Malinowski (NJ - 7) - Dem and Moderate party 'play'

[JustAnotherGen]

Fusion voting - which I recall from my 14 years as a voter in NY State allows a candidate to appear on two different lines.


Could a new political party defang radical politicians?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/08/tom-malinowski-moderate-party-new-jersey-can-it-defang-extremism/

Pundits and political scientists have claimed for years that there is no hope for a third party. The structural advantages for a two-party system and voters’ aversion to “throwing away their votes” pose a major hurdle for alternative candidates.

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Yet in a couple of states, alternate parties thrive. In New York, the Conservative Party and the Working Families Party both endorse candidates. In the case of the Conservative Party, such candidates may also run on the Republican Party line. These sort of “fusion parties” used to be common throughout the 19th century, but the entrenched parties set about to outlaw them to protect their political turf.

Now, as Republicans leap into the abyss of the MAGA movement, such parties might once again serve a useful purpose. The test case is the highly competitive race in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, where moderate Democrat Tom Malinowski will likely face off against Tom Kean Jr., son of the former New Jersey governor and co-chair of the 9/11 commission who used to personify moderate Republican politics.

Kean Jr., unlike his father, cast a Faustian bargain with the far-right wing of the GOP. Like so many cynical careerists, he preferred to jump onto the MAGA bandwagon over the moderate politics that once made his father a revered figure in the state. Local coverage has ridiculed his pandering to the MAGA crowd, including his refusal to condemn the Republican National Committee’s description of the Jan. 6 insurrection as “legitimate political discourse.” The Star-Ledger editorial board lambasted him for “squandering” his family’s legacy.

Malinowski tells me, “I think there’s a desperate need in this country for Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans to strike an alliance” against the increasingly radical, “election-denying” GOP. He adds, “I think a substantial share of Republican-leading voters in districts like mine would be willing to vote for a moderate Democrat if they could do so under the flag of a party reflective of their values.” These are people who say “I don’t want to vote for AOC’s party” but would gladly cast their ballot for a candidate who sounded like, well, the elder Tom Kean.

Local Article: Note - Wolfe is also a former Mayor of East Amwell -
https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/06/new-nj-political-party-moderate-party-east-amwell-township-committeeman-richard-wolfe-support-for-tom-malinowski/

Wolfe, who is a lawyer and lifelong Republican, said the party is prepared to file a lawsuit to overturn the law, which it contends is unconstitutional and violates the group’s rights to free speech and equal protection.

“As I understand it, because the two major parties wanted to preserve their monopoly, wanted to try to shrink the influence of third parties, they got the election laws changed in New Jersey to provide that a candidate can only appear on the ballot once for a single party,” he said. “So we have to challenge those election laws, which is what we’re going to do.”

NJ - 7th Resident here - we've got to do what we've got to do. Folks like AOC can have both the WFP and Democratic Party lines in NYC/Bronx.

But in the 7th - where folks who are former GOP won't ever vote for Democratics because of the links to the Progressive/Sanders branch of the party -

This is a way to get Republicans who agree with us on the need to save our Democracy, to vote for our moderate congressman.