Thanks to his purposefully cautious nature with endorsements and his immensely loyal following in the modern-day Republican Party, former President Donald Trump’s endorsements rarely fail to predict the winner of a Republican primary election in this day and age. In fact, until recently, his federal endorsements have not failed once this election cycle.
That was until the New Jersey Republican Primary for US Senate, when the openly-gay, relatively moderate South Jersey hotelier Curtis Bashaw defeated Trump-endorsed candidate Christine Serrano Glassner, the mayor of Medham. While there exists many reasons why this occurred, the greatest factor, after analyzing the results, was inarguably the New Jersey “county line,” the Garden State’s unique ballot design system.
The “County Line” System
To simplify, the “county line” is a system which places all party-supported candidates on the same column on the primary ballot. Party insiders or delegates are called on every year to choose their preferred slate of candidates for that election cycle.
Often, this leads to a nice-looking “line” on the ballot, where all the party-endorsed candidates fall. The other candidates are often scattered across the ballot in what New Jersey politicos call “Ballot Siberia,” where it appears they have no or little running mates.
The psychological impact of “the line” on voters is massive, and plenty of studies have been done on its advantages, including this one by the New Jersey Policy Perspective. To simplify the study, the county line provides party-endorsed candidates with a substantial advantage, and that in the four contests they analyzed, “the average vote margin between appearing on the county line and having your opponent on the county line was 35 percentage points.”
The implementation of the lines have consistently drawn criticism with good-government groups and anti-establishment sources, but things quickly escalated this year as First Lady Tammy Murphy launched her campaign and immediately drew the support of more than 50% of the county lines in the state. This quickly led to widespread cries of foul and nepotism by progressives, and her primary opponent, US Rep. Andy Kim, decided to take legal action that led to the abolishment of the “county line” in the Democratic primary. Murphy soon dropped out as a result of the negative fallout, and Kim easily won the primary last week with 75% of the vote.
No similar legal action was taken on the Republican side, which meant that the “lines” were still in place this year, but most analysts believe that this year’s Republican primary is likely to be the line’s “last hurrah” before it is tossed into the ashes of history by the courts. Bashaw won most of the “lines,” and it looked like he was poised for the nomination, but Trump then endorsed Glassner at his highly-covered Wildwood rally. The Republican primary quickly became a battle to answer this question: Can the “line” cement itself in history by defeating the most powerful endorsement in modern American politics?
The answer was yes. “The line” ended up defeating the Trump endorsement, as Glassner fell 7 points short. As of unofficial results on 6/8, Bashaw received 45.5% of the Republican primary vote to Glassner’s 38.4%, becoming the first-ever openly gay New Jersey Republican nominee for US Senate.
The Data
| County | Bashaw | Glassner | Murphy | Harshaw | Write-in* |
| Atlantic | 7,372 | 2,933 | 872 | 356 | 0 |
| Camden | 8,611 | 2,092 | 1,810 | 622 | 46 |
| Cape May | 7,397 | 1,214 | 490 | 248 | 44 |
| Cumberland | 3,452 | 928 | 379 | 139 | 7 |
| Essex | 4,938 | 2,295 | 553 | 306 | 0 |
| Gloucester | 7,723 | 2,936 | 1,380 | 511 | 46 |
| Mercer | 3,917 | 1,666 | 1,010 | 429 | 0 |
| Middlesex | 11,497 | 4,824 | 2,745 | 847 | 103 |
| Monmouth | 18,594 | 9,137 | 2,998 | 1,094 | 115 |
| Ocean | 22,860 | 9,904 | 2,510 | 1,203 | 121 |
| Passaic | 8,060 | 3,408 | 1,381 | 680 | 80 |
| Somerset | 9,314 | 3,259 | 1,148 | 847 | 87 |
| All Bashaw Lines | 113,735 | 44,596 | 17,276 | 7,282 | 649 |
| 61.97% | 24.30% | 9.41% | 3.97% | 0.35% |
| County | Bashaw | Glassner | Murphy | Harshaw | Write-in* |
| Bergen | 3,688 | 20,744 | 4,171 | 931 | 90 |
| Hudson | 638 | 3,664 | 981 | 351 | 117 |
| Hunterdon | 3,100 | 5,588 | 876 | 573 | 49 |
| Morris | 4,355 | 18,626 | 3,106 | 1,038 | 130 |
| Union | 1,438 | 7,966 | 1,031 | 315 | 57 |
| Warren | 1,627 | 4,910 | 970 | 517 | 47 |
| All Glassner Lines | 14,846 | 61,498 | 11,135 | 3,725 | 490 |
| 16.19% | 67.07% | 12.14% | 4.06% | 0.53% |
As seen from the tables above, Bashaw won clear majorities in every single county in which he had the line, and so did Glassner, despite South Jersey being relatively more “Trumpy” and North Jersey being relatively more “moderate.” In his home county of Cape May, where Trump held his widely-covered Wildwood rally, Bashaw received a massive 79% of the vote to Glassner’s 13%. Despite positive local media coverage for Glassner as a result of the Trump rally, she was unable to make meaningful advances against the “line” in Bashaw’s South Jersey base.
Even without the “line,” regional coalitions still proved to be quite powerful. Bashaw won the two South Jersey counties that did not use a “county line” this election cycle, Salem and Burlington, albeit by rather narrow margins compared to the “lined counties,” while Glassner easily won North Jersey’s line-less Sussex County. It should be noted that Bashaw’s relatively weak 35% showing in Burlington is a result that owes a great deal to hometown favorite Justin Murphy, who received a relatively high 22% of the vote.
Trump’s Endorsement Wasn’t Necessarily “Useless”
While the results largely didn’t escape the “gravity” of these county organizational lines, that doesn’t mean that Trump’s endorsement was necessarily “useless” for Glassner’s campaign. Despite the lack of her campaign’s presence in much of the south, she easily claimed second place in all of the counties where Bashaw had the line, even though third-place candidate Justin Murphy is also a South Jersey politician. On the other hand, Bashaw finished third in Bergen and Hudson counties, behind Murphy.
In addition, Bashaw’s campaign was widely considered to be a superior operation compared to that of Glassner. Bashaw’s campaign is run by arguably the most effective Republican politician in the state, Cumberland Republican Party Chairman Mike Testa, and he outraised Glassner by a margin of 4-1. Despite joining late in the race, Bashaw also easily defeated Glassner during the nomination process, easily winning the majority of the “county lines” in the state.
But despite all of these advantages, Bashaw won his “line counties” with just 62% compared to Glassner’s 67%, suggesting that Trump’s endorsement itself was able to significantly cut into these built-in advantages for the Bashaw campaign. Even though Trump was not able to escape New Jersey’s unique political gravity, his endorsement was able to effectively neutralize Bashaw’s superior spending and campaign operation, to the point where Glassner was able to pull within single digits statewide even though she had a 2-1 “county line” disadvantage. Trump’s endorsement, while not an inevitable coronation of a candidate as the GOP nominee, remains one of the most powerful forces in modern-day American politics.