While American citizens worry about the fate of the nation as time ticks down to the Nov. 5th election, New Jersey’s political establishment continues to gleefully look ahead to the train wreck potential of 2025. That’s the next gubernatorial election year, when New Jersey will choose the successor to two-term Governor Phil Murphy. If the NJ bosses didn’t see anything amiss in the intensification of totalitarianism at the national level, they did feel miffed by Andy Kim’s mangling of the establishment-friendly ballot system and how it might have a significant process impact on the next election, the big one, on the heels of that little afterthought called Harris v. Trump.

There was a time when politicians courted immigrants, instead of falsifying charges that immigrants eat cats and dogs. With its melting pot population heavy on Irish Catholics, Hudson County once all-but anointed the president when candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed up at Frank “I am the Law” Hague’s beach house to collect the coveted immigrant vote nurtured by Hague and former presidential candidate Al Smith. But that was then this is now, where a dedicated portion of the country sees George Wallace, not FDR, as the model, and Hudson – with the presidential contest already all but decided in New Jersey – preoccupies itself with the potential longer-term elimination of the county party line.

In order to protect incumbents, the Legislature will, of course, try to minimize a judge’s directive to alter the line in the public’s favor, but even the most conservative line adjustment by lawmakers seeking reelection won’t dispel the likelihood of a significant collision in Hudson County. The former Frank Hague stomping ground will feature a mayoral election next year, which creates political volatility after the 12-year run of Mayor Steven Fulop. Numerous citywide candidates continue to campaign hard in the city, among them former Governor James McGreevey, Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea, Jersey City Council President Joyce Watterman, and Mussab Ali, former president of the Jersey City Board of Education. In addition, Councilman James Solomon will formally kick off his canididacy on Thursday evening.

Fulop wants to be governor, and he remains popular in his hometown of Jersey City, even if the party pooh-bahs don’t back him for higher office. That sets up a civil war scenario between Fulop and the ruling establishment alliance of state Senator Brian P. Stack and Hudson County Democratic Organization Chairman (and County Executive) Craig Guy. Even if a judge insists on the most watered-down version of what was once the suffocating country party line, the organizational heft of Stack and the county will make it difficult for challengers to gain traction. Except, this is Fulop, who has a history of beating the machine in his home country. Even if he fails to get significant traction anywhere else in the state, he will give the brass in his home county fits.

Sources say Fulop is looking hard at Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla and Assemblywoman Jessica Ramirez to sign on the dotted line for their cause off the line.  At the same time, the HCDO is said to be mulling Katie Brennan as a potential candidate for the assembly. Assemblyman John Allen does not intend to seek reelection. Presumably, U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer will have Stack’s and Guy’s support and, at the very least, the HCDO slogan. if not some version of the line.

Whatever unfolds within the larger dimensions of a statewide clash in next year’s Democratic Primary for governor, Hudson will be relevant again, if not to the presidency as it was in Hague’s day, and if not even conceivably to the rest of New Jersey, owing to the diminished impact caused by too many primary crosshairs, Hudson will at least be relevant to Hudson, and maybe to New Jersey, unified and sufficiently potent owing to the exorcisms of the primary, in time for the 2025 general election.