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Noncitizen Voter Registration in New Jersey: Jim Pfaff on The Carl Jackson Show | Jul 30, 2026

Published: July 30, 2026
Network: The Carl Jackson Show
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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New Jersey announced that 6,600 illegal immigrants were registered to vote and that roughly 400 of them cast ballots. Then Governor Mikie Sherrill refused to hand the records to the Trump administration. On the July 30 edition of The Carl Jackson Show, Jim Pfaff, president of The Conservative Caucus, walked host Carl Jackson through the noncitizen voter registration fight in New Jersey, the Save America Act stalled in the Senate, and the staffer class that keeps both problems in place. Pfaff spent eight years on Capitol Hill as chief of staff to Congressman Tim Huelskamp and Congressman Thomas Massie. He knows exactly where these bills go to die, and who buries them.

Topics Covered

• Noncitizen Voter Registration in New Jersey: The Records Sherrill Won’t Release
• The Save America Act: 80% Support and a Senate That Won’t Move
• “Staff Is Policy”: Who Actually Runs Mitch McConnell’s Office
• Mamdani’s Grocery Stores and a Million Published Addresses
• Key Takeaways

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Noncitizen Voter Registration in New Jersey: The Records Sherrill Won’t Release

Jackson played the clip on air. A reporter asked Governor Sherrill whether her administration will comply with the Trump administration’s request for the list of non-citizens registered to vote in New Jersey — a list her own state says holds 6,600 names, about 400 of whom cast ballots. Her answer:

“As I have said, I am not in the habit of turning over private identifying administration information of the citizens of New Jersey.”
— Gov. Mikie Sherrill, in a press clip aired on The Carl Jackson Show

Sherrill built her refusal on one word: citizens. The 6,600 people on that list are not citizens — that is the entire reason the Department of Justice wants the records. Jackson caught the substitution on air, and Pfaff took the privacy argument apart: every American citizen’s identifying data already sits in federal databases. The only people a records transfer would newly identify are the illegal immigrants on the rolls. That, Pfaff said, is what Sherrill is really protecting. And the announced figure is the floor, not the ceiling:

“And there’s every bit of evidence that there’s at least maybe up to 10 times, maybe even 20 times, somewhere between 10 and 20 times more illegals registered to vote in New Jersey than what she’s represented as 6,600.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Ten to twenty times the announced number, in one state. Jackson drew the electoral conclusion: with clean voter rolls, Republicans could compete better in traditionally blue states — and Pfaff agreed. It is also why the legal question matters more than the press-conference framing. This is not a negotiation between Trenton and Washington. Congress already settled it:

“Every one of these Democrat states is duty-bound by law to turn this— the voter records over upon request of the Department of Justice.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff put New Jersey in the same column as California, New York, and Illinois — Democrat states refusing the same legal obligation. It is the same stonewall we documented in our analysis of the Minnesota child nutrition fraud scandal: a Democrat-run state planted between federal investigators and the records. His verdict on the privacy defense was blunt:

“So she’s a liar. No one’s being harmed by them getting the data, first of all. And secondly, she’s not willing to comply with the process that Congress passed for her to do this.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

That is the core of the noncitizen voter registration fight: not a privacy dispute, but a state government refusing a federal records request the law requires it to honor.

The Save America Act: 80% Support and a Senate That Won’t Move

The remedy for noncitizen voter registration already passed the House — twice. Pfaff laid out the history. The original SAVE Act, focused almost entirely on voter ID, passed the House in spring 2025, a month or two after Donald Trump took office. It went to the Senate and into Mitch McConnell’s committee, where it never came out. So the House ran a legislative maneuver Pfaff calls brilliant: Chip Roy and others updated the bill, and Mike Johnson’s House stripped the language out of an already-passed Senate bill and replaced it with the Save America Act text. That routed it back to the Senate with no committee stop required. That was November of last year. John Thune has done nothing with it since.

“But everything that the Save America Act would do would be to take us back to the gold standard of elections that no country has ever had any good success with.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

For the first 230 years of American history, Pfaff argued, elections were exactly what a free republic needs. Democrats spent legal and legislative effort radically transforming them — he called California’s elections “barely third world.” The bill restores the old standard. The polls show 80% of the American public want it, and the Senate is still not willing to act. Pfaff named the mechanics: Thune is protecting the Washington class. Lisa Murkowski does not want the bill to pass because it would hurt her reelection chances. McConnell does not want it because it would make it easier for more conservative members to enter the Senate. And the other side of the aisle has the simplest motive of all:

“Democrats don’t want it because they’ll hardly win elections anymore in the future because they’ve rigged them so far.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff’s prescription: call every senator and say “I want it now,” then run Mike Lee’s play — force the process, make senators sit through the filibuster, wear them out, and work through the August recess. Jackson pointed to the August 5 deadline for the bill to matter this cycle, and to theconservativecaucus.com, where TCC has posted phone numbers for Senator Thune’s office. This is a battle Pfaff says conservatives can win on, and should. The Conservative Caucus backs that pressure with money: about $8 million in independent expenditures supporting Donald Trump in 2024, and Pfaff said TCC may be on track to do something very similar in this year’s congressional races.

“Staff Is Policy”: Who Actually Runs Mitch McConnell’s Office

Jackson asked the question few hosts know to ask: what role do staffers play in keeping McConnell’s seat warm? Pfaff ran two House offices as chief of staff. His answer came from the inside:

“Listen, staff is policy in Washington, D.C.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Offices where the member actually drives the agenda are a few handfuls, Pfaff said. He watched Allen West — a strong, principled member who won his seat in the Tea Party wave — get undermined constantly by his own chief of staff. Some members just want the $174,000-a-year paycheck and show up to vote when told. And in McConnell’s office, the incentive structure is explicit: every staffer there is headed for a $300,000-to-$500,000-a-year lobbying job someday, because they worked for Mitch McConnell. That is the incestuous Washington pipeline Pfaff described — and it explains why a bill can sit motionless for eight or nine months while 80% of the country wants it passed. Pfaff’s prediction for McConnell is the Dianne Feinstein path: a seat run by staff to the very end, with the member physically incapable of doing the job, like Joe Biden was.

Mamdani’s Grocery Stores and a Million Published Addresses

In a second segment, Jackson brought Pfaff back to talk about Zohran Mamdani and the DSA. Jackson counted about $23 billion in new taxes Mamdani has proposed for New York City’s five boroughs — from the man campaigning on affordability. The government-run grocery stores lead the list. Pfaff’s warning: the government-run stores will destroy small businesses, and many of the bodegas all over New York City will go out of business when one opens nearby. Jackson added the insult on top: those owners pay their own capital, their employees, and their taxes — and the taxes fund the government-run competitor that puts them under. Then there is the property-tax scheme on million-dollar homes:

“Only 10,000 people are gonna be affected by that, but he published nearly a million of these residences to expose wealthy people publicly so that they could be bullied.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Jackson put the dragnet at 960,000 homeowners, many of them middle class and working class. Pfaff tied the tactic to a precedent: after California’s Proposition 8 passed in 2008, Google employees took the donor data and put a pin on the map for everyone who gave money to support it. Publish the list, intimidate the target — that is the play. Mamdani is also open to cash reparations, telling a questioner he looks forward to a commission’s findings because New York City was “very complicit” in slavery. And Pfaff added the detail the coverage misses: native New Yorkers voted in a majority for Andrew Cuomo. It was non-native, recently arrived residents who elected Mamdani in droves. Whether the DSA drags down the Democrat Party, Pfaff said, depends on how much of an “ick factor” develops before November. It is not showing up entirely in the polls yet, he said — but Harry Enten’s numbers, with the party 24 points underwater and 57% of voters calling Democrats too liberal, show it is in there somewhere.

Key Takeaways

1. New Jersey admitted 6,600 noncitizen registrations – About 400 of them voted, and Pfaff’s evidence-based estimate puts the real number 10 to 20 times higher.
2. Sherrill is defying federal law – States are duty-bound to turn voter records over to the Department of Justice on request. New Jersey, California, New York, and Illinois are all refusing.
3. The Save America Act has 80% support and no Senate vote – The House already bypassed the committee trap in November; John Thune has sat on the bill ever since, protecting members like Lisa Murkowski.
4. Staff is policy – McConnell’s office runs on staffers bound for $300,000-to-$500,000 lobbying jobs, which is how a bill 80% of Americans want stays buried for eight or nine months.
5. Mamdani’s agenda is intimidation economics – Government grocery stores to undercut bodegas, roughly $23 billion in proposed new taxes, and a published list of nearly a million homes to bully property owners.
6. The fix is noncitizen voter registration’s opposite: the gold standard – Voter ID and the Save America Act return elections to the rules that served the republic for 230 years. Call your senators before August 5.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Jul 30, 2026 on The Carl Jackson Show.