Green Party candidate Lily Benavides has dropped her bid for governor of New Jersey after Democrats successfully challenged enough nominating petition signatures to bring her below the required 2,000.
Benavides, a late replacement candidate after Steven Zielinski, Sr. withdrew earlier this month due to serious health issues, determined that she had no path to remain in the race. The attorney for the Democrats, Raj Parikh, still had hundreds of challenges to go.
Administrative Law Judge Tama Hughes rejected 446 of the 2,444 signatures on Benavides’ petition, bringing her to 1,998 – two short.
“I do it because I’m basically forced to do it,” Benavides said. “I can’t stay here for 100 hours and seeing all the signatures being invalidated, so there’s no point.”
The move is viewed as beneficial to the Democratic nominee for governor, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair). Green Party candidates tend to get about one-half of one percent in New Jersey – about 10,000 votes – and with Benavides out of the race, Sherrill could pick up at least some Green Party votes in her campaign against Republican Jack Ciattarelli.
New Jersey election law requires independent candidates to refile petitions to protect their ballot position if a candidate drops out. Zielinski had filed with close to 4,000 signatures.
“We are losing a battle, not a war,” said Benavides. “And this is not going to stop me or stop the Green Party of New Jersey from continuing, doing what we do, working for the community.
A former Democratic state legislator in New Hampshire, Benavides was the Green Party candidate for Congress against Sherrill in New Jersey’s 11th district in 2024.
Benavides’s exit renders one of Parikh’s challenges moot: the Green Party paid Geoff Sebesta, a political operative from Winchester, Kentucky, to come to New Jersey and secure petition signatures.
Parikh maintained that the state election law requires petition circulators to be eligible to vote, and that would disqualify eighteen books of petitions witnessed by Sebesta since a Kentucky resident isn’t eligible to vote in New Jersey.
Sherrill and Ciattarelli face two independent candidates: Vic Kaplan (Libertarian) and Joanne Kuniansky (Socialist Workers Party). This is the fewest number of independent gubernatorial candidates since 1922, when Democrat George Silzer and Republican William Runyan faced only Socialist George Goebel.
The dramatic drop in independent candidates follows a move by the New Jersey Legislature this year to double the number of petition signatures needed to get on the ballot, from 1,000 to 2,000.
