In a devastating repudiation of President Donald Trump’s second presidency, New Jersey voters unleashed a Democratic tsunami on Tuesday that swept Republican Congressmen Jeff Van Drew and Tom Kean Jr. out of office, toppled Republican county officials in stunning upsets in Atlantic, Monmouth, Morris and Cumberland counties, and buried GOP candidates in municipal contests across the state.
The sheer magnitude of the Democratic landslide evoked the Watergate-era elections of 1973 and 1974, when voter anger at President Richard Nixon produced historic Republican losses at every level of government. More than half a century later, New Jersey voters delivered another crushing verdict on a Republican president, dismantling GOP strongholds, ending political careers, and reshaping the state’s political landscape in a single night.
Perhaps the night’s most stunning upset was the defeat of four-term Rep. Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey’s 7th district. Van Drew attracted national attention in 2019 when he abandoned the Democratic Party, became a Republican, and pledged his loyalty to President Donald Trump.
Van Drew, who had become one of Trump’s most steadfast allies in Congress, lost to Democrat Zachary Mullock, the mayor of a tiny Cape May County town who had never run in a partisan election. It was an extraordinary political reversal for Van Drew, whose embrace of Trump had helped cement his standing with South Jersey Republicans, only to become a defining liability in the Democratic wave that ended a hugely successful political career that began in the 1990s.
Less surprising, but no less consequential, was the ouster of two-term Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in New Jersey’s 7th district, where Democrat Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, turned what was expected to be one of the nation’s most competitive congressional races into a 16-point rout. Roughly $30 million was spent on a contest that ultimately wasn’t close, as Bennett ended Kean’s congressional career and dealt a stunning setback to a political dynasty whose roots in elected office stretch back 250 years.
Conventional wisdom was that Van Drew would survive, but he couldn’t withstand the Democratic wave and a sudden, unexpected onslaught of money –nearly $2 million — spent against him by a super PAC during the final weeks of the campaign.
Unknown to Van Drew was that the leading forces behind the money were two New Jerseyans looking for revenge: Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who served with Van Drew in Congress (initially as a fellow Democrat) and then found herself being heavily criticized by him, and South Jersey Democratic powerhouse George E. Norcross III., who helped Van Drew unseat Republicans for assemblyman and state senator in the 2000s, and then flip a GOP House seat in 2018. (The other key player in funding the bid to take out Van Drew was the Laborers’ International Union of North America.)
“Here’s the moral of the story,” Norcross told the New Jersey Globe, referring to Van Drew’s attacks on Sherrill. “You don’t poke Mama Bear in the eye.”
And a South Jersey Democrat added: “Van Drew went out the same way he came in, on a network TV ad from George.”
With 92% of the votes counted, Mullock leads Van Drew 51%-48%, a margin of nearly 8,000 votes, after carrying Atlantic and Cumberland counties by about 13 points each.
Bennett, who began the race as a political unknown, is at 66% in Union County, 59% in Somerset, and 54% in Hunterdon and Morris; she and Kean are virtually tied in Warren (he has a 121-vote lead), and in Sussex, where Kean is ahead by just 35 votes.
The top of the ticket
In the race for the United States Senate, Democrat Cory Booker easily defeated his feisty but dramatically unknown and underfunded Republican challenger, former Tabernacle Deputy Mayor Justin Murphy. Booker is at 62.3%, about two points behind Bill Bradley’s 64% landslide in 1984. His 27-point lead came after he carried 16 counties; Murphy leads in Ocean, Cape May, Sussex, Warren and Salem.
With his third re-election behind him, Booker heads back to Washington as a member of the Senate majority and a likely candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
The midterm election provided landslide re-elections for the state’s congressional delegation: Donald Norcross (+46); Herb Conaway, Jr. (+27); Josh Gottheimer (+28); Frank Pallone (+38); Rob Menendez (unopposed); Nellie Pou (+35 after winning the seat by five points in 2024 in a district Donald Trump won by three points); LaMonica McIver (+69); and Analilia Mejia (+21).
The lone survivor of the Democratic wave is Republican Christopher Smith, who captured his 24th term in Congress on Tuesday by 18 points; he’s the longest-serving congressman in New Jersey history, but because he was elected at age 27, there were – at least until January – nearly 90 senators and House members older than him.
The third freshman congressman from New Jersey will be Dr. Adam Hamawy, a former U.S. Army combat surgeon who came out of nowhere to win the Democratic primary in the 12th district last June. He won the general election by 42 points.
Over 2.8 million New Jersey voters cast ballots in the 2026 midterm, less than last year’s gubernatorial election – and less than the 3.25 million that voted in Trump’s first midterm eight years ago.
This is what makes it a Democratic wave.
Democrats dealt severe body blows to Republicans in strongholds like Monmouth and Morris, and in Atlantic, where the GOP started with an 8-1 majority on the Board of County Commissioners and three constitutional officers and ended with five 5 seats and just the surrogate remaining.
The wave hit Atlantic County fairly hard, with five Republican county officials losing their jobs: Atlantic City Police Director Sean Riggin beat Sheriff Joe “Tokyo” O’Donoghue by seven points; Lisa Bender, who lost an Assembly primary last year on Steve Fulop’s ticket, unseated County Clerk Joe Giralo by eight points; Jonathan Marcellus and Kyle Gornick beat County Commissioners John Risley, who has served for 24 years, and June Byrnes; they lost by over 8,000 votes. In the 4th district, Democrat Richard Healy took out incumbent Andrew Parker by ten points.
Morris County Commissioner Tayfun Selen lost his seat to Democrat Christopher Russo, a Morristown councilman. Russo leads by ten points and over 20,000 votes.
And in what was the shocker of the night, Democrats won two county commissioner seats in heavily Republican Monmouth County – in January, the board will be 3-2 – and Surrogate Maureen Raish was defeated for re-election by attorney Anthony Cherry by a 51%-49% margin.
In the commissioner race, Democrats Chelsey Tanner and Sofia Ugarte defeated Republican Commissioner Erik Anderson and Middletown Mayor Tony Perry, who was seeking to replace retiring Republican Commissioner Ross Licitra. Tanner, a nonprofit executive, led the field with 115,713 votes, followed by Ugarte, a community advocate, with 114,049. Anderson trailed with 111,332 votes.
Democrats flipped control in Cumberland County, where the GOP sheriff and three county commissioners lost re-election. And they trounced three challengers – including the controversial Martino Cartier – to retain their 3-2 majority in Gloucester County.
Still undecided is very Republican Salem County, which is the size of Old Bridge; the race for two county commissioner seats is too close to call after the machine used to scan ballots broke down on Tuesday evening.
The outlier is in Hunterdon County, where County Clerk Mary Melfi won re-election in a county Bennett carried by nine points; County Commissioner Shaun Van Doren leads narrowly.
Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora has been forced into a December runoff in his bid for a third term against Corey McNair, and West Orange Mayor Susan McCartney lost her re-election bid to Joyce Rudin; both were non-partisan elections.