Kean, Van Drew and Smith face Democratic challengers seeking to turn dissatisfaction with the president, the economy and the Iran war into congressional gains
New Jersey’s three Republican members of Congress are heading into the November midterm elections carrying a political liability they have largely embraced rather than avoided: President Donald Trump.
Reps. Jeff Van Drew, Chris Smith and Tom Kean Jr. are seeking reelection in districts that range from one of the state’s most competitive battlegrounds to territory that has reliably returned Republicans to Congress for decades.
Their Democratic challengers are betting that Trump’s declining national approval, concerns about the cost of living and opposition to the administration’s war with Iran can make even traditionally Republican territory more competitive.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in late August put Trump’s approval rating at 33%, while support for the Iran war had fallen to 31%. Another Reuters/Ipsos survey found registered voters favored Democrats over Republicans by 36% to 28% when asked which party had a better plan for addressing the cost of living.
Whether those national headwinds will be strong enough to overcome New Jersey’s congressional geography remains uncertain.
Kean is America’s most vulnerable incumbent
The clearest Democratic opportunity is the 7th Congressional District, where former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett is challenging Kean, the Republican incumbent whose unexplained disappearance from public life for nearly four months became an issue before voters learned he had been hospitalized following a nervous breakdown.
Kean missed more than 140 House votes between March 5 and June 30, when he returned to the Capitol and claimed that he was hospitalized for four months following a nervous breakdown.
Kean broke his promise to make a full disclosure about his mental health diagnosis, refusing to state where he was hospitalized, whether he was prescribed drugs that influenced his votes on major issues, or addressing the disparity between his medical care and that available to working families whose Medicaid coverage he voted to end.
The disclosure came weeks after New Jersey’s candidate filing deadline and after Kean had secured the Republican nomination without opposition.
Bennett defeated three Democratic rivals in the June primary and has sought to turn Kean’s absence — as well as his support for major elements of Trump’s agenda — into an argument for changing the district’s representation.
“You are failing us, and you do not deserve to represent us in Washington,” Bennett told supporters during the primary campaign.
She also referred to “Tom Kean Jr., wherever you are,” drawing applause.
Kean has said that despite his absence from Washington, his congressional office continued serving constituents. After revealing his diagnosis, he spoke publicly about the seriousness of depression and the importance of seeking treatment.
“I’m grateful that I accepted help,” Kean said upon returning to the House. “Asking for help is not a weakness. It is a strength.”
The contest is particularly important because control of the House is narrowly divided and New Jersey’s 7th District has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to remove incumbents.
Republican Leonard Lance lost the seat to Democrat Tom Malinowski in the 2018 midterm election. Kean defeated Malinowski four years later after redistricting made the district more favorable to Republicans.
Bennett is also trying to reach voters outside the traditional Democratic coalition.
The former Navy pilot has criticized the increasingly partisan nature of Congress, arguing that ideological warfare in Washington has done little to lower household costs in New Jersey.
“I led missions in some of the most challenging environments on earth,” Bennett said of her 15 years in the military. “We served not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans who were there to serve our nation and get the mission done.”
Her strategy reflects a broader Democratic effort to attract independents and Republicans dissatisfied with Trump. Bennett is among several former Republicans running as Democrats around the country, although strategists in both parties caution that switching parties can create its own political liabilities.
Van Drew faces challenge in South Jersey
In the sprawling 2nd Congressional District, Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock is challenging Van Drew, a former Democrat who has become one of Trump’s most visible New Jersey allies.
Mullock defeated three Democrats in the June primary and will face Van Drew, who was unopposed for the Republican nomination.
Van Drew was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 2018 but switched parties in 2019 during Trump’s first impeachment. Since then, he has developed a close political relationship with Trump and has repeatedly aligned himself with the president.
The district remains difficult territory for Democrats.
It covers Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Salem counties and portions of Gloucester and Ocean counties. Democrats have won the seat only once since 1995 — when Van Drew himself was their nominee in 2018.
Van Drew won reelection in 2024 with 58.1% of the vote.
That history gives Mullock a considerably steeper climb than Bennett faces in the 7th District, but Democrats are hoping that an unfavorable national environment for Republicans can put districts into play that would be difficult to contest under ordinary circumstances.
Trump’s handling of the Iran war could become part of that argument.
Opposition to the conflict has increased as gasoline prices have risen and the deployment has placed additional strains on U.S. military personnel and their families. An August Reuters/Ipsos survey found just 31% of Americans supported military action against Iran, while Trump’s overall approval stood at 33%.
Democratic congressional candidates with military backgrounds have increasingly focused on those consequences.
Retired Rear Adm. Nancy Lacore, running in South Carolina, and retired Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, running in Colorado, recently blamed the administration and Congress for an extended deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
“This ill-conceived and unnecessary war is having terrible consequences for our national security and taking a serious toll on our sailors, Marines, and military families,” Lacore and Laubacher said in a joint statement. “The damage to morale, readiness, and recruitment could last for years.”
They also accused Congress of failing to demand a clear mission or adequate accountability from the Pentagon.
Their criticism illustrates the broader national debate that could spill into New Jersey’s congressional contests as Republicans defend control of the House.
Anti-abortion zealot Smith seeks 24th term
The longest-serving of New Jersey’s Republicans faces a different political equation.
Smith, first elected in 1980, is seeking a 24th term representing the 4th Congressional District. Democrat Rachel Peace, a small-business owner and single mother, won her party’s nomination with more than 70% of the primary vote and will challenge Smith in November.
The district, centered in Monmouth and Ocean counties, has been far more reliably Republican than the 7th. Smith won reelection in 2024 with 67.4% of the vote.
Peace has made health care a central issue and has attacked Smith as a career politician whose economic philosophy remains rooted in Reagan-era policies.
Smith’s longevity gives Democrats an unusually extensive congressional record to challenge.
He arrived in Washington alongside President Ronald Reagan and supported two of the administration’s defining economic measures: the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, which sharply reduced income tax rates, and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, which reduced spending on numerous domestic programs.
Nearly two decades later, Smith voted for the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed significant portions of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall separation between commercial and investment banking. The legislation was overwhelmingly bipartisan and was signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton. The law allowed the formation of financial holding companies combining banking, securities and insurance operations.
Critics later argued that financial deregulation contributed to excessive consolidation and risk-taking before the 2008 financial crisis, although economists continue to debate the extent to which repeal of Glass-Steagall itself caused the collapse.
Smith also backed some of the most consequential legislation of the George W. Bush era, including the 2001 USA Patriot Act and the 2002 congressional authorization for the use of military force against Iraq.
His record, however, has not always followed Republican leadership.
Smith voted in 2021 to establish an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and supported stripping Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of committee assignments following controversy over her past statements.
Those departures from the party distinguish Smith from the simpler image of an unwavering Trump loyalist and are likely to complicate Democratic efforts to tie him entirely to the president.
Peace nevertheless is seeking to make the election a referendum on decades of Republican economic and health care policy, including Smith’s votes over the years to repeal or alter the Affordable Care Act.
Three races, three very different districts
The three Republican-held seats present Democrats with dramatically different challenges.
Kean represents the most obvious battleground. His district has changed parties twice since 2018, and Bennett’s military background and former Republican affiliation could give her an opening with independent and anti-Trump Republican voters.
Van Drew’s 2nd District leans more heavily Republican, and his transformation from Democratic congressman to outspoken Trump ally has made the race unusually personal for South Jersey Democrats.
Smith’s 4th District remains the steepest climb. His political durability has survived Reagan, both Bush presidencies, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and two Trump administrations, as well as repeated redistricting.
Yet all three incumbents must run this year in a national political environment dominated by questions about Trump.
The president’s approval is near a low point, the cost of living remains a major concern and public support for the Iran war has weakened. Gasoline prices above $4 a gallon have added another potentially damaging issue for Republicans heading into the fall campaign.
The question for New Jersey Democrats is whether dissatisfaction with Trump can be converted into votes against Republican members of Congress — and whether voters will judge the incumbents primarily on the president or on their own records.
For Republicans, the challenge is the reverse: convincing voters who may be unhappy with Trump, Washington or the economy that changing their representative would do little to solve those problems.
That battle will be clearest in the 7th District, where Bennett has explicitly presented herself as a candidate capable of appealing beyond party lines. Her campaign is part of a national Democratic experiment involving former Republicans who argue that Trump transformed the GOP into a party they could no longer support.
But the limits of that strategy are apparent as well. Polling cited in the source material shows Trump retaining overwhelming support among Republican voters even as his standing among independents has deteriorated.
That leaves Democrats looking not for a mass Republican defection but for enough independents, former Republicans and dissatisfied voters to alter the arithmetic in competitive districts.
In New Jersey, three Republican incumbents will find out in November whether that arithmetic has changed enough to threaten careers ranging from Kean’s first few terms to Smith’s nearly half-century in Congress.
Discover more from NJTODAY.NEWS
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.