The Green Party of New Jersey is one of the more active Green state affiliates, having nominated over 150 candidates for office. The party experienced its first non-partisan electoral victory in 1999 when Gary Novosielski was elected by voters in Rutherford to the Board of Education of the Rutherford School District. In January 2003, Matt Ahearn, a New Jersey state legislator who had been elected to the New Jersey General Assembly as a Democrat in 2002, switched his registration to the Green Party, becoming the party's first state-level representative. Ahearn ran for re-election as a Green Party candidate in 2003 but lost to Robert M. Gordon, the Democratic candidate for office. In 2012, medical marijuana advocate Ken Wolski was the Green Party nominee for U.S. Senator from New Jersey. He finished in fourth place out of eleven candidates. In December 2014, there were 1,302 registered Greens in New Jersey, with the highest registration numbers in Bergen, Monmouth, Middlesex, and Camden counties. In May 2016, the Green Party of New Jersey saw a spike in registration, registering as many new voters in the pasttwo months as it had in the past four years. By the end of 2016, there were 3,252 voters registered as Green. In the 2016 election, Green Camden City Council candidate Gary Frazier received 6% of the vote, and Green Congressional candidates Raj Mailiah and Steve Welzer each received 0.7%. By November 2017, ten New Jersey counties had local affiliates recognized by the state party: Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic, Gloucester, Essex, Camden, Bergen, Union, Mercer, and Morris. The Green Party of New Jersey's 2017 gubernatorial candidate was Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale of Highland Park, with Lisa R. Durden of Newark as his running mate. The Green Party of New Jersey ran two candidates in the 2018 general election: Madelyn Hoffman for U.S. Senate, and Diane Moxley for Congressional District 7. Neither won, but Madelyn Hoffman received 25,150 votes and Diane Moxley received 2,676 votes. Current state party co-chair Craig Cayetano ran for Hawthorne Council in the November 2019 election. Although he did not win, he plans to run again in 2020 for a seat that has become vacant. Madelyn Hoffman is running for U.S. Senate again in the 2020 election. As of May 2020, there were 10,325 registered Greens in New Jersey, and new registrations come in every month.
Elected officials
From April 1999 to December 2015, there was one elected registered Green in New Jersey for a non-partisan office.
In the 2017 election, Green party member Jessica Clayton of Brick was elected to the Brick Board of Education as a non-partisan candidate. Green party member Erika Jacho was elected to the school board of Belleville, although she was not formally endorsed by the Green Party. In 2019, Green Party endorsed candidate Corey Teague won a seat on the Paterson School Board and was sworn in on 1/2/20.
