For working class New Jerseyans, politicking for governor doesn’t matter if all the candidates eventually make peace with the same party that oversaw a genocide, the growth of ICE, staggering income inequality, bailing out of big banks, and rent becoming more than a third of their income. That’s why we need to fight Republicans and Democrats and unite neighbors across race, status, wage, and party with a coalition like what amounted in last year’s Democratic primary.

New Jerseyans are facing an all-out assault by the Trump administration. From ICE raids to defunding of federal work and research and even gutting the National Labor Rights Board that protects workers every day, workers are in the crosshairs despite Trump’s “pro-working class” rhetoric.

What’s worse is Democrats seem incapable of mounting any worthwhile opposition that doesn’t speak to the material realities of workers. “Fierce opposition” amounts only to tweets about how much Republicans are lying. They are, but speaking to just that doesn’t win you votes. 

We need a more worthy opposition that calls out Trump’s posturing toward working class-aesthetics, like his McDonalds stunt, while gutting labor law, like his firing of two Labor Board appointees, rendering the board without a quorum for deciding on cases.

2025 may be a new year but nothing so far says the party is cooking with any new ingredients. 57% of registered voters have an unfavorable opinion of Democrats, the highest percentage since Quinnipiac started asking the question in 2008. The Republican party is at 43% favorability which is unimpressive given the lock on all branches of government. No one is happy with their choices in this system of bipolar elites.

We need to reckon with the political system that sentenced Bob Menendez to 11 years for acting as a foreign agent, but for every other senator, including Senator Kim, who consistently voted for funding apartheid, and genocide, nothing. 

Meanwhile, Democrats are making it harder to make it on to the ballot. Nearly doubling the threshold necessary to make it on. Both for candidates and for movements like Uncommitted.

Finally, last week, Gov. Murphy sat with his predecessor, Jon Corzine, and Republican former governors Chris Christie and Tom Kean Sr. in bipartisan bouts of who can suck up to the Camden County machine the best. All the Democrats in this scene are from Goldman Sachs and the Republicans have attacked teachers unions.

Workers just aren’t voting D unless healthcare, housing and the cost of living crisis are addressed. We need a party that champions Medicare for All, not hides from it.

We’ve meanwhile become America’s golden (back) door where immigrants are one in three and yet are targeted in ICE raids and have no voting rights even at the local level. Democrats’ political response ought to differ from the organizations on the ground, but so far it’s just been know-your-rights trainings. Those are good and well, but not the level of response necessary for our electeds.

Republicans’ vilifying of immigrants doesn’t find much of an audience in NJ but deep mistruths about who’s to blame for wages and working conditions exist, and we should combat them not with liberal scolding but with getting young people to join their unions or make them where they don’t exist.

We need more political activists, like Zohran Mamdani, a socialist running for NYC mayor who’s raised the most money so far and is proving the progressive mantle can rely on someone distancing themselves from the Democrat label altogether. He’s gone on hunger strike for taxi cab drivers and commits to freezing the rent and building municipal owned grocery stores. That’s the kind of vision and program socialists lead with.

New Jersey can be our first proving ground for this worthy opposition nationally. We’re first at bat with gubernatorial and legislative elections this year. We’re the first state to politically respond to Trump 2.0.

We are now also largely independent, as for the first time the “Unaffiliated” affiliation eclipsed Democrats in registration, as young people defect from the Democratic party, some toward Trump, and many more away from the ballot altogether.

Finally, as noted previously, New Jersey had a historic protest vote in the Democratic primary last year in the Uncommitted movement, and much like Michigan and Minnesota, where there’s a reformed or some level of independent party apparti (DFL) New Jersey is walking the line between fighting its Democratic party and swing state status.

The last time New Jersey was a swing state was in the 1930s, when Hudson County machine boss Frank Hague had FDR’s ear for his reliability in delivering a block of votes that could secure electoral votes from the state. During the Great Depression, FDR’s ability to deliver federal funding to Hudson made this marriage sacred. New Jersey can model Minnesota and fight its Democrats, and do like Philadelphia and kick out the Republicans, in different places at the same time.

If New Jerseyans were to get a chance at a primary without county ballot lines, and with a cohered labor-left program or candidate we might have a chance to mount an independent, popular electoral movement like we did in 2024. No matter what signature threshold Democrats raise the minimums to. If 50,000 Uncommitted voters rallied around a specific candidate or program this upcoming Democratic primary, it could mean something as big as state level Pro Act, or single-payer healthcare, or taxing the rich to fix NJTransit, or even championing the divestment of all public funds in Israel’s apartheid and genocide in Gaza. Or all of the above.

One common path of progressive candidates’ today is through the unrepresentative, an undemocratic Democratic county committees and their endorsement process. They don’t make “taking over the party” meaningful. Case in point is Tammy Murphy securing half the endorsements without any real popular momentum. These bodies fail to engage the deepest pool of potential Democrats, those not just responding to Trump’s rhetoric but living through his actions and realities made during Democratic administrations. Any attempts to take over the party should recall local efforts during Trump's first term in New Jersey, and admittedly socialists' plight in the state of Nevada.

Right now, workers at Rutgers University and RWJBarnabas are uniting to form the wall-to-wall labor entity that wins big, together, and bargains for the common good of our communities. But a labor movement without an electoral strategy of placing permanent negotiators in Trenton in the form of legislative seats won’t be able to win rent reductions and improved public transit, and other gains for the whole working class. 

Democratic socialists in Jersey City are running city council candidates Jake Ephros and Joel Brooks this year, two examples of sewer socialists that get down to basics, stand up to developers and model agitational and organizing-first politics.

The labor-left movement in New Jersey needs to mount the resistance now against Trump and not only defend immigrants rights but expand them, if it’s to have any shot at a general strike and replacing Democrats with more worthy champions at the state, local, and even federal level by 2028.

Thankfully, when the Republican President regularly resides in your state to golf, and when his austerity and xenophobia crumble any notions of labor peace or electoral coalition, you know even just a little bit of class struggle can take hold and deliver something monumental.