Criminal justice professor Beth Adubato plans to join Dem field for NJ-7

Beth Adubato, a criminal justice professor with a decades-long history in the worlds of academia, journalism, and acting, plans to run as a Democrat for New Jersey’s 7th congressional district, potentially making an already-crowded primary even busier.

The district, currently represented by two-term Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), is one of the most competitive in the country, and Kean’s last re-election campaign was the most expensive House race in New Jersey history. Sensing an opportunity to flip the seat, four Democrats have already launched serious campaigns to unseat Kean; Adubato will make five.

Adubato told the New Jersey Globe that while a hard campaign launch is still likely months away – she’s teaching in Italy in the interim – she’s laying the groundwork to defeat Kean and flip the House back to a Democratic majority.

“I lived in New Jersey when [Kean’s] father was the governor, and his father was a moderate Republican,” Adubato said. “But Tom Kean Jr. is voting completely along the lines with Trump, and these are terrible votes… These are all things that are not good for New Jersey and are really not good for anyone.”

As her last name signals to anyone enmeshed in New Jersey politics, Adubato comes from a politically connected family. Her father’s cousin was the late Steve Adubato Sr., the legendary Newark Democratic boss, which makes broadcaster and former Assemblyman Steve Adubato Jr. her second cousin. (Her father, Richie Adubato, is well-known in his own field, having been the head coach for three NBA teams in the 1980s and 1990s.)

Adubato herself grew up in West Orange and got her start in 1996 as a news anchor at a CBS station in Alpena, Michigan, which she says was the smallest CBS affiliate in the country. She then cycled through a number of other stations in the ensuing two decades, including eight years as a freelance journalist at News 12 in New Jersey.

In 2011, Adubato received a Ph.D. in criminal justice from Rutgers and began her academic career, first at the New York Institute of Technology and William Paterson University before landing at her current position at St. Peter’s University. Adubato’s academic focus is the intersection between crime, violence, and sports; she herself was the victim of sexual assault by a varsity athlete during her freshman year in college, prompting her to drop out and, much later, turn to research and activism.

Adubato’s time in the academic world has thrust her into labor organizing as well; she’s currently the Newark vice president of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union. She’s also the founder of LINDA Org, a nonprofit group for women in challenging situations like domestic violence, incarceration, and homelessness.

Throughout it all, though, Adubato said that she’s had a potential campaign for public office in mind. She had planned to run for State Assembly when she lived in Montclair around 15 years ago, and she also once attended an fundraising boot camp led by EMILYs List (an organization that supports Democratic women in politics), but this is her first time actually throwing her hat in the ring.

“I always figured I would be in the political scene someday,” she said. “I now live in this district that’s a purple district, and I used to be a reporter here on News 12 for years. So I thought, maybe I should do this.”

Adubato moved into the 7th district in 2019 and currently lives in New Providence, one of a number of wealthy, increasingly liberal Union County suburbs that make up the district’s Democratic base. She said that as she gears up for her campaign, she’s begun having conversations with her political connections in New Jersey, with EMILYs List, and with former Gov. Jim McGreevey, whom Adubato knows through the group he leads helping ex-prisoners re-enter society.

Adubato said that the core issues that will guide her campaign are women’s reproductive rights, health care – she faulted Kean for supporting a pending GOP proposal to curtail Medicaid – the rule of law, and educational funding. As a professor focused on criminal justice, the latter two issues are ones that she is very familiar with, and she said they’re also ones near and dear to highly educated 7th district voters.

Even though the Democratic primary for the 2026 election is still 13 months away, Adubato will have some catching up to do. At least four notable Democrats – former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett, former Summit Councilman Greg Vartan, former Forward Party leader Brian Varela, and former Small Business Administration leader Michael Roth – are also running, and all of them have already raised at least $100,000. Other serious contenders are still looking at the race, making for a potential clown-car primary where some candidates, even talented ones, might get lost in the mix.

Adubato said that her own long career, in two fields that are far from what most of New Jersey’s leading politicians have done with their lives, will make her stand out. There’s also a generational divide – Adubato is 64 while her four prospective opponents are all in their 30s – that Adubato said could work in her favor.

“I bring experience, and I think that may be what’s different,” she said. “I’m a mom, I’ve been a full-time professor for 14 years, I worked in journalism before this. I’ve seen a lot of things, I’ve been through a lot of difficult things myself, and I think I’m bringing experience and energy.”

Whoever ends up being the nominee, it’s obvious that Democrats are extremely interested in taking Kean down next year. The 7th district voted for Donald Trump by a 49% to 48% margin last year, making it one of the most evenly divided districts in the entire country, and Democrats have put it on their early target list for 2026.

That was much the same position Republicans found themselves in after the 2016 election, when Rep. Leonard Lance (R-Clinton) faced an enormous field of Democrats looking to unseat him in an earlier version of the 7th district; Tom Malinowski ultimately emerged from that primary and went on to unseat Lance in 2018.

In 2022, though, a Democratic-drawn congressional map made the 7th district substantially redder in order to shore up neighboring districts, and Malinowski lost to Kean, a longtime state legislator with a reputation as a moderate. Democrats threw millions behind activist Sue Altman’s 2024 campaign to flip the seat back, but she ultimately fell short 52% to 46%.

With Kean already stockpiling money for his next re-election campaign, it won’t be an easy lift for Democrats to unseat him – but in a seat that could determine who controls the House come 2027, Adubato said she’s up to the challenge.

“If I don’t try, I will not forgive myself,” Adubato said. “I’m going to put myself through it – it would be easier not to do it, but I’m ready.”