Region a swing district; party switch raised national interest in outcome
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP — The Second Congressional District race between now-Republican incumbent Jeff Van Drew and challenger Amy Kennedy has been one of the most interesting and high-profile in the country.
“New Jersey has 1 million more Democrats than Republicans among registered voters, so in many of the congressional districts and races up and down the state, Democrats do have some advantage,” said John Froonjian, executive director of the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University. “Although I will also say that we have probably one of the most competitive congressional races in the country here in south Jersey in the Second District.”
That’s in large part due to Van Drew’s very public party switch in December 2019, when he pledged his “undying support” for President Donald Trump on national television from the Oval Office.
The Second Congressional District is ‘one of the rare districts across the country that voters seem to really look at the candidates and make up their minds.’ And those voters do not favor extremism on either side.
–John Froonjian, executive director,
William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy
at Stockton University
The freshman congressman said the final straw was when the Democratic leadership told him he would lose their support if he did not vote to impeach the president.
But the marriage went bad before the honeymoon, when Van Drew cast his first vote against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House.
According to Politco.com, Van Drew had been planning to seek re-election as a Democrat but saw his support plunge into in the 20s when he announced he would vote against impeachment.
According to Ballotpedia.org, the district was one of 109 in the country that intersected with “Pivot Counties,” or counties carried by Republican Donald Trump in 2016 after Democrat Barack Obama claimed them in 2008 and 2012.
Despite Republican Frank LoBiondo holding the district from 1995 to 2018, and Democrat William Hughes holding it prior to that from 1970 to 1994, Froonjian called it a swing district in federal elections.
“The district actually has been a swing district when you look at the presidential races, the Congress races and the Senate races,” Froonjian said. “In Congress, we have had only two representatives over the last 45 years so that might sound a little bit fleeting. But keep in mind that this seat went 50 years ago from a Republican to a Democrat, Bill Hughes, to a Republican, Frank Lobiondo, to a Democrat in Jeff Van Drew, and so it’s been a long time between elections but you don’t see many congressional districts switch at all.”
The district includes Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Salem counties, as well as parts of Burlington, Camden, Gloucester and Ocean counties, and so the demographics are as diverse as the landscape, ranging from wealthy coastal towns to rural farming communities.
Froonjian said it is “one of the rare districts across the country that voters seem to really look at the candidates and make up their minds. And those voters, he said, do not favor extremism on either side.
“Although it’s generally been seen as a right-of-center district — the Democrats who have won like Bill Hughes and Jeff Van Drew have been very moderate or even somewhat conservative Democrats, and Frank LoBiondo was moderate on issues like the environment and labor unions — you’re not going to win it or stay in office long if you are too far to either extreme. We’ve seen that for 50 years now that a moderate Democrat or Republican can be elected and that the district has swung back and forth between the parties depending on the office and the election.”
Froonjian said both candidates have moved toward the center following the primary election but that neither was very far from the middle to begin with.
He said that while Kennedy “kind of came across as a little more progressive, I don’t think she has been campaigning on very far-left issues.”
“We had a debate [in October] and she came across as somewhat liberal but moderate and Jeff Van Drew also came across more moderate than I think he had been earlier in the campaign when he was in the primary,” Froonjian said. “So that’s kind of normal, conventional politics.”
He said it remains to be seen whether the expected blue wave washes all the way to the shore.
“I think the real question in this district is — it looks pretty clear that there is going to be a Democratic wave in a lot of places. We’ve seen Joe Biden and Democratic Senate candidates be competitive in red states that have never been that competitive before, so we know there is something of a blue wave out there. Whether it crests in a way that gives the Democrats a win and the majority, we’ll see soon enough — but the question is whether if there is a blue wave, if it reaches the Jersey shore in the Second District,” Froonjian said.
He added that if there is a Democratic wave that sweeps the Second District, Kennedy has a very good shot.
“She has raised a lot of money since spring, although in the last report she didn’t have as much as Van Drew but the National Democratic Campaign Committee has been running ads on Philadelphia TV for her, so even though her money wasn’t as high as Van Drew’s, she has had a lot of advertising,” Froonjian said
However, he said, “you almost always bet on the incumbent — almost always.”
But this year is different in a number of ways.
“Being that Van Drew switched parties from Democrat to Republican, a lot of Democrats who used to vote for him might be very mad.”
In Van Drew’s favor is that Trump is not as unpopular in southern New Jersey as he is in the rest of the state.
“A lot of people don’t mind or like Donald Trump, but a year ago we saw a pro-Trump Republican elected state senator in the First Legislative District,” Froonjian said, referring to Mike Testa.
“He was an attorney for the Trump campaign in New Jersey. His success shows that the Trump brand is not as toxic in south Jersey as it is in the rest of the state,” Froonjian said.
But as interesting as it is, Froonjian said the race means more to the Democratic leadership than it does for control of Congress.
“No one race is likely to be determinative, and it looks like most experts predict the Democrats are not in danger of losing control of the House, but they very well may add to their majority,” he said. “A win here would be very much favored by the Democrats in Washington, the leadership in Washington — speaker (Nancy) Pelosi — after Van Drew basically refused to vote for her and was kind of a thorn in their side sometimes by not voting with the party.”
He called winning the district “one piece of the attempt for the Democratic Party to solidify and increase their majority in the House” that will have “a strong impact on who represents South Jersey for a long time to come.”
“My personal opinion is if the Democrats had not gone to war with Van Drew over the impeachment vote, if they had just given him a pass on that, he probably would still be a conservative Democrat but a Democrat, and he probably would have been re-elected and they probably would have had a Democrat in that seat for the next 20 years or as long as he wanted to be there,” Froonjian said.
He said whoever wins likely will control the district for a long time.
“If [Van Drew] loses now and Amy Kennedy is in, and she is in the majority and they give her really good committee assignments and she starts raising money so that she has a ton of money two years from now, there is a good chance that she can represent the district for many years,” Froonjian said. “If Jeff Van Drew wins this, goes back to Congress again, then he becomes a very well-known incumbent and it probably becomes his seat to lose.”
He predicts that politics likely will be a little more conventional following this election — “you don’t have wave elections every year” — so that would make the winner hard to beat.