I hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend, had a chance both to reflect and relax. 

This is the last week of the New Jersey primary season, and most of our coverage is going to focus on the Camden Democratic primaries. That will start with this wider overview of last week’s mayoral debate and later this week we’ll include some candidate videos being shared online, and hopefully more. For those who haven’t followed the debate, I wrote a primer about what I was looking for (and the problems with holding the debate during the day), and posted the entire debate broken down by questions. This post will be my analysis — I’m expecting something similar from Jared Hunter and, of course, you are always encouraged to disagree and post your own thoughts either in the comments or as a guest post. I’d love to hear them! I’m going to split this into three parts: 1) the horserace 2) the election as a referendum on changes to the city and 3) what we can tease out of this debate in terms of Camden’s future. 

First up, the horserace:

I wrote before the debate that it was unlikely the debate would be a game changer in the race. Debates are generally overrated even in Presidential elections, and imaging that the debate would be a crucial factor in Camden misrepresents both how elections are won in relatively small communities, and also the structural challenges in Camden elections. In both cases, it is more likely to be retail politics and get-out-the-vote efforts that make a difference. That’s true in a lot of small communities, but particularly in Camden where much of the population is transient and isolated — there are big challenges to getting voters to the polls. I continue to believe that this race will be decided by who has the most professionalized ground game, and that the slate of candidates “on the line” have a huge head start in terms of infrastructure. A poorly attended debate in the middle of the work day is unlikely to change that dynamic, though I still think it’s worthwhile to livestream such events (thanks Rutgers!) and produce video so that there is civic infrastructure for Camden residents. 

I came into the debate with two questions: 1) would City Council President and presumptive front-runner Frank Moran choose to double-down and defend the city’s record or would he pivot to a new, forward-looking agenda? and 2) could Theo Spencer or Ray Lamboy position themselves as the most likely candidate to unseat Moran? 

The answer to the first question was no. Moran ran on the major accomplishments of the last mayor: using economic incentives to bring businesses to Camden, the record of the Metro Police, and the influx of new schools in the city. The debate quickly become a referendum on those policies, with Spencer and Lamboy spelling out grievances and Moran laying out the accomplishments. Those policies and grievances have been repeatedly written about and litigated here on the blog, and it was hard to tell at the debate what landed. Part of that had to do with the hardcore audience, a mix of a who’s-who of the local Democratic party, quick to clap for Moran, and supporters of Lamboy and Spencer, who did the same for their candidate. Multiple people mentioned to me after the debate that no one in the audience changed their mind in this debate, and I think it was an apt observation. 

But the referendum on these policies does indicate a wider strategy to double-down on policies that are increasingly seen by the rest of the Democratic Party in the state as being too conservative. All three Democratic leaders in the governor’s race have called for limiting corporate subsidies and been critical of charter schools. The police issue is a bit more contested state-wide, with the community policing elements being lauded, the union busting less so, and the significant drop in officers of color remaining off the radar. If we’re reading the tea leaves, the South Jersey Democratic Party (particularly in Camden) looks poised to continue down this path of being generally to the right of the part state-wide — perhaps a reflection of a powerbroker that openly supports school vouchers, cutting union wages and beyond, but also likely a reflection of a South Jersey community that itself has subtle conservative tendencies, from race relations to the unpopularity of high property taxes. 

I also came into the debate looking to see if either Lamboy or Spencer could separate from the other and establish himself as the premiere “resistance” candidate. My sense going in was that the racial elements of the race were still important, and that Theo Spencer had made strides within the black community and a particularly strident group of young black activists while Lamboy has a broader appeal and more organized campaign. Some of those Spencer’s supporters  were very vocal at the debate. While Lamboy has generally run the more professional campaign (seen around the edges — his website with at least a basic platform, some consultant influence to the campaign, professional mailing lists and requests for money, his slate of candidates, high quality videos), he faces an uphill battle uniting the varied constituencies. In some ways, its the same challenge as mentioned above — Camden is fractured and transient. Local activists have built followings, but they are often neighborhood specific. One of the challenges is stitching together an idiosyncratic group of communities into a coalition. Lamboy’s slate reflects that challenge — particularly the selection of a candidate (Namibia El) who has works closely with one such group centered around the Unity Community Center. 

I came into the race thinking Lamboy was more likely than Spencer to pull together that coalition, for both the professionalism reasons above, and because Spencer was unable to do so when he ran in the previous mayoral primary against Mayor Dana Redd. But it’s a big challenge for both of them, and one they’re both wrestling with. The debate offered a minor opportunity to emerge as the frontrunner and avoid a split vote scenario. Judging from the media footprint of the debate, that didn’t happen. Joe Hernandez’s News Works article highlighted some of Spencer’s critiques first, and also had a Spencer quote to close out the article. 

But I’d also caution against reading too much into the debate tea leaves on these issues of coalitions. It will be a major problem for both Spencer and Lamboy if they split the vote that largely agrees with their critiques of the current leadership. But the presence of a few activists on either side tells us little about what’s happening on the ground in Camden. Yes, a few prominent voices were very vocal for their chosen candidate at the debate (for both Lamboy and Spencer) and there’s been some buzz on Facebook from some of those same faces. But in the ever-changing world of Camden activism, it’s always been unclear how many votes activists bring with them. The longer, harder, work is going door-to-door and meeting families, then having the infrastructure to get them to the polls on June 6th. We don’t know very much about how that process is going right now, so we should be humble about reading too much into the debate support tea leaves. 

I also want to talk a little bit about some of the policy issues in the debate. As a general rule, there weren’t a lot of policy specifics. Moran proposed a business council to meet to address concerns about hiring. Spencer proposed a wage tax. Lamboy stuck closely to a series of democratic reforms to return local control to the city. But the debate was a testy back-and-forth about the merits of what the current Democratic leadership has done in the city. That was predictable — this was the only time for Spencer and Lamboy to directly challenge Moran on these issues — but took a surprisingly wide berth. Moran was criticized for everything from not paving streets in his own community, to misleading campaign literature, to big-ticket policies such as police, education and business tax subsidies. The last was the biggest lightening rod, with Moran pointing out two audience members who had received jobs at Holtec, and fierce criticism from both Lamboy and Spencer about the policy and the pressure it put on residents and local businesses. Spencer’s quip was picked up by WHYY, he said “That’s property taxes that are supposed to be coming into the city to fix things. You gave the money away!”, and Lamboy’s answer was one of his best retail-politics moments — he told a story about how local businesses called it a “fundraiser” when the city was low on funds because the city would send inspectors to write tickets to small businesses. It was Lamboy’s strongest moment in the debate — not a coincidence given his track record helping small businesses at the Latin American Economic Development Association. 

Finally, this was a debate at times that got ugly and personal. Lamboy and Moran seemed, in particular, to have little love for each other. Lamboy challenged Moran’s track record as a councilman in his own district, and Moran went after both candidates — critiquing Spencer (unfairly in my view) for not being visible in the community (probably because Spencer does a lot of traveling for work), and with extremely personal critiques of Lamboy both for his closed family business on Broadway Street, and for having lived part of his life in Cherry Hill before returning for Camden. It was a stylistic difference from Mayor Dana Redd, who largely chose to stay above the fray, and reflects how different of a personality Moran is from previous leadership. While he is a talented retail politician, he also came across as undisciplined. In a more scrutinized race, that would probably have garnered more pushback. It was surprising to see a frontrunner engage in that kind of petty political attacks. 

But underneath the rancor was Some important consensus, and I want to highlight that. All three candidates were focused on judging impact of policies on local jobs. That’s something that’s been missing from the structure of the Economic Opportunity Act, Urban Hope Act and new police force — though there have been after-the-fact attempts in all three areas to encourage local hiring. Those programs have mixed reviews (I think they’ve been largely unsuccessful except for police/education, but there is a little more promise with Holtec’s internship). But the consensus (and campaigning on it) provides an inkling of hope that the next line of policies will put local hiring and jobs in the center of its strategies. 

I came out of the debate thinking their weren’t necessarily winners or losers. The status quo remains the same — Moran is in a powerful position largely because of the wider system he is a part of. Both Spencer and Lamboy have an uphill battle that is largely organizational. There was no evidence that one has separated from the other — which needs to happen for one of them to win — but there was meager evidence at all on the topic. And the divides about what a thriving Camden looks like, the democratic role of its residents, and the impact of key policy changes in the city over the last few years are lightening rods for debate. We’ll cover the election as much as possible before next Tuesday, but that appears to be where we’ll be going into election day.