Sue Altman raises over $200k in first month as NJ-7 candidate

Democrat Sue Altman raised over $200,000 during her first month as a candidate for Congress in hugely competitive New Jersey’s 7th district, a fundraising haul that exceeds the amount national Democratic groups and funders wanted to see as they look at the field of candidates to take on freshman Rep. Tom Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) in 2024, the New Jersey Globe has confirmed.

Altman announced her bid for Congress on May 31, giving her just four weeks to raise money before the end of the second quarter.  Her entrance into the race came eight days after former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) announced he would not seek a rematch with Kean, a Republican who narrowly unseated him last year.

Kean tops a target list of House seats Democrats need to win back to reclaim their majority next year.  He unseated Malinowski by three percentage points in 2022 in a district that Joe Biden carried by four points in 2020.

Raising more than $200,000 in a month is good news for Altman, a 41-year-old former teacher, and professional basketball player who took a leave as state director of New Jersey Working Families to run for Congress.    To put her fundraising into perspective: Altman raised roughly the same amount in her first four weeks as Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff), the Human Fundraising Machine, did in the month after he launched his bid to unseat seven-term Rep. Scott Garrett (R-Wantage) in 2015.

Her fundraising success comes at a time when other potential candidates are deciding if they want to take on Kean.   Jason Blazakis, a former State Department counterterrorism expert, is mulling a House bid.   So is former State Sen. Raymond Lesniak, 78, a former Democratic state chairman who served 30 years in the New Jersey Legislature before his retirement in 2017.

A third possible contender, Roselle Park Mayor Joseph Signorello, is expected to decide soon if he will drop his challenge to Bob Menendez in the 2024 Democratic primary and switch to a run against Kean.

Altman raised about half of her today first-month warchest during the first seven days of her campaign.   She also won personal endorsements from the heads of two politically influential labor unions: the Communications Workers of America and 32BJ SEIU. Most of Altman’s cash remains in the bank except for a few start-up expenses.

Democrats waited for Malinowski to make his own decision before getting into the race.

Kean raised a massive $831,000 during his first three months in Congress, a haul that exceeded Gottheimer’s first quarter in 2017.  The freshman congressman has not yet announced how much he raised in the second quarter.

Republicans held the 7th district House seat from 1956 to 2018 when Malinowski unseated Leonard Lance (R-Clinton Township), a five-term incumbent in Donald Trump’s 2018 midterm election, with 52% of the vote.   Kean, the former minority leader of the New Jersey State Senate, came within one percentage point of winning the seat back in 2020 and then won two years later.

Malinowski’s political undoing was aided by his own party after Democrats on the congressional redistricting commission successfully advocated for a map that shored up three other New Jersey House seats at his expense.