Democratic congressional nominee Rebecca Bennett dominated the only face-to-face debate of the race Sunday night, leaving Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. scrambling to defend his record on health care, the economy and the war with Iran in a performance that political observers described as a rout.
The debate, sponsored by Rider University and a political gossip blogger, may be the sole direct encounter between the candidates before the November midterm elections in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, a swing seat that has flipped party control in each of the past two midterms.
Bennett, a retired Navy helicopter pilot and political newcomer, repeatedly put Kean on the defensive over his vote for the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the Trump-backed tax and spending package that she said stripped health insurance from tens of thousands of district residents.
“The number one thing I have heard from people loud and clear across this district is that we are living through a cost-of-living crisis in this country right now,” Bennett said. “Everything is more expensive: child care, elder care, housing, energy.”
Kean, who returned to Congress in June after a four-month hospitalization in a psychiatric facility following a nervous breakdown, during which he missed more than 140 votes, struggled to articulate a coherent defense of his record.
When pressed on his deciding vote for the tax package, he pivoted to claims about fraud prevention and touted past recognition from the New Jersey Hospital Association, a response that drew skepticism from the audience.
NJHA estimated that New Jersey would lose about $3.3 billion in Medicaid funding under the law, which passed in July 2025, with Kean casting the deciding vote.
NJHA President Cathy Bennett (no relationship with the Democratic candidate) called it a “devastating step backward for healthcare” and warned that the Medicaid reductions would have “irreversible consequences” for patients, communities and hospitals and said hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents would lose coverage.
Warning of health care job losses, service reductions, overcrowded emergency departments and the possibility of hospital closures, Cathy Bennett said NJHA projected that roughly 350,000 New Jersey residents would lose Medicaid coverage, producing a chain reaction involving more uncompensated care, pressure on charity care, longer emergency-room waits and potentially reduced hospital services and staffing.
The congressman also displayed what critics called a glaring ignorance of the religious foundation of Iran’s nuclear posture.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa — a formal religious ruling — declaring the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons “haram,” or forbidden under Islamic law. Iran’s foreign minister has repeatedly stated that this fatwa represents a “non-negotiable principle” for the Islamic Republic.
Kean justified his support for the U.S. war with Iran by claiming the country’s leadership “says death to America” and “cannot be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon,” apparently unaware of or indifferent to the fatwa that has been a cornerstone of Iranian policy for decades.
Iran was fully compliant with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multinational nuclear agreement that constrained its uranium enrichment program, until President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018.
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Iran’s compliance in multiple reports after the U.S. withdrawal.
Trump’s decision — which Kean has supported — shattered the agreement and set the stage for the current military confrontation.
The Kean name carries a complicated history in New Jersey. Tom Kean Jr. is the son of Thomas Kean Sr., a two-term governor whose 1981 victory — the closest gubernatorial race in state history — was marred by allegations of voter intimidation.
The elder Kean benefited from the activities of the “National Ballot Security Task Force,” a Republican-funded operation that dispatched armed off-duty police officers to polling places in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
The task force hung posters warning that vote fraud was a crime and challenged voters’ eligibility. James Florio, the Democratic candidate, lost by 1,797 votes and blamed the task force for suppressing turnout.
The operation prompted a federal lawsuit and a consent decree that restricted Republican ballot-security activities for decades.
Kean Sr.’s path to the speakership of the New Jersey General Assembly was equally fraught. In 1969, a group of Hudson County Democrats led by Assemblyman David Friedland — whom federal authorities identified as having ties to organized crime — joined with minority Republicans to elect the elder Kean as speaker. Friedland’s law license had been suspended for helping annul criminal charges against a loan shark, and he was later convicted of accepting bribes and sentenced to prison. He famously faked his own death in 1985, disappearing in the Bahamas while under indictment, before being found two years later in the Maldives under a false name.
The younger Kean’s political dynasty stretches back 250 years to the founding of the country, with ancestors who served as senators and congressmen. But that legacy appeared to weigh on him Sunday as Bennett effectively framed the race as a choice between a servant leader and a career politician who has repeatedly failed to show up for his constituents.
Kean’s own ethics have also drawn scrutiny. Quiver Quantitative, which tracks congressional trading through STOCK Act filings, recorded 189 trades totaling $3.19 million in Kean’s portfolio, with transactions occurring during his four-month hospitalization for depression. The congressman has claimed he has no involvement in investment decisions.
The Cook Political Report recently shifted its rating of the race from a tossup to “lean Democratic,” with analyst Erin Covey writing that Kean “looks like the clear underdog.” An InsiderNJ/StimSight poll earlier in September gave Bennett a five-point lead, 47% to 42%, and showed Kean’s approval rating at 37%, with 60% disapproving.
Given Kean’s disastrous debate performance, his vote to strip health insurance from 15 million Americans, and his unwavering support for an unpopular war, the prognosis for his re-election is grim. This journalist predicts that Kean lost the November midterm election the moment he cast the deciding vote for Trump’s massive tax cuts for billionaires last year.
Vote-by-mail ballots were sent out Sept. 19. Election Day is Nov. 3.
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