Summit Council President considering run for Congress in NJ-7

Summit Council President Greg Vartan is considering entering the race for New Jersey’s competitive 7th congressional district, potentially adding one more candidate to an already-busy Democratic primary.

“I have been contacted by a number of friends and supporters across the area urging me to consider running to represent the 7th district in 2024,” Vartan told the New Jersey Globe this morning. “I do share the view that we need better representation in Washington.”

Vartan said that for now, his attention is directed at this year’s local races in Summit, where the mayor’s office and three council seats are up. That may mean there won’t be a definitive decision from Vartan until November, after the 2023 elections are over.

“Right now, I’m focused on my role as Summit’s council president, working hard on keeping my hometown a great place to live and on electing great leaders to office in the important races that we have this fall,” Vartan said.

Already in the 7th district Democratic primary are former Working Families Party state director Sue Altman, Roselle Park Mayor Joe Signorello, and former U.S. State Department official Jason Blazakis. The winner of the primary will go on to face Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), who narrowly unseated Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) last year in the state’s most closely watched contest.

Vartan first ran for the Summit Common Council in 2016, when he was 23 years old and just a year out of college. But although Hillary Clinton won the town that year 63%-33%, Summit has much more competitive politics at the local level, and Vartan lost to Republican Stephen Bowman by eight votes, 2,578 to 2,570.

In 2018, Vartan tried again, this time successfully; riding the winds of the 2018 blue wave, he flipped an open Republican-held Ward 2 seat by a 64%-36% margin. (On the same ballot, Malinowski defeated Rep. Leonard Lance to win his first term in Congress, a victory that was aided by his 25-point margin in Summit.)

Vartan, who works professionally as a sales manager for a health care company, was re-elected in 2021 by a smaller margin of 55%-45%, and at the beginning of this year he was unanimously selected by his colleagues to be council president.

If the now 30-year-old Vartan does join the 7th district campaign later this year, he’ll have a lot of catching up to do. Altman, Blazakis, and Signorello are all actively fundraising and gathering supporters, and their headstart will only continue growing with every day that passes.

But Vartan hails from the most vote-rich part of the district, giving him a potential path to the nomination. If he can leverage his local political connections into getting party support in Union County, which casts around one-third of the district’s Democratic primary votes, that would instantly make him a top contender.

Waiting at the end of the road for whoever ultimately emerges from the Democratic primary is Kean, one of 18 House Republicans who represent a Biden-won district. Whether it be Altman, Blazakis, Signorello, or Vartan – or some other as-yet unknown challenger – the 2024 general election in the 7th district is bound to be an expensive, intense affair.