The New Jersey Globe and Rider University will host the first debate in the race for Congress in New Jersey’s 7th district between Democrat Rebecca Bennett and Republican incumbent Tom Kean, Jr. on Sunday, September 27, at 7 PM.
NJ-7 is considered one of the premier House contests in the nation. Donald Trump carried the district by one point in 2024, and Mikie Sherrill won it by two points last year.
The 90-minute in-person debate will be streamed on the New Jersey Globe, Facebook Live, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and C-SPAN. The debate will be available to voters through the November general election.
New Jersey Globe Editor David Wildstein will moderate the debate with Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. Additional questions will come from Rider students.
Vote-by-mail ballots go out on September 19
Bennett is a retired U.S. Navy helicopter pilot; she won a decisive victory in the June Democratic primary. Kean, a two-term congressman and former minority leader of the New Jersey State Senate, unseated two-term Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski in 2022.
The New Jersey Globe has sponsored more than 30 debates, including the only debates between the candidates for the United States Senate in 2020 and the Lieutenant Governor in 2021; we sponsored the first U.S. Senate debate in 2024. The New Jersey Globe sponsored five gubernatorial debates in the 2025 primary and general elections, all with 100% candidate attendance.
Among those debates were two between Kean and Malinowski in 2020 and 2022, and one between Keana and Altman in 2024. The New Jersey Globe sponsored a Democratic primary debate in NJ-7 with Bennett, Michael Roth, Tina Shah, and Brian Varela last spring.
Only major party candidates were invited to participate.