Luke Goldstein
Democratic congressional candidate Sue Altman speaks at a town hall meeting held in New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District, October 10, 2024, in Bridgewater, New Jersey.
This story is part of the Prospect’s on-the-ground Election 2024 coverage. You can find all the other stories here.
BRIDGEWATER, NEW JERSEY – It only took until the final month of the race for New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District for Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) to agree to a debate against his Democratic opponent Sue Altman. The virtual event showed why Kean had been reluctant. It was an all-around disastrous performance for the sitting congressman, who hasn’t really been heard from in the district since defeating Democrat Tom Malinowski in the 2022 midterms.
As a viral social media clip put on full display, Kean doesn’t talk to reporters or even acknowledge their presence in the halls of Congress; nor for that matter does he hold in-person town halls or really any constituent-facing events. Throughout the debate, he struggled to answer basic questions about his record on reproductive rights, IVF, election certification, minimum-wage laws, and his endorsement of Donald Trump despite claiming to be a middle-of-the-road moderate.
During a particularly bizarre moment, Kean stared blankly into the camera for eight seconds straight after Altman posed a question to him, refusing to acknowledge her presence. “Now I know how the reporters must feel,” Altman said.
But another exchange stuck out from that debate. During a rapid-fire thumbs-up or -down section prompted by the moderators—an insufferable yet common debate format—the candidates were asked whether they thought their campaigns were adequately supported by the national party.
Altman, on camera, put her thumb down. That moment spilled into the open growing tensions between Altman and the campaign arms of the Democratic Party.
The image was clipped online, made the rounds on social media, and sparked blowback at party leadership for neglecting one of the closest races this cycle, which could decide which party controls the House.
And the pressure appears to have worked. Just this week, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s House Majority PAC (HMP) announced it would finally make its first investment in the race with a $4 million ad buy, set to run in the pricey New York metro market for the final two weeks of the campaign.
Though her candor at the debate was somewhat unexpected, Altman really had every right to air her grievances.
FOR MOST OF THE RACE, NJ-07 WAS the only Republican-held seat listed as a toss-up or lean Republican in the Cook Political Report that the House Majority PAC hadn’t spent a dime on. Kean has been backed with robust support from national Republicans, receiving millions from the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund, the GOP’s counterpart to the HMP.
Despite the lopsided differential in outside spending, a Monmouth poll last week, which was promoted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Altman, showed her in a virtual tie. Altman has also out-fundraised Kean on her own in the final quarter, though Kean has more cash on hand overall by about a 2-to-1 margin.
The Democratic campaign arms’ unwillingness to lift a finger in NJ-07 had become one of the most perplexing under-the-radar stories this election season.
“There were definitely skeptics and critics in the pundit and political class who thought Sue might be too progressive to win, but her commonsense messaging and record of taking on corruption in both parties has resonated with the independent-minded voters needed to flip a district like this,” said Charlie Blaettler, deputy federal affairs director with the Working Families Party in New Jersey.
On paper, the seat has the exact makeup of districts the party is targeting this year to flip the House. Prior to Kean’s victory in 2022, it was held by Malinowski for two terms. It’s mostly suburban and highly educated, with an average income of $120,000, making it one of the wealthiest districts in the nation.
New York is an expensive metro market, to be sure. But just across the river, the party has invested heavily in several races that look almost identical in terms of viability. Why the difference in NJ-07?
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Altman’s opponent, Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), seen attending a House Transportation Committee hearing in Washington, June 27, 2024
Political parties’ investments are not always rational decisions, immune from favoritism. The party has a history of letting progressive candidates languish in general elections, after defeating more moderate candidates in primaries backed by party leaders. Notably, the DCCC spent hardly any money to help Jamie McLeod-Skinner in Oregon in 2022 or Kara Eastman in Nebraska in 2018, both of whom were outgunned by opponents and lost narrowly.
Because of her affiliation with the progressive Working Families Party, Altman was immediately deemed by media pundits and political insiders as ill-suited for the district when she stepped into the race. Kean has certainly tried to paint Altman as a radical for WFP’s past positions on a host of issues, mostly defunding the police in 2020, the Green New Deal, and imposing conditions on military funding to Israel.
But the overturning of Roe v. Wade has significantly altered the political landscape, particularly in suburban districts and perhaps with even more resonance than in 2022. Along with portraying Kean as an absentee congressman, Altman has gone on offense against him for his party’s radical positions on abortion, IVF, and January 6th.
Much of Kean’s campaign hinges on his self-professed moderate track record. He says he’s pro-choice and that reproductive rights should be left up to the states. But while parroting a similar line in the 2022 midterms, he was revealed to have a secret website for Republican voters and donors where he promised federal restrictions on abortion access, in line with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s view that life starts at conception. While saying he supports IVF, Kean hasn’t signed on to a bipartisan bill in Congress designed to do exactly that.
Altman has sought to exploit Kean’s inconsistencies at every turn. The strategy appeared to work early on in the race, yet with no measurable effect on the party’s resource allocation.
SOME POLITICAL ANALYSTS IN THE STATE suspected that the Democratic Party’s cold shoulder to Altman had to do with her work as an anti-corruption reformer. Out on the trail, she’s been willing to openly buck her own party.
One of her stump speech lines is that, unlike her opponent, she won’t be subservient to the “national political parties” and “corporate donors” over the real constituents of the district. You can imagine why that kind of rhetoric may ruffle some feathers.
For much of her career, Altman had been a thorn in the side of the New Jersey political machine, fighting against both Republicans and corrupt Democrats. In 2019, she made headlines for being forcibly removed from a state Senate hearing regarding a sweetheart tax break program used to award lucrative contracts to politically connected developers in Camden, New Jersey. The most notable beneficiary was George Norcross, the South Jersey political boss who has now been indicted on racketeering charges for those deals.
Altman was also one of the first to call for Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez to resign after his own corruption indictment. (Menendez was convicted and has now stepped down.) Along with Senate candidate Rep. Andy Kim, she led the charge in numerous lawsuits that ultimately took down the “county line” system, an electoral tool to tilt the playing field in elections toward the state machine’s endorsed candidates.
Though she built credibility with reformers, she made some powerful enemies along the way. Norcross, a major party bundler, has close friends throughout the national party, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. His brother is a sitting congressman, Rep. Don Norcross (D-NJ), who’s been a generous donor to the party’s campaign arms, including raising nearly $100,000 this year for the DCCC.
Out on the trail, Altman is leaning into her track record as a reformer to showcase her independent streak and appeal to more moderate swing voters.
Anti-corruption goes hand in hand with championing economic populism for Altman. She ties the shady developers that siphoned out public money in Camden to corporate landlords that are jacking up the cost of housing.
Luke Goldstein
For much of her career, Altman has been a forceful critic of political corruption within the Democratic Party.
Though NJ-07 is a comparatively well-off district, the affordability crisis for homes, education, and health care has hit families here just as much. Altman’s economic pitch views these soaring costs as largely a function of corporate monopolies, rhetoric she’s embracing on the trail.
“This is one of the most affluent and highly educated districts in the country and yet I hear how hard it is to make ends meet … prices are too high, wages are too low, and I believe it’s due to a lack of competition and corporate greed,” Altman said at the debate. She’s also equally embracing some more moderate-favored policies like repealing the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, a regressive tax cut but a critical issue in blue-state suburban districts.
This economic platform squares with her pitch to get money out of politics. It’s strikes a contrast with her opponent, who has routinely run into issues with the blind trust he submitted to the Congressional Ethics Committee, which was rejected as inadequate. A former state Senate majority leader, Kean in many ways is the face of the Republican wing of the state machine that Altman has fought against for years. The scion of a political dynasty in the state whose father served as governor, Kean’s name recognition is his most valuable asset in the race.
Altman is portraying Kean as an out-of-touch political boss who doesn’t have the district’s interest at heart, and who takes his cues from donors on a host of issues, from minimum-wage laws to environmental policy. In addition to the national party’s help, Elon Musk’s America PAC is also spending on mailers and canvassing to help Kean’s campaign. Altman is making Musk’s entrance into the race a major target.
This isn’t to say that Altman doesn’t have to navigate her own tricky balancing act to appeal to voters in an affluent swing district.
While Altman is more than willing to buck her party on certain economic issues, she’s actively upholding the party’s status quo on unconditional support for funding Israel amid its war on Gaza and potentially wider regional war. She’s raised concerns about antisemitism on college campuses such as her alma mater Columbia, and has faulted Kean for not condemning neo-Nazis hosted at a Trump golf course in the district.
EARLIER THIS MONTH, WHEN I TRAVELED to the district for a town hall, I encountered the type of nontraditional voters Altman is trying to win over to her campaign.
Typically, when you attend events hosted by progressive groups you can expect a pretty standard set of locations: a nonprofit building, a sleek law firm, maybe a school auditorium if they’re really trying to show the dirt under their nails. So I was quite surprised to find myself in the parking lot of the local lodge for a fraternal motorcycle club.
Inside, bearded men and tattooed women with leather jackets chain-smoked cigarettes and played pool for a jar of quarters. Outside, club members prepared a barbecue next to a volleyball game on the sand courts.
Lodge members were not the core audience of the town hall, but it was held in a more conservative part of the district. As a spokesperson told me prior to the event, “We’ll have some MAGA people here, some of whom don’t like Kean and want to see what we’re all about. So we’re ready to field some difficult questions.”
Some Trump bumper stickers were on cars nearby, with Altman lawn signs closer to the location, which the campaign professed were not their doing.
At the town hall, Altman addressed a variety of questions. Some were in her wheelhouse, about taking on money in politics, and support for small businesses. In particular, she spoke at length about agricultural reforms to level the playing field for family farms, of which there are actually many in the district, struggling due to corporate concentration.
“Democrats simply haven’t served rural communities well, and it’s something I’m now seeing rear its ugly head,” Altman said. “Sometimes Democrats suck up to big business too … [meanwhile] Republicans are there to help the giant agribusiness.”
But there were also tough questions about her stance on immigration reform, defunding the police, and trans people in sports. The latter issue was especially animating for a group of women who showed up that night to grill Altman because of a recent New York Post headline that Altman wasn’t “‘worried’ about biological men in women’s locker rooms.”
In response to one woman’s question, Altman said that as a former athlete, her point had been that she believed there were bigger issues for women competing in sports, such as equal resources.
One thing that’s notable about Altman, who played professional basketball overseas and was a teacher before getting into politics, is that she doesn’t talk in the lingo typically associated with professional activists. She responded to opposing views with the kind of familiarity you’d expect from someone who grew up debating over the dinner table with Republican parents in New Jersey (which she did).
On several issues, Altman has staked out more moderate positions than are typically held by progressives. One town hall guest asked her a question about immigration as a threat to public safety, referencing Republican claims that the Biden administration is letting in rapists and criminals. She replied that the two issues needed to be separated. On public safety, she was willing to give more ground.
“I think the left got a lot of that wrong [about public safety] in 2020,” she said. This comment was in reference to a tweet she put out in 2020 with the hashtag “Defund the police,” which she has since disavowed.
On immigration, however, she’s more eager to use the issue to go on the attack against her opponent. She both supports a pathway to citizenship, lauding the economic benefits of immigrants for sectors like elder care, while also backing stronger border enforcement. She says she’d vote for the bipartisan immigration bill brokered by Democrats, in contrast to Kean, whose party thwarted the legislation.
Closing out the town hall, Altman came back to the main calling cards of her campaign: economic justice, abortion, and accountability for public officials.
On the way out, I spoke to several voters about their reactions. Their priorities ranged from housing to gun control or crime, but there was a common thread among Altman’s supporters of all political stripes: They wanted a representative who’d actually be present and attentive to the voice of the voters in the district.
