The entire New Jersey State Legislature is up for election Tuesday — in many ways, a midterm test of Gov. Phil Murphy’s popularity.
Republicans gained seven seats in the legislature two years ago. If they improve on that performance, they could take control of one or both houses in the legislature.
The election will also be a test of how much local school board races can influence the outcome of the legislative races when they’re held on the same election day.
With the state legislature at the top of the ticket — rather than a race more likely to draw in voters, like a presidential election — turnout is expected to be low. But about 90% of local school boards are holding elections. A conservative movement of parents is active around New Jersey supporting candidates who do not favor policies, based on state guidance, that generally prohibit schools from outing transgender students to their parents. That could drive some parents to the polls.
“There are a number of attacks going on,” said Mike Gottesman, founder of the New Jersey Public Education Coalition, a group that opposes conservative parents who want more say over what’s happening in schools. “I think the major thing that people have to understand is that board of [education] elections, which up until about two or three years ago have always been nonpartisan, have now become the landscape for politics.”
Gottesman’s group organizes against the conservative “parents’ rights” movement, which includes parents who want to ban books from school libraries or change sex education and other curricula they believe aren’t age-appropriate for their children. Most of the books that parents groups have looked to ban involve characters who are LGBTQ or people of color, but those groups argue they also include material that’s too explicit for young children.
In the legislative races, one of the state’s leading Democrats, Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth) is broadly considered in danger of losing his…
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