>Don’t tell anyone, but there’s an election in two weeks
Published: Monday, October 24, 2011, 11:29 PM
The other night, I had a nightmare. I dreamed that there was an election coming up soon in which every seat in the state Legislature was up for grabs. Yet no one was paying attention.
Then I woke up, got my coffee and looked at the calendar. The election’s two weeks from today. That was no dream.
But it may be a nightmare, at least for the New Jersey Republican Party. About this time last year, they were riding high. They had a new Republican governor and they were looking forward to a redistricting process that could give them a fair shot at erasing the dismal memory of the prior decade.
In 2001, the Republicans controlled the state government. Still, they managed to mangle the redistricting process so badly that the Democrats got a map that let them take over both houses of the Legislature.
The GOP didn’t do any better this time around. Perhaps no observer is following the races for 120 seats in 40 legislative districts quite as closely as Patrick Murray of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. I asked Murray if he expects to see the GOP make any major inroads this year.
“Frankly, no,” Murray replied. “It’s as if in April everybody said, ‘Let’s call off the election and everybody can keep their seats.’ ”
April was when the redistricting commission met, setting new legislative districts based on the 2010 U.S. Census. The commission was made up of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. The deciding vote went to an arbiter chosen by the chief justice after he received nominations from both parties. The Democrats submitted the name of Rutgers professor Alan Rosenthal — and so did the Republicans.
https://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2011/10/dont_tell_anyone_but_theres_an.html
