For Henal Patel, law and policy director at the nonpartisan New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, the issue is that the party line isn’t about specific candidate or person — it’s about “the system itself,” and whether or not the state will empower the “increasingly diverse” community of voters in New Jersey or “basically say their votes don’t matter.” She called the party line a “sophisticated form of voter suppression.”
“This is the U.S. Senate seat. The stakes are really high. And yet everyone’s talking about it like it’s sewn up. It’s decided, because five people in five counties have gone in for the first lady, and then that’s it. It doesn’t matter what the voters of New Jersey—one of the most diverse states in the country — want,” Patel said.