The 10 big N.J. races to watch on Election Night

By Matt Rooney
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No preamble is necessary for this one, Save Jerseyans.

Here are the 10 hotspots I’ll be watching in New Jersey this Election Night/Election Month/whenever the hell this election is resolved…

U.S. President: Trump (i) vs. Biden

Newsflash: Donald Trump won’t win New Jersey. No Republican has since 1988 and, unlike the formerly solid blue upper Midwest, New Jersey is much more diverse, its suburbs are dense, and its independents are lean-Democrat. Oh, and there’s that Democrat one million voter registration advantage.

What matters is the margin and any corresponding down-ballot impact. The closest Republicans have come in relatively recent memory was Dubya in 2004 who lost by 6.8 points. Trump did better in 2016 (a 14-point loss) than Romney who took a 17.8-point ass kicking in 2012. Smart money probably places the 2020 margin somewhere in between those two goal posts but hey… who knows. New Jersey’s mandatory vote by mail election (over 6 million ballots went out, and roughly half are still out or in transit) probably benefits the majority party but it also injects great uncertainty into the proceedings.

Watch Gloucester and Salem counties closely; those are the only two New Jersey counties that changed allegiance between 2012 and 2016, switching from Obama to Trump. All of Salem and part of Gloucester rest in the competitive NJ-02 congressional district.

Mehta (left) with the owners of Bellmawr’s Atilis Gym

U.S. Senate: Booker (i) vs. Mehta

The math is pretty simple and horrific: an over one million Democrat statewide registration advantage + high turnout = a decisive Democrat advantage. It’s also been said one million times: New Jersey hasn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1972. The state’s densely-populated suburbs – once solidly Republican in recent memory – are now simply too purple or blue to offset massive Democrat margins in Essex/Hudson counties.

Granted, there are many appealing things about Republican challenger Rik Mehta as a candidate (a lawer/pharmacist Indian American family man), but as Bob Hugin found out the hard way in 2018, even well-funded GOP challengers face an uphill slog in the Garden State these days. Mehta doesn’t have cash for television and is running a largely social media campaign reliant on organic outrach.

What’s most useful here is watch how Cory Booker performs at the county and local level, e.g. how well Booker does in Cumberland (where Menendez failed to reach 50% in 2018). In the event there’s a significant drop off between Booker and Biden? That could be a small bright spot for New Jersey Republicans heading into 2021.

NJ-02: Van Drew (i) vs. Kennedy

Jeff Van Drew’s risk wasn’t switching parties in 2019; it was his vote AGAINST impeachment which was the real risk since it guaranteed him a tough Democrat primary battle had he remained a “D.” As an “R,” Van Drew has embraced Trump with both arms. He was there for the post-switch White House photo spray and then welcomed the president for an early 2020 rally in Wildwood. 

Enter Amy Kennedy. She married into the infamous Massachusetts clan but her presentation and ideology are very much in sync with her in-laws. She’s a poor fit for rural, working class NJ-02 in many ways, but this is still a Democrat majority district and she’s spending ridiculous amounts of cash (and so are her allies) to make Van Drew pay for his betrayal.

I think this one will be close, and it’ll come down to (1) Atlantic City/Pleasantville and (2) the Route 47 corridor (which runs through Vineland and Millville). Van Drew should lose all four municipalities, but his many years as a popular Democrat state senator allowed him to create precinct-level community relationships which – according to my sources and some published accounts – appear to have survived his pivot to the GOP. Among them? The legendary (or infamous, depending upon your perspective) Callaway vote-by-mail operation. The margins are what matter; watch how JVD (and Trump) perform with the black/Hispanic electorate in Cumberland and Atlantic. 

Kean (left) and Malinowski (right)

NJ-07: Tom Malinowski (i) vs. Tom Kean

The battle of the Toms shouldn’t be this year’s most likely NJGOP pick up opportunity on paper. For starters, it’s the only House district on this list that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The GOP is hopeful for a few reasons. One, TK2 raised a decent sum of cash despite being outspent. Two, he raised that cash because he has Kean family connections and a name that still carries weight with a shrinking but still measurable segment of the electoral battlefrield. Three, Jon Bramnick and Nancy Munoz survived their 2019 LD21 reelection battle which suggests there may be a “bottom” to the woke revolution sweeping the Central Jersey suburbs.

I hope Kean wins for one reason more than any other: NJ.com’s Tom Moran (yes, another Tom in the mix to make it more confusing) as published editorial after editorial bashing Kean. The purported reason is the tenor of his campaign. The real reason: Kean – a blue blooded old school GOPer and close Bush family ally – is considered a class traitor by the media class for not bashing Donald Trump.

Kean could outperform DJT in the district and probably needs to (by a couple or a few points at minimum) in order to win. He might pull it off. We had one poll in March with Kean ahead by a statistically insignificant 1-point margin but a lot has happened since then.

NJ-03: Andy Kim (i) vs. David Richter

This is a district that WANTS to vote Republican; Kim won his seat by 4,000 votes in 2018 under ideal Democrat conditions. All the same, Richter emerged from his bloody spring/summer GOP primary fight with some scars and a fundraising handicap. Burlington County remains a big problem since its once-reliable GOP suburbs like Evesham Township and Mount Laurel are now ground zero of the suburban woke realignment. The end result is a 40,000 Democrat registration advantage on the district’s western end (where 2 out of every 3 votes come from), and Kim (buoyed by independent expenditure groups) is raining money on the district.

Still, victory isn’t impossible. There’s every early indication that Ocean County Republicans and GOP-leaning unaffiliated voters are returning their ballots in solid numbers.

The President is the big difference-maker here. Trump carried this district by 6-points (51% to 45%) in 2016. If Trump can repeat this performance? He might help drag Richter across the finish line. 

NJ-05 and NJ-11

I’m unfairly lumping these districts together because they’re grappling with similar issues which make my analysis pretty much the same. There’s no point repeating myself!

Both North Jersey districts were unquestionably “red” until 2016 (in the case of NJ-05) and 2018 (for NJ-11). Both are now represented by Democrats who look and talk like centrists – and who raise depressingly enormous sums of cash – but then vote decidedly like leftistS down on Capitol Hill. Josh Gottheimer’s strength is Bergen County’s sprint to the Left over the past decade; Republicans can do well or even romp outside of the Bergen burbs, but the numbers weren’t sufficient in ’16 or ’18 to catch up. Mikie Sherrill’s Morris County-centric district is equally frustrating, loaded with country club Republicans and professionals/graduate degree holders who led the 2018 GOP suburban exodus. 

Candidly, in 2020 at least, the NJGOP would probably need a legit “wave” election – 1994 or 2010 in scope – to overcome the voter registration trends and spending disparities facing the challengers (Frank Pallotta in 5 and Rosemary Becchi in 11). Both challengers have solid attributes and might’ve fetched significant national financial support in a stronger GOP fundraising environment at 30,000 feet. My realistic hope: that the margins are tight enough in both districts such that the national GOP – turned off by the price of playing in the NYC media market – declines to write off these seats in 2022.

NJ-04: Chris Smith (i) vs. Schmid

Democrat Stephanie Schmid (who at one point was an intern for Smith) is a singularly awful challenger, so Republican Chris Smith (who entered Congress in January 1981, almost four years before I was born) will unquestionably return to Congress in 2021 to begin his 20th (!) term in office.

Once again, the margin is the thing that’s interesting. Smith was reelected in 2018 – a horrible GOP year – by his closest margin since 1982 (his first reelection cycle) and the first time he’s fetched less than 60% in a reelection year. 12-points isn’t exactly a close race, sure, but is this district – which includes newly-blue Hamilton Township – starting to inch away from the GOP? Or was 2018 just a blip on the radar?

LD25

Click here. The bottom line (for those of you who don’t want to click): this district will tell us a lot about how the GOP is doing in the burbs. 

Cumberland County Freeholder

New Jersey sees very few competitive freeholder races and even fewer control battles. This is one. Rising star State Senator Mike Testa Jr. is the GOP county chair, and he’s hoping a strong performance by Donald Trump and Jeff Van Drew in NJ-02 (see above) helps put the ticket of Darwin Cooper Jr., Victoria Lods and Antonio Romero over the top.

Cumberland is working class and sportsmen-intensive; it’s also home to a many Hispanic voters, and some national/battleground polls suggest the President is performing stronger than GOP presidential candidates usually do with these voters, especially first generation immigration. You might see it here if it’s actually happening, and if the trend is real then it’s huge news for the GOP in a county that Dems have dominated for awhile.

Matt Rooney
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MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.