Making a Difference in LD26
How SOMA Action helped drive record turnout and tighten the results in a 2019 State Legislature race
By Rose Maura Lorre
SOMA Action was founded on a belief that change starts at home, but in 2019, the group took an important step--politically and geographically--toward affecting change next door. That’s when the organization handed out two of its first-ever endorsements to campaigns situated outside South Orange-Maplewood’s electoral borders. Christine Clarke and Laura Fortgang were running to unseat two GOP Assemblypersons representing New Jersey’s 26th District, an area that ends just a few miles northwest of SOMA.
Candidate Christine Clarke (center) with canvassers Jerry Leventhal and Rebecca Scheer
Spoiler alert: Clarke and Fortgang did not win. But their campaigns exemplified the continued need for strong progressive candidates to run everywhere, and for grassroots groups like SOMA Action to be by their sides.
“I grew up in Morris County, when New Jersey was a swing state and the county was deep red. For years, I’ve watched Morris County turn progressively more blue,” recalls Rebecca Scheer, a Maplewood resident and chair of SOMA Action’s Political Action Committee, which spearheaded the group’s efforts to support Clarke and Fortgang’s joint ticket. “I felt like SOMA Action could use some of our power to speed up that process by helping candidates who are challenging longstanding incumbents.”
But not just any candidates. Scheer notes that, in years past, Democrats in districts like LD26 “more or less ran as ‘suicide candidates.’ They didn’t really run campaigns or get much support from the Democratic party.” In contrast, she calls Clarke and Fortgang “formidable” contenders for several reasons. For starters, before running on a joint ticket in LD26, both served as local Democratic municipal chairs; they were also early organizers behind another grassroots activist group, NJ 11th for Change. “They championed progressive values and policies,” Scheer explains. “They’d been involved with grassroots politics in the district for a long while, so we knew that their commitment to these values was real, and had developed long before they had decided to run for office.”
After responding to a lengthy questionnaire outlining their positions and platform, Clarke and Fortgang received SOMA Action’s official endorsement -- a move that allowed the group to work directly with the candidates’ campaigns on phone-banking, canvassing, postcard-writing drives and get-out-the-vote initiatives. Fortgang looks back on SOMA Action’s endorsement as “a great boost… It could mean essential support like dollars and canvassing boots on the ground, it could mean further name recognition for the campaign and it serves as a credential of sorts, further legitimizing the campaign.”
Still, winning was always expected to be an uphill battle. Clarke and Fortgang were taking on Republican incumbents in a district that hadn’t gone blue in more than a generation. Adds Scheer, “This was a single, state-level race, outside of our distinct. There wasn't the imperative of flipping the state assembly, as there had been in the House races we had canvassed for in the midterms. In fact, I think many people were still burnt out from the midterms. But despite all this -- and having our work cut out for us educating many of our own members [about the race] -- we got a lot of people on board, we were able to inform a lot of people about this race, and SOMA Action definitely made an impact.”
The most impressive result of Clarke and Fortgang’s candidacies? They increased voter turnout in LD26 by 91 percent compared to 2015. Among those who voted for the Democratic candidates, turnout increased by a whopping 117 percent.
The impact of their campaigns also reverberated in races throughout the state--and will continue to do so in elections to come. “The Republican candidates had to make an effort to hold on to their seats… They had to raise money–and spend it,” says Scheer. “This depletes resources for the state GOP overall, who have only a finite amount to spend on races throughout the state.” Adds Fortgang, “I have no doubt it moved the needle.” Progressive campaigns that finish strong in red districts send an equally critical message to the Democratic party machine. According to Scheer, “It showed the Democrat establishment in New Jersey that independent, progressive candidates need to be taken seriously. It showed that strong, grassroots support for a candidate goes farther than any amount of money. There were many well-funded, machine-backed candidates who challenged Republicans throughout the state, and the women running in LD26 did just as well as any of them, and a lot better than most.”
In the end, of course, all politics are local. “We are impacted by who gets elected to these seats!” Scheer stresses. “We are impacted by how members outside of our own district vote in the state assembly or in Congress, or which party controls each of those legislative bodies. And we are impacted by how Pennsylvania and other swing states will vote this November.”