New Jersey elects state officers in odd years. On June 7, the deadline for independent candidates to file in the 2011 New Jersey elections, Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford, a registered Democrat, filed to run as an independent candidate for State Senate, 2nd district. Langford is irked at the incumbent Democrat, Senator James Whelan, because Whelan supports the Governor’s plan for the state to set up an agency that would diminish Atlantic City’s ability to govern itself.

Whelan, who was Mayor of Atlantic City 1990-2001, is white; Langford is black. The 2nd district (at least with its old pre-2010 census boundaries) leans Democratic, although in 2009 that district elected two Republican Assemblymembers. The State Senate seat in the 2nd district had not been up in 2009.

It is very rare for prominent politicians in New Jersey to ever run outside the two major parties. In most of New Jersey’s counties, the independent and minor party candidates are squeezed into a party column on the far right-hand side of the ballot, headed “Nomination by Petition.” By contrast, all the Democratic nominees are in a column headed by “Democratic” in big letters; and all the Republican nominees are in a similar column headed “Republican.” No one other than Democratic or Republican nominees has been elected to state office in New Jersey since 1880, largely because of the unfavorable ballot format in most counties. Langford is on the ballot, but he has said it is possible he will withdraw later.