Democrats spent all of 2024 talking about how President-Elect Trump was going to take democracy away. In reality, it is the New Jersey Democrats who are doing just that right now.

Ever since I remember, it has been 100
signatures to run in a partisan primary for the New Jersey Legislature. Now after the Democratic machine has made multiple mistakes in the past year, contributing to the best Republican Presidential and US Senate showings in NJ in a generation, they are descending further into defense.

As reported in the New Jersey Globe today, the Democrats want to raise signature requirements to 250 members of a party to sign to run for the Legislature. What does this mean? It means despite Republican registration doubling in Hudson County since 2010 aspiring candidates in our 3 main districts now need to go from under 1 percent of Republicans signing to get on the ballot to 2 percent. In the 29th District we share with Essex it is almost a staggering 4 percent! Practically this means that in many urban districts despite valiant efforts, Republicans may not make it on the ballot at all, This would leave having to do a write-in vote in the primary. Or the Democrat incumbent being unopposed in the general as the only two options.

How is this defending democracy? It is also clear discrimination against the increasing amount of minority voters who want to and are voting for Republican candidates. This is a bad bill and I call on Senators Ruiz, McKnight, Mukherji and Stack, who never have shown disrespect to competition, to vote No and truly protect democracy in NJ. Also, I call on the whole Republican Senate caucus to stand united in opposition to this bill.

Jose Arango
Hudson County Republican Chairman