Hunterdon County leaders offered sharply divergent views Friday on the 7th Congressional District race, with local Republicans defending U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. as an independent-minded liberal after Democrats supporting moderate challenger Rebecca Bennett described him as a rubber-stamp vote for the Trump administration.
Republicans pointed to a Heritage Action scorecard showing Kean with a 46% session score and a 52% lifetime score, arguing that it demonstrates weak alignment with conservative policy positions rather than lockstep loyalty. That record was updated to reflect a 59% session score and a lifetime score of 58%.
They described the congressman as a liberal Republican in the mold of his father, former Gov. Thomas Kean Sr., citing his vote with Democrats to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies in January 2026 and his avid support for abortion and gay rights.
“Tom Kean Jr. is a liberal Republican,” said Henry Brudos, noting that as Senate minority leader in Trenton, the career politician never voted against any of Gov. Phil Murphy’s appointees, including Muslim cabinet members and Sharia law judges.
Too often lawmakers get elected and forget about the conservative principles their constituents elected them to uphold.
Brudos said New Jersey Right to Life said Kean was “in direct opposition to our pro-life mission and goals” and “unacceptable to pro-life voters.”
“New Jersey Right to Life is an organization that puts the pro-life position before party loyalty. We would not have supported Tom Kean, Jr. regardless of how he voted on embryonic stem cell research,” said Marie Tasy, the executive director of New Jersey Right to Life, during the 2006 U.S. Senate race in New Jersey.
“It was a well-established fact long before Kean’s December vote that he was a self-avowed supporter of abortion,” said Tasy, following Kean’s committee vote to support human embryonic experimentation. “To suggest that pro-life voters were content with Tom Kean, Jr. before the vote in support of embryonic stem cell research is a blatant misrepresentation of the pro-life position.”
Over his political career in the New Jersey state legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives, Kean’s stance on abortion has frequently been a point of debate among both conservative and progressive groups:
Over his political career in the New Jersey state legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives, Kean’s stance on abortion has frequently been a point of debate among both conservative and progressive groups:
Republicans arguing that it is “preposterous to call him a conservative” also pointed to the national debt, saying it has grown by roughly $8 billion per day since Kean was first elected to Congress, where lawmakers hold the federal government’s power of the purse.
Hoping to appeal to the district’s moderate population, Republicans argued that Democrat Rebecca Bennett is more conservative than Kean in some respects.
Kean’s GOP defenders described Bennett as a military veteran who earned commendations for courage during combat missions and noted that her husband, also a military veteran, works for the U.S. Department of Energy under the Trump administration.
They said Bennett is committed to a strong national defense, while Kean never served in the military.
Democrats, meanwhile, said Kean has a verifiable pattern of near-total voting loyalty to Trump’s agenda, even when those votes conflict with his district’s interests.
A legislative scorecard released in September 2025 showed Kean voted 100% in line with Trump’s positions during that Congress, according to Democrats, who described him as a “reliable yes-man” and a “rubber stamp” for the administration.
Democrats said Kean voted against War Powers resolutions aimed at halting U.S. military action against Iran on three occasions, including a September 2026 House vote of 220-204 on a resolution directing Trump to remove U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran.
At a debate that month, Kean defended the war, arguing that Iran could not be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Democrats also cited Kean’s decisive vote for the budget reconciliation package known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed 215-214 and reduced federal Medicaid funding by hundreds of billions of dollars while imposing new restrictions on SNAP.
In New Jersey, state health officials estimated that 360,000 or more residents could lose Medicaid coverage, and the New Jersey Hospital Association projected more than $3.3 billion in annual funding cuts affecting hospitals and public health institutions.
Data later showed New Jersey Medicaid enrollment dropped by about 28,000 and SNAP enrollment fell by roughly 41,000 in the months following the law’s implementation.
Democrats said the same bill extended Trump’s tax cuts and, according to independent analyses, provided more in tax breaks to the top 1% than to the bottom 80% combined.
Kean defended the bill by touting an increased cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes, or SALT, which is disproportionately benefiting wealthy taxpayers since middle-class working families earning less than $125,000 do not pay $40,000 in annual property taxes.
Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot making her first bid for public office, has centered her campaign on protecting reproductive rights, lowering costs and holding the administration accountable.
She has criticized Kean for his votes on the Iran War Powers resolutions, calling him “too afraid to stand up to his own party.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, EMILYs List, AFSCME and Bennett have cited the scorecard to argue that Kean is a “rubber stamp” who prioritizes loyalty to Trump over his constituents. Polling from September 2026 showed Kean’s approval at 37%, with 60% disapproving, while he trailed Bennett by 5 percentage points.
Kean’s campaign has not made the congressman available for interviews with local media in recent months. His campaign barred reporters from a Hunterdon County GOP event in August. Kean has not held an in-person town hall since taking office.
The race has drawn national attention as one of roughly two dozen contests expected to determine control of the House. Kean has raised $4.9 million this cycle, while Bennett has raised $4.3 million, with House Democrats boosting her campaign after the June primary.
The contest is among the nation’s most competitive House races, with election analysts at the Cook Political Report recently shifting the race toward Bennett.
A September poll showed Bennett leading Kean 47% to 42% among likely voters, though the difference was within the survey’s margin of error.
An incumbent stuck below 50% is seen as fundamentally vulnerable, as they may have difficulty winning over late deciders. Pollster Nick Panagakis coined the rule that undecided voters late in a race typically favor the challenger rather than the incumbent.
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