Governor Phil Murphy will cruise to the Democratic party’s nomination for governor after judges disqualified his only two challengers following a petition from the Democratic state party.

Perennial candidate Lisa McCormick was disqualified after Judge Jeffrey Rabin ruled that none of the signatures on her petition to get on the primary ballot were valid, saying that it appeared they were simply forged.

“Even without expert testimony, it appeared to the layman’s eye as if respondent McCormick had, at the last minute, simply created a template for completing individual single signature petition forms, and merely inserted the names and addresses of miscellaneous registered Democrats into the forms,” Judge Rabin wrote.

McCormick’s petition signatures also included two dead people and several people who said they had never signed it.

Roger Bacon, another potential challenger to Governor Murphy, was invalidated by Judge JoAnn LaSala Candido, whose petition to get on the primary ballot included 281 Republicans, whereas the petition needed the requisite 1,000 signatures from Democrats.

Governor Murphy will eventually face a Republican in the gubernatorial election on November 2nd, 2021, with several GOP candidates, including frontrunner Jack Ciattarelli, former Freeholder Brian Levine, pastor Phil Rizzo, and businessman Hirsch Singh, still vying for the Republican nomination.