Hunterdon Dems endorse Bennett in NJ-7 primary

Hunterdon County Democrats endorsed Rebecca Bennett for New Jersey’s 7th congressional district, picking her from the field of Democrats looking to unseat Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield). 

The Hunterdon Democrats picked Bennett over Brian Varela in a runoff, 94-76. The victory grants Bennett the county slogan and, perhaps more importantly, a concrete victory to build on for later stages of the campaign.

“We are the people who are going to make a difference,” Bennett said in a short victory speech. “People ask me all the time, ‘What’s the plan?’ We are the plan. There’s no one else to save us, we are going to save ourselves.”

On the first ballot, Bennett and Varela snuck past the rest of the field with 55 and 47 votes from delegates, respectively. Michael Roth and Megan O’Rourke, both former Biden administration officials, trailed with 42 and 39 votes, respectively. Tina Shah, a physician who didn’t focus much on Hunterdon, received four votes.

Since no candidate earned a majority, Hunterdon’s top-two runoff system went into effect, leaving Bennett and Varela to square off, though Roth’s and O’Rourke’s strength showed that, at least among these Democratic committee members, the race is far from decided.

Bennett pushed her service as a Navy pilot to the forefront before attacking Kean as a “coward” and saying her victory will grant the 7th congressional district an opportunity to hold Kean and the Trump administration to account.

“We have been here as a nation before. At every turning point in American history, when democracy was on the line, Americans stood up, fought back, and said, ‘We’ve got this,’” Bennett said. “Hunterdon County, it’s our turn.”

In a speech before committee members, Varela touted his coalition, saying it spans ideologies and is in a position to win come November. Varela highlighted his endorsement from Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (whose soaring oratory boosted him to a surprise second-place finish in Hunterdon’s gubernatorial endorsement process last year), as well as elected Democrats in Trump-won towns.

“If you look at 2024 Donald Trump, he beat us for a variety of reasons,” Varela said. “He attracted young voters, he attracted men, he attracted Hispanics. I am literally a young Hispanic male, and I am uniquely positioned to bring out these groups.”

Varela wasn’t the only candidate to center their remarks on electability. The 7th is expected to be one of the country’s premier congressional races this fall, and Gov. Mikie Sherrill won the 7th’s towns by slightly less than 2 percentage points during her landslide victory last year. When O’Rourke asked delegates how many of them would consider general election viability while casting their ballots, a clear majority lifted their hands.

“We need to find the 24,000 voters that we lost by last time around,” she said. “And I can find those, I can reach the independent voters in the western part of the district, I am actually from here.”

And Roth built his remarks on the importance of effectiveness in an ever-more-logjammed Congress.

“It’s not just about who can beat Tom Kean Jr. once,” Roth said. “The question is, who can hold this seat and do something meaningful with it? Who can win, who can fight, who can reform? That is the test.”

Varela told the New Jersey Globe that he considered the close loss a legitimization of his campaign.

“I really feel like we had a strong shot to win the endorsement,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is that when we started this campaign, we were an underdog campaign, and it was a campaign that no one really took seriously. Fast-forward to where we are today: we are a leading contender.”

Hunterdon Democrats also endorsed Senator Cory Booker’s re-election campaign. Two Hunterdon locals, former county Democratic official Chris Fields and perennial candidate Lisa McCormick, challenged Booker for the endorsement. Booker won on the first ballot with 146 votes, with Fields far behind at 30 and McCormick with eight.