Tammy Murphy beats Andy Kim for the Bergen County Democratic Party line

After more than two hours of voting, New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy won the line at an open county convention for the first time, scoring her first victory in Bergen County.

Murphy and Rep. Andy Kim have been battling at conventions throughout the state to claim the coveted county line — a ballot position that lends an edge to the holder — for the June primary for the Democratic nomination in this year’s U.S. Senate race.

More than 1,100 delegates turned up to the Bergen County Democratic convention Monday night at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers hall in Paramus.

Murphy won 738 votes to Kim’s 419. The vote was conducted via paper ballot.

Both candidates — vying to replace federally indicted Sen. Bob Menendez, who has not yet said whether he will seek a new term — have been holding campaign events in Bergen County for weeks.

Kim and Murphy addressed Bergen County Democratic delegates at the IBEW hall on Century Road in Paramus last Tuesday.

Bergen County Democratic Chairman Paul Juliano endorsed Murphy two days after she announced her candidacy. Juliano has said he did not talk to Kim after the Burlington County congressman announced his intent to run. Juliano currently serves as the president and CEO of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, having been appointed to the post by Gov. Phil Murphy last year. He makes $280,000 a year in the role.

What Murphy and Kim said

The first lady said after the vote that the Bergen win showed she has momentum but that nothing changes and she plans to keep going up and down the state.

“I think things are going as I had hoped. Obviously it’s great to have this incredible win, and I just feel really good,” she said. “I spoke to so many people. I was standing up for four hours straight taking pictures, and I could just feel the excitement.”

The congressman is not retiring from the contest, though. Kim said he was happy with the turnout and said he wanted to show that he isn’t “scared of the machine, and 400 people also said that.”

“We’re really excited about the energy we’ve had. The Korean American community has been fired up here,” Kim said. “Bergen County is going to be central, so we’re going to continue to be up here.”

He went on to say that it was not a fair fight because Juliano, the county Democratic chair, endorsed Murphy a mere 48 hours after she declared her candidacy.

When asked about the fairness of the process in Bergen County, Murphy said the candidates are all in the same fight, but she did not expand on that response.

Juliano said he “definitely supported her, but it was a fair process.”

“I picked up the phone and said this is where I’m going and this is why I’m going that way,” Juliano said. “If they chose to follow me I’m grateful, and if they chose to go another direction that’s fine, too.”

Where does the race stand?

Kim has won the line in Monmouth, Hunterdon, Sussex and Warren counties, where an open convention with a secret ballot was used to determine ballot position. He also won the endorsement of the county party in Sussex, though the ballots there have a block design format.

Murphy has garnered the line in Passaic and Union counties, where the former allows for a private screening committee vote and the latter has the party’s screening committee of the municipal and county chairs vote publicly.

Kim lawsuit has March 18 hearing

Kim filed a lawsuit last month calling the ballot design in New Jersey unconstitutional and saying the design used in the other 49 states — a block style — should be used here as well.

A hearing in that case will be held March 18.

“The system provides preferential ballot position for such candidates and displays them in a manner that nudges voters to select them, even when they otherwise might not,” Kim's filing says. “By contrast, their opponents are often excluded from a chance at preferential ballot placement, displayed in a column by themselves or in a manner that is less appealing to or harder to find for voters, separated by one or more blank ballot spaces from their opponents, stacked in a column with candidates for other offices with whom they do not want to be associated, and/or otherwise strewn about haphazardly on the ballot.”

Kim, alongside the two other candidates in the primary, Patricia Campos-Medina and Lawrence Hamm, has already called for the line system to be dismantled and the block system, which is used by every other state in the nation as well as two New Jersey counties, to be implemented statewide.

In response to the suit, a spokesperson for Murphy said that "Andy Kim doesn't have a problem with the county line system, he has a problem with the idea of losing county lines — as he is perfectly happy to participate in the process when he wins, and he has benefited from the lines in every other election he's run."

Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey State House. Email: sobko@northjersey.com