Today kicks off the deadline for candidates to file if they want to run for state Assembly or Senate.

And this year, the legislature has the largest number of openings in more than a decade.

It's an opportunity for both voters and candidates to shake it up a little in Trenton, maybe even elect a legislature that looks more like New Jersey.

Senior writer and projects editor Colleen O'Dea is with me now.

She has the latest on the race for the State House.

Colleen this is somewhat unprecedented.

We've got this mass exodus from the legislature.

What do we know as we get to the deadline today?

So much of it is due to redistricting that happened last year.

So every ten years, we redraw the district boundary lines to account for population changes.

And this time around, it was kind of an interesting redistricting in that some Democrats and some Republicans voted together rather than just along party lines.

So there are some instances where two Democrats were put into the same district.

There were other instances where Republicans were flipped into one another's districts.

And so that pushed some of these members to retire?

Yeah, exactly.

You know, if you're especially if you're somebody who's been around for a long time and you've had maybe a pretty easy time in your district and suddenly you're in an area where you're not well known you may just not want to have to deal with actually going out, raising a lot of money.

Maybe you haven't had to do that in the past and meeting a lot of new people to try to keep your seat.

There's also been a number of people who've retired.

They haven't cited age specifically, but they often cite, you know, trying to spend more time with family.

So there are a lot of folks in their seventies and even older who are retiring this time.

So how many vacancies total?

And either way, we're going to be looking at a very different legislature come come fall.

Right.

So so far we know of 19 incumbents who are not running for reelection at all.

There are a few Assembly members who are trying to move up to the Senate.

There's going to be another one most likely in the 27th district where you've got Nia Gill the senator who was redistricted into the same area as Senator Codey a former governor Codey.

So one of those is gonna lose as well so we can have at least 20 openings in the legislature which when we've got a legislature 120 that's a big chunk.

Yeah.

I mean that's a lot of new blood.

What could we see shift?

You've been looking into some of the demographics share those with us.

Right.

So the legislature is overwhelmingly white males.

69%.

That's nowhere near what the the state looks like.

It's more like a quarter of the state's population is white male.

So the legislature really needs to catch up in terms of female and in terms of people of color, Hispanic and Asian in particular.

They are significantly underrepresented in the legislature.

Now, you know, we talk a lot about kind of politics continuing to be in many parts of the state an old boys network.

So whether there will be a lot of diverse candidates coming up remains to be seen.

All right, Colleen O'Dea for our thanks so much, Col.

Thank you, Bri.