Last Tuesday was a Republican sweep by every measure. So who forgot to inform New Jersey voters of the trend?
While Massachusetts voters were busy electing a Republican governor, the Democrats swept the Garden State. Frank Lautenberg defeated Doug Forrester by a wide margin (even after a ballot switch of questionable legitimacy), Democrats maintained their majority of House seats, and the party did extremely well in county and local elections.
Things weren't always this way. Once upon a time (i.e. three years ago), pundits spoke of New Jersey as a swing state, as the home of famously independent voters who might go either way in a given election. Although today it is fashionable to talk about how the state has not elected a Republican senator in 30 years, people often fail to mention that for 16 of the last 20 years, New Jersey has had a Republican governor. Until 2000, both houses of the state legislature were controlled by Republicans, too. And before 1998, the Congressional delegation had been pretty well split in half between the parties.
Perhaps there has been a massive shift in New Jersey voter opinion in the last few years. I tend to think not. The President still gets consistently high statewide approval ratings, and polls suggest that opinions on the issues still tend to be fairly moderate. No, the recent difficulties associated with electing Republicans in New Jersey are political, not based in a major realignment of values.
Consider the abortion issue. According to the latest Quinnipiac polls, while over 80 percent of New Jerseyans support abortion rights in some form, over 75 percent of voters also support required parental notification for minors seeking an abortion. Guess which recent Senate candidate's position mirrors public opinion on abortion? Here's a hint: It's not Lautenberg's.
Doug Forrester's position of abortion rights with restrictions is one that New Jersey voters overwhelmingly support in public opinion polls, and yet he was slaughtered by Lautenberg on the abortion issue. How did that happen? The simple answer is that Forrester's position is one that requires a nuanced explanation that is difficult to deliver en masse during a campaign, and so voters sided with Lautenberg's unequivocal support of a woman's right to choose. The real answer is much uglier.
The Republican party of New Jersey is bitterly divided between moderates and conservatives. Conservative candidates can't win statewide office; unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler is proof of that. Moderate Republicans appear to have a set of positions that reflect public opinion in the state extremely well, but they are unable to articulate them. It has nothing to do with poor oratory skills, but rather, with the Herculean political task set before them. If they clarify their true positions, they will capture more of the necessary votes in the center, but they will also depress turnout among their more conservative party base. The result is a muddled message that leaves conservatives dissatisfied and fails to seduce the centrists. And the party loses.
When former Governor Christine Whitman ran for reelection in 1997, she almost lost to challenger James McGreevey. The tightness of the election was a surprise to many observers; after all, Whitman had been a popular governor. But as a moderate she had angered the conservative base of her party, and she lost a large number of votes to Libertarian Murray Sabrin. In fact, Republicans from other parts of the country often still refer to her as a RINO (Republican In Name Only). Moderate Republicans can win in New Jersey, but they must walk a very tight line between general popularity and strong party support.
New Jersey is not a bastion of liberalism, nor can it be considered a solid blue state. Voters still will swing, and the moderates of either major party hold the popular positions. But just as the national Democratic party is searching for a way to move forward with a clear and common message, the Republican party of New Jersey must find a way to bring its members together under a coherent platform that both unifies its base and attracts the center.
Many Democrats hope this does not happen; they would for good reason prefer to see the Republican party reduced to a position of token opposition within a solidly Democratic state. That prospect frightens me, just as it would if the situation were reversed. New Jersey has been a place of political dynamism, a battleground of ideas and programs where democracy has shown its true form in competitive elections. Here's hoping it returns. Lowell Schiller is a Wilson School major from Warren, N.J. He can be reached at schiller@princeton.edu.
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