republican voters who do trust vote-by-mail, or they wouldn't have asked for those ballots. We couldn't have said that last year, because everybody got them."

Though Murphy has allowed in-person voting for this year's races, other voting changes enacted over recent years are still in effect, including a six-day grace period to count mail-in ballots election officials receive after Election Day and a law that requires voters who request such ballots receive them for future elections.

Studies have shown mail-in voting does not benefit either party disproportionately and instead boosts turnout across the board, but the reality is more complicated. Like all get-out-the-vote operations, mail strategies take time to build. Democratic county organizations, particularly in South Jersey, have for years emphasized mail-in voting. Republicans have not undertaken similar efforts.

While GOP voters have mailed in their ballots at a slightly higher rate so far this year, Democrats account for the vast majority of requested and returned ballots. As of Thursday, 512,234 New Jersey Democrats, just under 20% of the party's membership, had requested vote-by-mail ballots, and 158,741 had returned them. By contrast, the 164,404 Republicans that requested mail-in ballots accounted for a little less than 11% of the New Jersey GOP, and 52,218 of them had cast their ballots as of Thursday.

“It doesn't surprise me, but again, I think if you're a Republican, you have to say, 'This is great that we're at least in the game,'" Rasmussen said.

Even among Democrats, vote-by-mail uptake has been far from universal. At 62%, turnout rates in the 2020 general election were lower in Essex and Hudson counties, both Democratic strongholds, than anywhere else in the state.

Hudson has seen some increases in mail-in voting, Hudson County Democratic Chairwoman Amy DeGise said, but much of that has been limited to young voters, especially young white women.

Skepticism over mail-in voting among elderly voters and voters of color — just 28.5% of Hudson County residents are white, according to census data — has largely persisted.

“Our older voters, to them voting is an experience. They go to their polling location, they see friends from the neighborhood that they don't see as regularly as they want, they sit and talk, and they linger," DeGise said. “Voting by mail for them, that keeps them in the house, and they don't want to be in the house. They want to get out."

The story's similar in Essex County, where 42% of residents are black and 24% are Latino.

“People in Essex County are more confident and more trusting of the machines," said Essex County Democratic Chairman LeRoy Jones, who also chairs the Democratic State Committee. “People look forward to marching to the polling sites, much like their own personal crusade for change."

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Anti-vaxxers defeated in New Jersey as judge declines to block Rutgers vaccine mandate

A federal judge declined to block Rutgers University's vaccine mandate Monday, ruling the anti-vaccine group that lodged the suit failed to demonstrate the action was likely to succeed or that the plaintiffs would face irreparable harm.

U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi denied the bid for an injunction to block the mandate sought by Children's Health Defense — an anti-vaccine group with ties to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and 12 current or future university students.

In his ruling, first reported by Law360, Quaraishi found the plaintiffs failed to meet all four bars it needed to meet for injunctive relief.

Without hearing oral arguments, Quraishi ruled the suit was unlikely to succeed, citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent for the enforcement of vaccine mandates that has gone largely unchallenged for more than 100 years.

That 1905 case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, involved a state resident who refused to comply with a smallpox vaccine mandate, charging the state law requiring such vaccinations was unconstitutional.

Because Rutgers' mandate allows religious and medical exemptions to vaccinations, the university's mandate is less strict than the standard established in Jacobson, and the ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic puts the policy on firm ground, Quraishi found.

Recent suits against vaccine mandates in Indiana and Massachusetts have also proven unsuccessful.

The timing of the plaintiffs' filing raised eyebrows. Though Rutgers announced it would require its students to be immunized against COVID-19 in March and adopted the policy the following month, the lawsuit was not filed until late July.

The vaccine opponents didn't seek an injunction until Aug. 30, only two days before the semester began. By delaying, the plaintiffs harmed themselves, the judge said.

He also found blocking the mandate would harm the university by forcing it to adopt costly measures to accommodate unvaccinated students. The increased spread of COVID-19 would harm the public interest, he ruled.

The suit is ongoing despite the lack of an injunction. The university is due to respond to the plaintiffs' complaint by Oct. 29.

Quraishi's decision is unsurprising. The suit against Rutgers' vaccine mandate always faced long odds, and those appear to have grown longer still after a plaintiff made an incorrect claim that she was told to get the vaccine because of a remote-learning class she was taking.

It turned out that student was set to attend a single class that could meet in person later in the semester and was not enrolled in a fully online degree program, according to Monday's ruling. Students enrolled in the all-remote program are not provided with university IDs, are not expected to ever come to campus, and are exempted from the mandate.

The plaintiffs earlier this month sought Quraishi's recusal, charging his time as an adjunct for the Rutgers University Law School could create the appearance of a conflict of interest, though they did not claim any such conflict exists.

Quraishi declined, citing numerous cases where sitting judges with ties to the Newark law school remained on cases involving the New Brunswick undergraduate college, which is named as a defendant in the vaccine suit.