Special ed math teacher becomes latest Democrat to challenge Van Drew

In another sign of Democratic enthusiasm ahead of next year’s midterm elections, a fourth Democrat has entered the race against Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) in South Jersey’s conservative-leaning 2nd congressional district.

Bill Finn, a special education math teacher from Gloucester County, has never run for public office before and is, by his own admission, a “newbie.” Given how tired many voters are of the political status quo, though, he said it might not be so bad for Congress to gain a voice like his.

“I’m just a regular guy,” Finn said. “And maybe Congress needs a few more regular people.”

Born and raised in South Jersey, Finn has been a teacher for decades and now teaches at a high school in Philadelphia, where he’s a member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. He lives in Mantua, a Gloucester County suburb that’s just outside of the district he hopes to represent (the town was moved from the 2nd district to the 1st during redistricting in 2021).

As a working dad of two sons who also drives for Lyft to earn extra money, Finn had plenty of ideas for how the 2nd district’s member of Congress could improve life in South Jersey: increasing taxes on the super-rich to pay for social services, supporting offshore wind projects to lower electricity costs, and expanding the size of the U.S. House itself to make Washington more representative.

But what inspired him to run for Congress more than anything else, he said, was the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, President Donald Trump’s enormous legislative package that shifts hundreds of billions of dollars towards tax cuts and away from Medicaid and food stamps. Van Drew was hesitant to support the bill’s Medicaid cuts but ultimately voted for the bill, which Finn (like many Democrats) nicknamed the “Big Ugly Bill.”

“We already have an unequal tax structure to begin with, and we’re going to give more money to people who have basically unlimited funds?” Finn said. “And while we give them more money, then we’re taking it away from other things – taking it away from the poorest individuals possible.”

Three other Democrats had already announced campaigns against Van Drew earlier this summer, two of whom have deeper backgrounds in politics in New Jersey or in Washington D.C.

One contender, criminal justice attorney and former detective Tim Alexander, was the district’s Democratic nominee in 2022 and narrowly lost a Democratic primary for the district in 2024; another, Bayly Winder, worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and has already brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign. Rounding out the field is Terri Reese, a first-time candidate from Northfield.

If Finn were to win the Democratic primary, he’d face a tough general election against Van Drew, who first won the 2nd district as a Democrat in 2018 before defecting to the Republican Party a year later. Trump carried the district 55%-43% last year, and Van Drew won re-election by an even larger 58%-41% margin.

Van Drew is thus seen as the substantial favorite for another term next year, with most observers instead focusing on the 7th and 9th districts in North Jersey as next year’s marquee races. But some Democrats are intrigued enough by the possibility of making a play for the district that they commissioned a CD-2 poll this spring, one that found Van Drew potentially vulnerable with the right messaging.