Michael McGuire has emerged as the Republican nominee in the 3rd congressional district, the New Jersey Globe projects, winning a splintered three-way contest to face Rep. Herb Conaway (D-Delran) in the Democratic-leaning district.
As of 12:47 a.m. and with nearly all votes counted, McGuire, an attorney and Marine veteran, has 58% of the vote, while businessman Jason Cullen has 24% and contractor Justin Barbera has 18%.
Local Republican organizations in the 3rd district were divided, with Cullen winning the support of Burlington Republicans while McGuire got party endorsements in Monmouth and Mercer. And indeed, McGuire is winning healthy majorities in both of his allied counties – but he’s also getting 55% of the vote in Cullen’s home of Burlington County.
Barbera lacked any of that institutional support, but he had a different claim to fame: coming in last place in last year’s GOP gubernatorial primary. (Cullen has also sought the governor’s office before, earning 0.1% of the vote as a conservative independent in 2009.)
Now that he’s the GOP nominee, McGuire is in for a difficult fight against Conaway, a longtime Burlington County legislator who was elected to Congress in 2024 to succeed Senator Andy Kim.
Republicans held the 3rd district as recently as 2018, but that was back when the district covered a huge chunk of deep-red Ocean County. Democrats redrew the district four years ago to include the liberal-leaning suburbs of Trenton, making it an uphill climb for any Republican; a well-funded GOP nominee, Bob Healey, fell 12 points short in 2022, and the party has not mounted a serious effort to flip the district since then.
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