Tom Malinowski’s pandemic profiteer stock scandal took a turn for the ugly last week, Save Jerseyans, and according to NJ Globe’s David Wildstein, it may’ve sealed his fate. Not with the voters (although that could also be true – time would tell), but specifically with the Democrat insiders who control the upcoming redistricting process.
“I’d rather dump all the Republicans into one district and let Kean win in a landslide,” Wildstein quotes one Democrat insider saying. “Then we don’t have to worry about Mikie [Sherrill]. Then we wouldn’t need to worry about [Josh] Gottheimer.”
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Stupid, awful, corrupt behavior made worse by the fact that at least $1 million of his trades pertained to pandemic-related products and services. The NRCC – which is hoping Tom Kean Jr. can avenge his narrow 2020 loss in 2022 – is positively giddy over the prospect of Malinowski paying a political price for it.
“Tom Malinowski’s days of using his official position to gain personal profit are numbered,” said NRCC Spokeswoman Samantha Bullock on Tuesday.
Is that true? We’ll see.
Based off of the new census, New Jersey will stay at 12 U.S. House seats. Each House district will contain approximately 774,083 residents. The process won’t even begin until September 2021 because that’s when the states will have both the town-level and census block data they need from the feds to draw workable maps.
Democrats currently have a super-slim 9-seat edge in the U.S. House; that margin assumes currently vacant seats (there are 5) remain with the party of the previous occupant in upcoming special elections. What’s more, Republicans are favored to gain a few seats in 2022 just based upon reapportionment (red states gained seats while blue states cumulatively lost them), and that’s without factoring in the usual result where incumbent presidents lose seats in midterm cycles.
The bottom line: with five competitive House seats in New Jersey – four of which are held by Democrats – Nancy Pelosi can ill-afford to drop one in New Jersey due to redistricting.
What remains to be seen is how much pressure Pelosi exerts on New Jersey Democrats to find a way to keep all of the current competitive Democrat seats blue. It may be hard to do based upon what the local/census block data tell us, but N.J. Dems might find themselves under extreme pressure to try.
I’d expect them to try.
I also wouldn’t be shocked if, after the stock scandal calms down, Malinowski returns to the Department of State and Democrats dig up a replacement candidate with less dirt under his or her fingernails.
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