John Van Vliet

Early voting is relatively new to New Jersey, but it seems like it has taken hold among Garden State residents. Whatever happened to the good old tradition of showing up on a Tuesday Election Day, casting a ballot, and leaving the polling place having done one’s civic duty? Absentee voting had been and remains more[...]

Senate-hopeful U.S. Rep. Andy Kim joined with CD-9 Democrats in Paterson Friday evening to drum up some more Get Out The Vote enthusiasm. As far as the House is concerned, CD-9 sees a race where the late Congressman Bill Pascrell’s successor, State Senator Nellie Pou, is facing Republican challenger Billy Prempeh, who had faced Pascrell[...]

State Senator Nelida “Nellie” Pou just got a new title: US Representative-elect, beating out Republican challenger Billy Prempeh–although only just.

Following the 2024 General Election, where Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris and is set to return to the White House, Insider NJ takes a look at the quakes that shook the Garden State's political scene.

Following the 2024 General Election, where Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris and is set to return to the White House, Insider NJ takes a look at the quakes that shook the Garden State’s political scene. Who’s Up? Representative Tom Kean, Jr. – the son of former New Jersey governor Tom Kean defended his[...]

The Hispanic shift to the right in the 2024 election, compared to 2020 when Joe Biden overwhelmingly had their support, should worry every Democratic chair in presumably blue New Jersey as well as their neighbors in culturally diverse New York City and cities in eastern Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was, of course, the key to the 2024 election, a critical swing state which, in the end, turned out for former President Donald Trump. Within all these metropolitan hubs, however, there has been a notable growth of support from Latino voters, men specifically, compared to previous elections. Democrats have been losing ground with a key demographic.

In his third election campaign, Donald Trump promised to implement a massive deportation program that would target millions of undocumented migrants living in the United States. To that end, the president-elect announced Tom Homan, former head of ICE, as his choice for “border czar,” tasked to oversee federal agents rounding up undocumented migrants, many of[...]

Bergen County, New Jersey's most populous county with over 957,000 residents, typically embodies moderation with a solid Democratic Party. Case in point, U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, serving since 2018 in CD-5, built his brand around the idea of bipartisanship and across-the-aisle cooperation. Thus far, it has paid off for him, even surviving the Red Wave of 2024, which dramatically crashed over traditionally blue New Jersey. Even a Democratic stronghold, like Bergen, shifted notably redder from 2020. Four years ago, Joe Biden handily carried Bergen—along with the rest of New Jersey—against Donald Trump. On election day 2024, however, Vice President Kamala Harris barely captured New Jersey as a whole, and the Bergen map saw multiple flips from blue to red. Neighboring Passaic County was a bloodbath for the Democratic Party, even though Democratic U.S. Rep.-elect Nellie Pou eked out a win, Chairman John Currie's battle lines retreated throughout the entirety of Passaic, leaving only a blue island of Paterson, Haledon, and Prospect Park to deliver majorities for Harris.

Nowhere else quite encapsulates the microcosm of American civilization and its consequences within the scope of New Jersey like the annual League of Municipalities event held in Atlantic City. In terms of the calendar, it is keenly placed. Just after the national or state frenzy of a general election, depending on the year, and just prior to Thanksgiving, the League is at a confluence of contradictory emotional flows. It is a celebration of New Jersey work while also a demonstration of power, coming off the high or low of the most consequential political ritual that affects them all, and assessing that consequence.

New Jersey and Damascus, Syria, may be separated by 5,600 miles, but for tens of thousands of Syrians and Syrian-Americans who call the Garden State home, the distance between their two lands just got a little bit shorter. The fall of Bashar al-Assad, Ba'athist President of Syria and ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, marks the end of over fifty years of his own family's dictatorial rule. His father before him, Hafez al-Assad, ruled over Syria from when he took power in a coup d'etat, until his death in 2000. Shortly after Bashar took power, he suppressed the Damascus Spring, and in 2011, a revolution and civil war against his police state began. With the support of Russia and Iran, the Assad regime managed to hold onto power while the cities were devastated and over one million Syrians were displaced from their homes.