State Supreme Court: Special Election Can Go On As Planned

The state Supreme Court Thursday afternoon said it will not hear a challenge to the October special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat of late Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

In a single-page opinion handed down Thursday afternoon, the court dismissed the challenge brought by Somerset Democratic Chair Peg Schaffer, who argued Gov. Chris Christie did not have the authority to create the Oct. 16 special election. 

Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said Schaffer’s request for the court to hear the case is denied.

Schaffer argued that Gov. Chris Christie overstepped his authority in setting the election just 20 days before the regular Nov. 5 polling date and that voters would be unnecessarily confused and disenfrachised by Christie's move.

Schaffer said she was disappointed in the court's decision.

"We tried to fix it and we were unsuccessful,'' Schaffer said. "I know the public sentiment is very much against this hodge-podge of back-to-back elections and hopefully they express that at the appropriate times.''

NJ Citizen Action, a government watchdog group that filed a brief in support of Schaffer’s case, expressed disappointment with Thursday’s decision.

"I think we had a strong argument, that the legislature wanted to avoid special elections because of costs associated with it," said Ann Vardeman, an organizer with NJ Citizen Action. "The cost of this special election is unnecessary and wasteful."

Politicians React

Barbara Buono, Christie's Democratic challenger, called the governor's decision to hold two general elections within 20 days of each other "a conscious effort to discourage voter participation" in a release.

"It is just another example of the cynical conservative philosophy that disenfranchising voters is a viable path to victory,'' the release said.

U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, (D-N.J.), who is vying for the U.S. Senate seat, also decried Thursday's decision in a release.

"The Governor’s aggressively partisan decision reeks of the same voter suppression tactics employed by Tea Party Republicans across the country and is the type of action I have spent my entire career fighting," Pallone said in the release.