Twenty years have gone by since Herb Conaway’s first campaign for New Jersey’s 3rd congressional district. In 2004, Conaway – then a four-term assemblyman from Burlington County – ran against Rep. Jim Saxton (R-Mount Holly) and got crushed by nearly 30 percentage points, shattering his dreams of becoming South Jersey’s first Black congressman.
This year, those dreams have finally been realized.
Conaway arrived in Washington this week for new House member orientation, having won a redrawn version of the same 3rd congressional district last Tuesday over Republican Rajesh Mohan by a 53% to 45% margin. He’ll succeed Senator-elect Andy Kim, whose Senate campaign opened up the Burlington County-based district this year and gave Conaway an unexpected second shot at national prominence.
“I’m excited to get started on the work to come: advocating for my constituents and advancing the interests of our nation more broadly and our place in the world,” Conaway said in the halls of the Capitol today.
For Conaway, who remains a state assemblyman and chairs the Assembly Health Committee in Trenton, one immediate challenge will be adjusting to serving in a chamber that’s controlled by Republicans. But the congressman-elect, who was in the minority as a Democrat during his early years in the Assembly, said he’s prepared to work with the GOP where needed.
“I passed legislation as a minority member, because you have to work with everybody,” he said. “I’ve always done that and will continue to do so, and I have some acquaintances on the other side already… I know Tom Kean, I worked with Tom and Jeff Van Drew [in the legislature].”
Asked what his top priorities are for his first term in Congress, Conaway said that in an ideal world, Democrats would be passing bills related to abortion and voting rights. In the Republican-controlled reality, however, he said he’ll focus on making sure New Jersey gets a fair shake during tax negotiations.
“Our interests in another world would be to deal with codifying Roe and dealing with issues related to access to the vote,” he said. “But in this environment, we’re going to be dealing with the tax bill. And one of our big concerns now – it was always one of our concerns – is to deal with restoring the SALT deduction here for New Jersey.”
Back during his first run in 2004, Conaway was confronting a huge number of headwinds: Saxton was a popular incumbent, George W. Bush was on pace to win re-election nationwide, and the 3rd district at the time included many deep-red Ocean County towns that pushed it far to the right.
Conaway – memorably summarized in one Roll Call article as “Doctor/Lawyer/Veteran [Who] Wants to Add a Title” – hoped that he could buck those tides and flip the seat to Democrats. But his hopes were for naught; he lost 63% to 35%, dramatically underperforming Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and only winning one town in the district.
This year’s campaign went very differently.
When Andy Kim was elected in 2018, flipping the 3rd district to Democrats, that seemed to foreclose a path to Congress for Conaway or any other ambitious Democrats in the district. Kim was only 36 when he first won the seat, and it seemed like he could hold it for as long as he wanted, especially after it was redrawn in his favor prior to the 2022 cycle.
Kim’s Senate bid, though, opened up an unanticipated path forward. Upon launching his House campaign, Conaway – who’s had more than 25 years in the legislature to build up relationships in Burlington County and beyond – won every county party endorsement in the district, and defeated his own legislative running mate, Assemblywoman Carol Murphy (D-Mount Laurel), 50% to 25% in the Democratic primary.
The general election that followed between Conaway and Mohan was relatively quiet, with little money spent on either side in a district that had been drawn to be safe for Democrats and that neither party gave much attention. Conaway’s ultimate 8.3-point margin, though, was narrower than might have been expected, mirroring similarly poor results for other Democrats across New Jersey.
Mohan, a cardiologist on his second run for office after losing a local race in Holmdel two years ago, said in his concession statement that his solid performance was a result of the hard work of his team and his own outreach to moderate voters.
“My sincerest gratitude to especially those large numbers of voters who went across party lines to split the ticket and vote for me overwhelmingly more than for other similarly situated candidates running for other offices,” he said. “Your support did not go unnoticed. Your participation is what strengthens our democracy, and I am honored to have had the opportunity to share my ideas and vision for the future with you.”
Vice President Kamala Harris performed similarly to Conaway in the 3rd district: she carried it 53% to 45%, a six-point decrease from Joe Biden’s 14-point margin in 2020. Conaway did much better than Harris diverse towns like Willingboro and Burlington (towns he already represents in the legislature) while doing a bit worse than the vice president in most of the district outside his own legislative turf.
Conaway – who will spend the coming weeks and months figuring out his way around Washington, determining what committees he’ll sit on, and so on – said that while he doesn’t yet know why Democrats underperformed this year, he hopes his party will figure it out.
“That analysis [of Democratic results in New Jersey] has not been done,” Conaway said. “But it needs, obviously, to be undertaken. And when we find out, we’ll know best how to proceed as we look toward 2026.”