The Green Party’s gubernatorial candidate, Lily Benavides, has claimed that the playing field is lopsided for third-parties.

The party’s original candidate for governor, Stephen Zielinski, stepped down in August due to a health issue. Zielinski announced that he was passing the torch to his intended lieutenant governor running mate, Benavides.

In order to qualify for the ballot as a replacement, Benavides raced to gather 2,000 petition signatures in less than a month. Eventually, the effort was derailed when more than 400 signatures faced a legal challenge from the Morris County Democratic Committee.

According to Benavides, the issues included signatures and writing that didn’t exactly match. Benavides challenged that allegation, saying that some signatures may have come from older adults who may have a hard time writing. Meanwhile, many of the names that were stricken were those of people with “long, foreign names” – or who may have been seen as being Muslim or Latino, she claimed.

She is now running a statewide write-in campaign.

“The goal here is to let New Jersey voters know that they have another alternative for governor besides the two mainstream candidates,” Benavides recently said.

Elections chair Barry Bendar said the Green Party of New Jersey will continue to support Benavides as their candidate for governor, and will be campaigning “just as strongly as if she were on the ballot – as she should be.”

Since then, the Benavides campaign has made stops in more than half of the state’s 21 counties – and is pressing ahead full steam, organizers say.

“To hear Sherrill and Ciattarelli talk about it, they are the only two choices,” Benavides said. “But if you stand against the genocide in Gaza as many in New Jersey do, neither candidate will represent that point of view as governor. Neither candidate has spoken out loudly against the misuse of ICE and the National Guard to ‘fight the enemy within,’ as Trump proclaims.”

Benavides also criticized the $580,000 threshold needed to appear in this year’s gubernatorial debates, claiming that the deck is stacked against independent political parties and candidates.

“We will continue to participate in whatever events we can to let the public know that these obstacles to real democracy won’t deter us,” Benavides said.

Other Green Party candidates have also blasted the debate fundraising requirements, including Benavides’ campaign manager and former gubernatorial candidate, Madelyn Hoffman.

When Hoffman ran for governor in New Jersey as a Green in 2021 against Phil Murphy, she blasted the then-$490,000 fundraising threshold that kept her out of the debates.

“It is not for the State Elections Commission or the media to determine who should participate in the debates and certainly, the amount of money raised should not be the deciding factor,” Hoffman charged.