New Jersey requires 800 signatures for an independent candidate, or for the nominee of an unqualified party, to get on the ballot for a statewide race. This year, only five petitions were submitted for Governor-Lieutenant Governor. See the state’s list here. They include Steve Welzer for the Green Party, Kenneth Kaplan for the Libertarian Party, Diane Sare for the LaRouche organization, and two independent candidates: William Araujo, who hasn’t chosen his ballot label yet, and Hank Schroeder, who uses the label “Don’t Look Back” in half the counties and “Economic Growth” in the other half.

This is the smallest number of petitioning candidates in a New Jersey gubernatorial general election since 1989, when there were a total of six candidates on the ballot. New Jersey hasn’t had any ballot-qualified parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties since the law was amended in 1920, to define “party” as a group that had polled at least 10% of the vote for Assembly in the entire state. “Assembly” is the New Jersey name for the lower house of the state legislature.

The deadline for the petitions is 4 p.m. on June 4 (Tuesday) so it is possible some more candidates will submit petitions. The link to the state list of candidates can be used to determine if more candidates enter later today.