When Democrats drew New Jersey’s congressional map in 2021, they had a clear idea of the outcome they were hoping for. They were willing to concede three districts to Republicans – among them the competitive 7th district seat held at the time by Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski – but drew the state’s remaining nine districts to be as solidly, unshakably blue as they could.
Three years later, their plan seems to be working. The nine carefully drawn districts, each of which elected or re-elected Democratic House members by at least ten percentage points in 2022, are looking strong for Democrats once again this cycle; neither party is acting like any of the nine seats is competitive, and there’s been no outside spending in any of them.
But a cohort of Republican challengers has stepped up this year just the same, willing to fight against the twin forces of unfriendly district lines and well-funded Democratic opponents. To hear them tell it, while their races may be tough, the issues that have transpired under Democratic leadership – rampant inflation, a crisis at the southern border, chaos in the Middle East – will make voters more interested than ever in crossing the aisle to support their campaigns.
“I think this year is much different than years in the past,” said Scott Fegler, the GOP nominee against Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) in the 6th district. “2024 is a much, much different year. What has transpired over the last four years, I think, makes people a lot more aligned with [Republicans] than they have been in the past.”
The New Jersey Globe spoke with Fegler and four of his fellow Republican nominees – Teddy Liddell in the 1st district, Rahjesh Mohan in the 3rd district, Mary Jo Guinchard in the 5th district, and Darius Mayfield in the 12th district – about their campaigns this year. (A sixth Republican nominee, the 9th district’s Billy Prempeh, will participate in a New Jersey Globe debate tomorrow night.)
All of them said that while the voters in their districts may lean Democratic, many are feeling left behind by Democrats and are looking for a change. None of the Republican nominees are especially likely to win; Mohan himself admitted that he’s an “underdog.” But they’ll sure try.
The districts
When the New Jersey Congressional Redistricting Commission met in December 2021, New Jersey Democrats were in panic mode. Gov. Phil Murphy had narrowly avoided a shocking upset loss to Jack Ciattarelli in that November’s gubernatorial election, and Democrats were afraid that his performance was an omen of disaster for the 2022 midterms.
With that in mind, they set out to draw a congressional map that would cut their losses where needed and protect as many incumbents as possible. That wasn’t hard in some areas – the majority-Hispanic 8th district and the majority-Black 10th district, for example, are dark blue essentially no matter how you draw them – but the four swing districts Democrats had flipped in 2016 and 2018, all of which voted for Ciattarelli on the old map, proved more complicated.
Democrats ultimately landed on a map that created nine Murphy-won seats – including those of former swing-district Reps. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), and Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) – and three districts that voted for Ciattarelli, one of which was held by Malinowski. (Their map was quickly approved by redistricting commission tiebreaker John Wallace, using the much-mocked reasoning that Democrats deserved to have their map chosen because Republicans had won the equivalent redistricting fight in 2011.)
Besides Malinowski, Democrats across the congressional delegation could breathe a sigh of relief. 10th district Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark) and 8th district Democratic nominee Rob Menendez stayed in solid-blue urban districts; 1st district Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), 6th district Rep. Pallone, 9th district Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), and 12th district Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) all kept their strongly Democratic districts in their respective parts of the state; and Kim, Gottheimer, and Sherrill were given much friendlier seats than they had ever run in before.
Republicans had some hopes that, despite the new lines, they’d be able to make a dent in the delegation, and recruited a solid slate of candidates to take on the Democratic incumbents. In the 3rd district, Kim faced down an onslaught of spending from self-funding yacht manufacturer Bob Healey, while in the 6th district, Pallone faced Monmouth County Commissioner Sue Kiley (R-Hazlet), on paper his strongest challenger in decades.
But in the end, it was all for naught: the partisanship of the districts, and the heavy financial advantage enjoyed by most Democrats, proved to be far too much for Republicans to overcome. Malinowski lost in the 7th district, but every other Democratic incumbent won re-election by double digits, even in places like Kim’s district where the race had looked much closer.
That result set the tone for this year: if Republicans couldn’t come close to flipping any seats in a Republican-leaning year and with strong recruits in many seats, what chance did they have going forward?
Accordingly, nationwide groups like the National Republican Congressional Committee declined to do much in the way of recruiting New Jersey candidates for the 2024 cycle, focusing instead on opportunities in other states. Even local Republican parties in New Jersey weren’t nearly as involved as they have been in the past, and in many cases, the parties were content to lend their support to whoever was interested – producing an eclectic slate of challengers.
The challengers
Here’s one interesting fact about the nine GOP congressional challengers this year: seven out of the nine of them have never held political office before. (The two exceptions are Guinchard, who once served as mayor of Tuxedo Park, a gated community of 645 in New York, and 10th district nominee Carmen Bucco, who was a school board member in Belleville nearly two decades ago.)
Here’s another: eight of the nine of them have run for office before, some of them for Congress and other for local offices like town council or state legislature. (The one exception is Fegler, who is on his first political campaign.)
In other words, nearly all of the GOP’s candidates this year fit a common profile: someone long involved in local politics who’s now stepping up to become the party’s standard-bearer for Congress. Beyond that, though, the candidates have a wide variety of backgrounds.
In the 3rd district, there’s Mohan, a practicing cardiologist from Holmdel. Mohan has run for town council in his hometown before, but what he emphasized was his experience as a doctor, interacting with patients regardless of ideology.
“For me, everybody is the same,” he said. “I’ve treated criminals, I’ve treated priests, and everybody in between. Patients come into my office with a MAGA hat, with a Biden hat, I treat them the same. You have to work dispassionately for the people.”
In the 5th district, Guinchard has become known for her back-to-back campaigns for the Bergen County Board of Commissioners, but she’s also a former professional singer and actress who says that her ability to connect with the people of the district will outweigh whatever Josh Gottheimer, her opponent, throws at her.
“The people want a change,” Guinchard said. “They’re fed up with how Josh has been handling things lately – he’s a nice person, but what’s going on in District 5 is that they are just not feeling the leadership.”
On paper, Guinchard and Mohan have the best chance of victory of any challengers in the state. The 5th district is the least Democratic of the nine Democratic-held districts (though Joe Biden did still win it by 12 percentage points in 2020) and the 3rd district is the second-least Democratic; the 3rd district is also open this year thanks to Andy Kim’s Senate campaign, meaning that Mohan will instead face Assemblyman Herb Conaway (D-Delran).
But even in more challenging districts, candidates like Liddell, a U.S. Army veteran and attorney, say that their profile will appeal to voters who feel ignored by Democrats like his opponent, Donald Norcross, a member of a powerful South Jersey political family.
“I’m a different candidate with a different resume and a different approach,” Liddell said. “I decided to run in this race because, for too long, this area of South Jersey has been a stronghold of the Norcross family. The people want change. The people want a public servant who cares about them and who wants to make a positive difference.”
And Mayfield, a business strategist who ran against Watson Coleman once before in 2022, said that recent history shows that underdog candidates can’t be counted out.
“We have one example right here in New Jersey of Mr. Ed Durr, who did it with next to nothing and beat the Senate President,” Mayfield said. “We also have somebody in President Trump, who had no political experience and went up there and won the highest office in the land.”
Other nominees include Anthony Valdes, a state building inspector running in the 8th district; Billy Prempeh, a U.S. Air Force veteran who is running in the 9th district (and who will go up against Democrat Nellie Pou in tomorrow night’s debate); Carmen Bucco, a tailor and businessman who is running for the 10th district for the second time in two months; and Joe Belnome, another building inspector running in the 11th district.
The nominees are a diverse group: while Guinchard may be the only woman among them, Liddell, Mayfield, and Prempeh are Black, Mohan is Indian American, and Valdes is Hispanic. If any of them were to be elected, they’d be the first nonwhite Republican to ever represent New Jersey in Congress.
The issues
The classic cliché is that all politics is local, but in this year’s elections, there are a few key issues that are animating virtually every Republican congressional campaign in New Jersey and around the country.
First and foremost is inflation, which has eased in recent months but which has still resulted in substantially higher prices compared to a few years ago. Bringing prices down and controlling reckless spending, the Republican nominees said, would be one of their first priorities in Congress.
“The economy – can you believe it?” Liddell said. “Eggs have gone up, since 2020, 70%. Gas prices, 40%. When I go to the grocery store and I see the packaging get smaller or the price double, there’s a problem. It’s tough to purchase a home. It’s tough to even rent an apartment… [Voters] see money spent every place else – money is going to illegal immigrants, money is going to Ukraine.”
Immigration, too, is a top concern, with Republicans insisting that the federal government needs to implement stronger border control policies or even shut the border down entirely.
“Democrats, they’re playing footsie with illegal immigration,” Mohan said. “They basically are very soft on it. We have to stop making our southern border a magnet for illegal immigration; we have to, essentially, seal the border, as far as illegal immigration is concerned.”
Republicans aren’t as keen to attack their opponents on the issue of abortion, where the official GOP platform may be less appealing to many New Jersey voters. Guinchard, who defined herself as “pro-life” but supportive of some exceptions, said that she believed it was now an issue to be decided at the state level – and that New Jersey already has plenty of abortion protections in place.
“Abortion isn’t on the federal level anymore. It’s on the state level,” she said. “Let’s focus on fixing what this district needs, and let our governor and our legislature deal with [abortion]. That’s where it sits.”
Notably, all five nominees that the New Jersey Globe spoke with said that they support Donald Trump for president against Kamala Harris. That’s something of a risky move, since Harris is quite likely to carry all of their districts in November – but Mayfield said he believed Trump could pull off upsets even in their deep-blue areas.
“I happen to think that there’s literally no way [Trump] loses this election, because of the mood of the country,” he said. “And I think because of that, he’s going to help lift people like myself.”
Each of the nominees brought up local issues that they think will resonate in their districts specifically. Fegler pointed to the wind farms under construction off the Jersey Shore as an issue where Democrats are out of step with their constituents; Mohan and Liddell both cited the indictment of South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross, saying that voters in their South Jersey districts are fed up with corruption; and Mayfield attacked Watson Coleman for her votes against providing aid for Israel in its ongoing war with Hamas.
Fegler, Liddell, Mohan, and Mayfield also hit their opponents for being, in their words, career politicians; each of their Democratic foes has been in elected office for at least 14 years, and Pallone in particular has had an incredibly long tenure in Congress at 36 years.
“I think people are craving fresh leadership, and they really get turned off by his length of time in office,” Fegler said. “The average constituent watches the news casually. They don’t look at ‘ranking member of the Energy Committee,’ they look at, ‘Wow, that’s a four-decade-long career politician.”
Guinchard, meanwhile, faulted Gottheimer for angling to run for governor in 2025 even while he campaigns for re-election.
“[He shouldn’t be] running for another office on the heels of being elected,” Guinchard said. “As a former mayor, I would never do that. Ever. I am in it to win it, and stay.”
Each of those messages could potentially be effective if it reached enough voters – but the problem for Republicans in New Jersey this year is that they simply do not have enough money or national attention flooding into their races to turn their underdog operations into the type of campaigns that can likely win.
Reports from the most recent fundraising quarter are still coming in, but those that have already been filed aren’t looking especially promising. Mohan reported raising $74,000 during the 3rd quarter of 2024, $50,000 of which was self-funded, while Mayfield raised a little over $10,000; needless to say, those aren’t the kinds of fundraising hauls Republicans would like to see.
And national Republicans have not deigned to come to their aid, either. None of the nine Democratic-held congressional districts in New Jersey have witnessed any spending whatsoever from outside Republican groups, who are all focused instead on protecting vulnerable Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) in the 7th district.
In other words, come November 6, it would be a significant surprise to find out that Democrats lost any of the New Jersey districts they currently hold. But for the next three weeks, their opponents will be doing everything they can to make that unlikely event a reality.
“Money doesn’t buy you everything,” Guinchard said. “You know what buys you everything? Touching the people. Listening to the people. Being everywhere. Criss-crossing the three counties of the district. Listening to what they have to say. Being vocal for them. Answering their phone calls. Being present.”
“We are the underdogs, but I have knocked on thousands of doors myself, we have a great ground operation, and we’re cautiously optimistic,” Mohan said. “I think we will flip this district.”