Polls promise a tight contest in the 7th Congressional District, but there are few signs of competition elsewhere in the state. (Photo by New Jersey Monitor)
New Jersey residents will elect a new U.S. senator for the time in 11 years on Tuesday, though few seats in the state’s House delegation are expected to change hands.
Rep. Andy Kim (D-03) and hotelier Curtis Bashaw are vying for the seat once held by Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat who resigned from the chamber in August after being convicted of bribery and foreign agent charges.
That contest heavily favors the Democrat, who has sat in the House since being elected amid a Democratic wave in 2018. Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate race in New Jersey since the state reelected Sen. Clifford Case in 1972. Political observers say former President Donald Trump’s presence on New Jersey ballots is unlikely to lend special aid to Bashaw, who has pitched himself to voters as a moderate alternative to Kim.
“There really is a mismatch between Trump and Bashaw on some issues, so it becomes very difficult for those coattails to help Bashaw, quite frankly,” said Ashley Koning, director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling. “Then, on top of that, add the lack of name recognition, it’s a huge uphill battle for him.”
An Eagleton poll released Wednesday found Bashaw, who if elected would be the first openly gay New Jersey senator, was still unknown to most New Jersey adults. More than half, 58%, said they were unaware of him, and 27% had no opinion of the Cape May County resident.
Just under half, 49%, said they did not know Kim or had no opinion of the congressman, who would be New Jersey’s first Asian American senator.
The Republican faces other headwinds. Statewide, there were 906,299 more Democrats registered than Republicans on Nov. 1, though some of those voters will be ineligible to cast ballots on Nov. 5 because they missed the state’s voter registration cutoff.
The contest in the 7th Congressional District promises to be closer. There, first-term Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R) faces a challenge from progressive activist Sue Altman (D) in a district that grew more Republican after lines were redrawn in late 2021.
The few public polls in that district have shown Kean with a narrow lead within the margin of error.
“It’s really hard to get a gut feeling because, by definition, it’s a coin flip,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics. “Anybody who tells you they’ve got a gut feeling on it is probably not basing it on much.”
Though he cautioned against drawing conclusions from pre-Election Day voting data, Rasmussen noted Democrats’ advantage in that arena was smaller in the 7th District than almost anywhere else in the state.
As of Saturday, 202,023 voters had cast early ballots in the 7th, and Democrats had an edge of 4,720 votes, with unaffiliated voters accounting for 50,763 ballots, according to voting data maintained by Associated Press elections researcher Ryan Dubicki.
“You don’t want to read too much significance into this. It doesn’t mean that Kean is ahead. The next thing he would have to do is get a big Election Day vote,” Rasmussen said. “But what it does mean is you don’t see either side really having run up the score in an insurmountable way leading into Election Day.”
At least two other races are guaranteed to give New Jersey new representation in Congress.
Two physicians, Assemblyman Herb Conaway (D-Burlington) and cardiologist Rajesh Mohan, are vying for Kim’s seat in the House.
That district grew more Democratic after the latest round of redistricting, shedding heavily Republican Ocean County towns and gaining equally Democratic portions of Mercer County and more contested ground in Monmouth County.
The contest has drawn little interest from national Republicans, and Democrats there enjoy a broad lead in pre-Election Day voting.
“I think there is less of a worry there as [Kim] vacates that seat,” Koning said.
State Sen. Nellie Pou (D-Passaic) and Republican Billy Prempeh are vying to fill the 9th Congressional District’s vacant seat, and the district’s composition makes Pou the favorite.
Democrats have held the heavily urban district since 1983. The district’s seat has been vacant since Rep. Bill Pascrell (D), who represented the 9th for more than a quarter century, died in August following a prolonged hospital stay.
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