When Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) endorsed Donald Trump for president earlier this year, his Democratic opponent, Sue Altman, bashed him for “embracing extremism” and refusing to stand up against the former president. Since Kean represented a congressional district that Trump lost in 2020, she figured the congressman’s endorsement was out of step with his constituents, and he could pay a political price for it.
Then Election Day 2024 arrived, and the voters of the 7th district chose to elect both Kean and Trump.
According to current results – which could still shift slightly as a few remaining votes are counted – Trump carried the 7th district over Kamala Harris by 2 points, 49.8% to 47.8%. That’s a nearly six-point swing towards Republicans compared to 2020, when Joe Biden won the historically Republican district 51% to 47%.
Altman, meanwhile, underperformed Harris by four points, losing to Kean 52.2% to 45.9%. Kean outran Trump almost everywhere, running up the score in the rural western parts of the district and keeping his losses to a minimum in the more suburban east.
For Democrats – who spent millions of dollars trying to unseat Kean only to come up short – the problems facing them this year in the 7th congressional district were twofold.
Part of their challenge was that Altman wasn’t able to close the gap with the top of the ticket. Kean’s longtime reputation as a moderate – and his success at painting Altman, the former head of the left-leaning New Jersey Working Families Party, as an out-of-step extremist – ensured that there were several thousand Harris voters in the 7th district who still wanted Republican representation in Congress.
Looking at the map of where Kean outran Trump the most, the towns that stand out are wealthy suburbs like Westfield, Summit, and Bernards, many of which Kean represented during his time in the legislature. In Summit, voters supported Harris by 28 points but Altman by only 16, a clear sign that Kean kept his independent brand while Altman struggled to keep moderate voters on her side.
But the other part of it was that Democrats in New Jersey were running against incredibly strong headwinds this year. Perhaps if Altman had run a different campaign, or if there had been a different Democratic nominee with less past baggage, the gap between Kean and Trump could have been reduced – but realistically, there was probably no way any Democrat could beat Kean as long as Trump was carrying his district.
Case in point: the U.S. Senate race between Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) and Republican Curtis Bashaw. Kim outperformed Harris by nearly four percentage points statewide, winning 53%-44%, but even he couldn’t win the 7th district; Bashaw carried it 50% to 47.7%.
Kean, a former state legislator, has been aiming for a seat in Congress for a long time. He ran for the 7th district in 2000 and lost the Republican primary to Mike Ferguson, for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and lost to appointed Senator Bob Menendez, and for the 7th district again in 2020 and lost to Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) in a squeaker; he finally succeeded in 2022, after the 7th district was redrawn to be more Republican, unseating Malinowski 51.4% to 48.6%.
Now, with this year’s re-election campaign under his belt, Kean is in a more formidable position than he’s ever been. He’s now beaten two strong, well-funded opponents, and he’ll go into 2025 representing a district that, after shifting to Biden in 2020, is back in the Trump column. Kean, one of New Jersey Republicans’ most proven vote-getters for decades, continues to prove his value to his party over and over again.
But under the hood, there are a few warning signs for Republicans in this year’s 7th district results – and anyone who says that the district is now off the competitive playing field is probably fooling themselves.
Although the 7th district moved towards Trump, it did so by much less than New Jersey as a whole, which shifted dramatically rightwards – making the 7th district bluer relative to the state than it was in prior years. Compared to other parts of New Jersey, where Democrats turned in shockingly bad numbers among Latino and white working-class voters, Harris did relatively alright in the 7th district.
In 2016, the 7th district (under its current district lines) supported Trump by 5.7 points, nearly 20 points more Republican than New Jersey overall; in 2020, it supported Biden by 3.6 points, 12 points more Republican than the state overall; and this year, it supported Trump by 2 points, 7 points more Republican than the state overall. To put it another way, if New Jersey ever goes back to voting for Democrats by double-digit margins like it used to – which is not guaranteed – then the 7th district would probably start going blue in statewide races.
Compare that to, say, the 9th district, where State Sen. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) eked out a win in a district that Trump seems to have narrowly carried despite losing it by 19 points in 2020. Democrats also lost substantial ground in Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly)’s 5th district – which Trump only barely lost – Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch)’s 6th district, and Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City)’s 8th district, among others.
(The New Jersey Globe will report more on the results in other districts, and what they mean for New Jersey politics going forward, in the coming weeks as more votes are reported and finalized.)
The fact that things in the 7th district weren’t as bad as they could have been for Democrats is, of course, cold comfort to Altman and to those who worked to elect her. But it does provide a path for Democrats to flip the district in the future, perhaps as soon as 2026, when Kean will have to deal with running in a potentially unfriendly midterm environment. In 2018, Democrats flipped the 2nd, 3rd, and 11th districts, all of which had supported Trump two years earlier – so Trump’s win in the 7th this year certainly does not make Kean safe.
Whether or not Democrats will be able to mount a third consecutive serious effort to win such a tough district, though, remains to be seen. Malinowski and Altman each raised millions of dollars from small donors only to lose – will either of them want to try again? And if not, will Democrats be able to find another candidate who can garner the same type of attention and support for their campaign?
What’s more, national Democrats spent $2 million aiding Malinowski and nearly $4 million aiding Altman, to no avail. As Democrats strategize about how to take back the House majority in 2026 – assuming they don’t win it this year, which isn’t yet certain – they’ll have to make a decision about whether to prioritize the 7th district once again. (Given that Trump probably won Pou’s district and nearly won Gottheimer’s, Democrats may have more pressing worries in New Jersey than beating Kean.)
In other words, Kean should be prepared to face yet another tough battle in 2026. But for now, he can sleep well knowing that the 7th district has reverted at least partially to its more Republican roots – and that he’s created an independent enough politician brand that he outran the top of the ticket by four points in a year when many downballot Republicans significantly underperformed Trump. One thing he’s made clear is that he won’t be easy to beat.