On February 19th, Felisha Reyes Morton was appointed to the Fourth Ward Camden City Council Seat. While the Camden City Democratic Committee solicited resumes, Morton was the frontrunner from day one for appointment, in part because she is a strong candidate, rooted in community — something particularly important given the potential of a stiff challenge for the seat by veteran and Camden native Luis Gaitan, who is running a primary challenge. Gaitan’s potential as a candidate required the Democratic Committee to tap one of the best talents on its bench. It’s an important reminder that what makes the local Democratic party so powerful isn’t that it always uses its resources in elections, but that these resources (people and financial) are available when there is a stiff challenge, and that it’s possible to escalate the performance of establishment infrastructure in those races.
I remember having this conversation with Alex Law when he started his primary campaign again Don Norcross for the NJ1 congressional seat. Law, to his credit, had a plan. He’d charted a course to beat Norcross’ previous primary numbers in the previous election. And Law did that — he hit his numbers and would have beaten Norcross if Norcross’ votes had stayed stagnant. It just happened that Norcross (and the Democratic power structures that support him) had tremendous latent power — they got out the vote at a much higher level than the previous election and beat Law easily.
I found this to be tremendously insightful into how the local power structures work. They work, in part, because they have the resources to pull out the stops when serious challengers arrive. But far more often, the threat of those resources is enough to keep serious challengers out of races.
There are lots of strategic questions around this (are the resources and bench deep enough to sustain against multiple credible primaries?). But in the case of Camden’s 4th Ward, it appears that there was a sense early on that Gaitan would be a credible challenger. Against Luis Lopez, who had significant weaknesses as a candidate, Gaitan had serious inroads with community. But the ability to nominate Morton and make her an incumbent — one who has deep ties in the youth and education aspects of the North Camden community — makes the path much harder for Gaitan.
He’s now facing the same challenge that Alex Law faced — he’s being taken seriously, and that means a much more uphill climb. For Gaitan, who has a compelling local story, respect for his organizing in North Camden, and a somewhat professional campaign infrastructure, he now faces the second challenge of the campaign: can he respond to the first chess move in response to his candidacy?
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