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In a battle of Assembly members, Gordon Johnson easily defeated Valerie Vainieri Huttle by a margin of 3 to 1.
The primary race to determine the Democrat who will try to succeed retiring Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg was a lopsided one.
The two Assembly members in Weinberg’s district took each other on, the first time in almost 20 years there was a Democratic primary for her Senate seat, and Gordon Johnson won handily, by a 3 to 1 margin over Valerie Vainieri Huttle.
The two progressives were just about carbon copies of each other politically, but until voters okayed it in a referendum, Huttle had been opposed to legalizing recreational marijuana. Johnson had an advantage on the ballot a position on the Democratic line with Governor Murphy.
NJ Republicans wrestle with devotion to Trump in primary
MIKE CATALINI, Associated Press
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TRENTON, N.J. (AP) New Jersey Republicans will decide Tuesday whether their standard bearer to take on Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy will be a strong supporter of Donald Trump or a well-funded establishment-backed candidate who hardly mentions the former president.
Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. in primaries for governor and the state Legislature, which has every member of both houses up for election this year.
Murphy is running unopposed in the Democratic primary, but the GOP is sorting out how it will move forward in the post-Trump era in a four-way race.
Mississippi case makes abortion topic in NJ Legislature, election
TRENTON – Long-simmering legislation that would write the right to an abortion into New Jersey law and make related changes got an extra push last week, when the Supreme Court accepted a case from Mississippi that could pare back or overturn Roe v. Wade.
There’s no state law in New Jersey codifying abortion rights – just case law, which activists contend would be in jeopardy, depending how the Supreme Court rules, probably next year, on the law that prohibits abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Mississippi.
Gov. Phil Murphy said he strongly prefers a vote on the Reproductive Freedom Act before June 30, because that’s when the Legislature is likely to go on recess until after the election.