The 2024 cycle’s final campaign finance reports before Election Day were due yesterday, and they contained some mixed blessings for both candidates running in New Jersey’s closely watched race for the 7th congressional district.
For Democratic challenger Sue Altman, the good news is that she has now officially outraised incumbent Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) in the 2024 cycle to-date. Altman has raised a total of $5.64 million since launching her campaign to Kean’s $5.56 million; in the pre-general election report, which covers October 1 through October 16, she outraised him $463,000 to $191,000.
That’s an especially impressive statistic given that Kean is the incumbent, and thus was able to spend all of 2023 raising money while Altman was still getting her own campaign off the ground. Altman began doing better than Kean in fundraising starting in the 1st quarter of 2024, and she hasn’t slowed down since.
But looking at the cash on-hand that the two candidates have left, things start to seem much more favorable for Kean. Altman has had an incredibly high burn rate on her money, spending $5.1 million and leaving her with just $567,000 left for the final stretch of the race; Kean has spent a comparatively modest $3.4 million and still had $2.3 million left in the bank.
That means that, if he so chooses, Kean can spend the last few weeks of the campaign pummeling Altman on the airwaves in the 7th congressional district, which is located in the pricey New York media market, while Altman won’t have the money to respond in kind.
Outside spending, too, has favored Kean, in part thanks to an increasingly sizable investment from billionaire Elon Musk. Kean’s allies at the Congressional Leadership Fund have spent $4.5 million on ads excoriating “radical liberal” Sue Altman, an investment that is likely to grow even larger by Election Day, while Musk’s America PAC has spent an additional $1.2 million to boost Kean.
National Democratic groups recently started spending on the race, too, with $1.8 million already coming in for Altman from the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC and another $2 million expected soon. But their investment only began very late in the race – long after Democratic PACs had already spent millions in other races around the country – and will still likely fall short of what Republican PACs are spending when all is said and done.
Asked yesterday why it took so long for national Democrats to begin spending on Altman, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene (D-Washington) skirted the question, saying that her organization has been committed to helping Altman from the beginning.
“We’ve been engaged with Sue since early on,” Delbene said. “She’s been on our Red to Blue list from early on, and we’ve been making field investments, making sure she’s well-positioned to set up her campaign and be in a strong position to flip this seat. We’re up with a coordinated buy in the district right now, and outside groups are up with large investments in this district.”
Fortunately for Altman, though, the millions in TV spending that have come from her campaign will go further than any money spent by outside groups, thanks to broadcast rules dictating that candidates get cheaper ad rates.
If nothing else, the high rate of spending is further proof of what both campaigns know to be true: the race is a competitive one. Kean won the district over Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) by three percentage points in 2022, and a recent poll from the nonpartisan Monmouth University Polling Institute found this year’s race in a dead heat.