Assemblyman Herb Conaway (D-Delran) has won the race to succeed U.S. Senator-elect Andy Kim in the 3rd congressional district, the New Jersey Globe projects, defeating Republican physician Rajesh Mohan.
As of 10:35 p.m., Conaway leads Mohan 53% to 45%. Results in the district were somewhat delayed due to technical issues in Burlington County, where a majority of the district’s voters live; too few voting machines and internet connectivity problems caused a massive backlog that led to multi-hour lines, and polls were ordered to stay open an hour later to account for the massive number of voters stuck in line.
The 3rd district was once among the most competitive in the country, swinging back and forth between the parties several times before being won in 2018 by Andy Kim, a former State Department official who narrowly unseated Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-Toms River). But in 2021, Democrats on the Congressional Redistricting Commission redrew it to be far more Democratic, making it near-impossible for any Republican to win the seat.
The new map seemed to set Kim up for a long tenure in the House – until Senator Bob Menendez got indicted and Kim launched a campaign to replace him in the Senate. Kim’s decision opened up the 3rd district seat to a variety of ambitious local Democrats, most of whom may have assumed they’d never get the chance to move up to Congress.
The two who emerged to the fore were Conaway and Assemblywoman Carol Murphy (D-Mount Laurel), who represent the same Burlington County district in the legislature. (Three other candidates – civil rights attorney Joe Cohn, businesswoman Sarah Schoengood, and teacher Brian Schkeeper – also stepped up to run.)
At first, Conaway and Murphy seemed evenly matched, setting up a competitive race. But Conaway, who has served in the legislature for close to 30 years, proved to have much deeper relationships among Democrats across the district, and he won every county convention and built up a huge fundraising lead; Murphy had no answer for that flood of support, and Conaway won 50% to 25% in a line-free primary.
Republicans, meanwhile, struggled to recruit a top-tier candidate after running self-funders against Kim several cycles in a row. They ultimately landed on Mohan, a cardiologist who had run for township committee in Holmdel two years ago; Mohan won the Republican primary over Shirley Maia-Cusick by a relatively tight margin.
If the 3rd district’s prior lines were still in place, the general election contest between Conaway and Mohan might have been the most competitive in the state. But under the new lines, Mohan stood little chance, and the race was bypassed by national Democrats and Republicans alike; Conaway was generally seen as a lock for the seat once he won the Democratic primary.
Now that he’s a congressman-elect, Conaway gets to make history as the first-ever Black member of Congress from South Jersey, which until Kim won in 2018 had only ever sent white men to the House.