well late Friday Governor Murphy ordered special elections to be held to fill the seat of the late Congressman Donald Payne Jr the writ of election as its known calls for a special primary on Tuesday July 16th and a special general election to be held on September 18th the move was somewhat anticipated given Democrats thin majority in the house and a seat that would otherwise have been left vacant until the end of the year the catches though candidates now have until just the end of this week from Friday May 10th to file petitions if they plan to seek the nomination Murphy's decision has put a spotlight on just how confusing New Jersey laws are around succession for a US House seed and so we're going to try and make sense of it with Micah Rasmussen director of The rebovich Institute for New Jersey politics at Rider University Micah I'm grateful to have you because we've all been trying to wrap our heads around this so let me just ask you simply what are the rules and why can't the governor name a successor like he can for a seat great question and this has to do with the house rules the house rules say that when someone is seated um it has to be through a special election and when you look around the country over the last couple of years whenever there's a vacancy in the house there is a special election so it's really the combination of that rule and New Jersey's rules that slow us down New Jersey's rules require a primary election before the general election so we don't have to just get one election in which allows a lot of states to fill in two months two and a half months New York just went through that with George Santos and his replacement um ours takes double that amount of time because we've got to have both a primary election and a general election and so then what happens for the June 4th primary because Payne's name is on that ballot already and he was running uncontested and so are you telling me that he could potentially win uh in the June 4th primary and then we're going to still have a special election for the current nominees very very likely that he will win the primary postumus uh and also very confusing because his current term uh has to be filled which or doesn't have to be Governor floro declined to name a special election for himself um when he was elected governor but Governor Murphy has opted to have one as you say they view it as very important to get that seat filled as quickly as they can uh don't know what votes could happen in the house um but what is confusing is that there is also the issue of the full election for the next full term which is the one where Congressman Payne will win the primary um and then the Democratic party has to fill a vacancy uh for that primary for that um nomination uh so that they have a candidate to run in the fall and so that will be for the full year term so we have these two processes going on one for the current term one for the next term all at the same time so they're running parallel one to fill out until the end of 2025 and then one for beyond that I'm just making sure that I have my hand W so is there precedent beginning of 2025 beginning of 2025 so what does history show us about how often this has happened and and why the legislature hasn't taken a stab at maybe rewriting at least New Jersey's portion of this statute it's a great question and I don't know that it will be uncontroversial for the legislature right now because the way you get rid of a primary is to give the power to the party to put in a new nominee that's going to be controversial right now because we're in an era in our politics where we want to return that power directly to the voters which means having these two special elections so that keeps us at the F month replacement uh window that we have the Long window that we have in New Jersey so there's not an easy way to reconcile this desire to let the voters make their choice but also to let us make a replacement as quickly as we can and that's why asked about historical President we just have not done this in decades we haven't done a special election we've opted to leave that seat vacant for just a couple of months until we can have the full election I want to ask you about Front Runners names that we're seeing circulating a couple of folks from Newark which is interesting in and of itself um what have you heard about the names that are being pushed to the front of the line uh from the Democrats in the district yeah so just on Friday night uh some of the Mayors from the district and some of the uh chairs of the party party uh the uh chair in um in Essex the state chair um and the Mayors got together and they decided that the front runner is L Monica MacGyver the current city council uh president in New York she'd be very young member of Congress 38 years old um and uh by all accounts as a community leader in nework and uh comes out of the Baraka camp and would be very close to him so there'd be a partnership there in running the city and getting things back for the city so there are other candidates but looks like she has catapulted to the front of the line yeah and of course being from Newark um a Powerhouse of politics there Micah thank you for helping us wrap our heads around this appreciate it so much good to see you thank you [Music]