By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
Amy Kennedy, of Brigantine, won the Democratic primary for the Second Congressional District Tuesday, July 7.
She easily outpolled the other four Democrats in the races, including her closest rival Brigid Callahan Harrison, of Longport, a political science professor who had been supported by the south Jersey Democratic machine and the county party chairmen.
The same machine had supported Jeff Van Drew, a longtime state legislator now in his first term in the House of Representatives who gained national attention for quitting the Democratic Party late in 2019 and vowing his “undying support” for President Donald Trump as a newly-minted Republican. Trump brought a campaign rally to Wildwood in New Jersey with Van Drew by his side.
Van Drew easily outdistanced his primary opponent, Bob Patterson of Ocean City.
Kennedy declared victory Tuesday night after the polls closed, saying she is “ready to take on Jeff Van Drew and turn this district blue again in the fall.”
About half of the precincts were reporting by Wednesday morning in the mostly mail-in election; mail-in ballots did not have to be postmarked until Tuesday to count and may not be fully tallied until late this month.
Kennedy, a former school teacher in Northfield who is married to former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy and played on the Kennedy name during her campaign – had more than double the votes of Harrison, earning 18,583 to Harrison’s 7,983, according to press reports. Will Cunningham had just under 12 percent of the vote with 3,648.
In Cape May County, the Board of Elections posted unofficial results showing Kennedy with 3,517 votes to Harrison’s 1,753. Cunningham, of Vineland, had 490, John Francis of West Cape May had 133 and Robert Turkavage, a Republican-turned-Democrat, had 102.
In a speech to supporters Tuesday night, Kennedy said, “Seven months ago, when Jeff Van Drew abandoned the people of South Jersey and pledged his undying support to Donald Trump, I knew I had to step up and do something.
“And since he became a Republican, Jeff Van Drew has chosen time and time again to serve Donald Trump instead of serving this community. He has spent more time raising money for Trump’s re-election campaign than he has doing anything for the people he was elected to represent. He has co-signed onto Trump’s hateful, divisive, racist brand of politics and doubled down on his pledge.
Now more than ever, here in South Jersey and across the country, leadership matters. Our country and our community are in crisis because of the devastating impact of COVID-19 and the needless murder of George Floyd, the most recent victim in a seemingly endless string of acts of violence against people of color in America. We need leaders who will heal when we hurt, listen when we speak, provide direction when we need guidance, and show up when it matters.
So, my message to Jeff Van Drew tonight is – we have had enough and we demand better. We have had enough division and hate and selfishness. We have had enough of being abandoned and mistreated and forgotten. We have had enough of you and Donald Trump.”
Kennedy said she was proud of the positive campaign she ran.
“We tried to unite people, not divide them,” she said. “We ran a campaign focused on putting forth bold and specific ideas of how we will fight for the people of South Jersey.”
By contrast, Harrison’s campaign include positive messages with positions that were closely aligned with those of Kennedy, but she also spent a lot of time attacking Kennedy in press releases and mailers.
Kennedy, a former teacher at Northfield Community School, is education director of The Kennedy Forum, where she works to facilitate policy change in the areas of education and mental health, according to her campaign website. She has more than a decade of experience working in public schools in New Jersey and serves on the boards of Mental Health America and Parity.org, which promotes gender parity at the highest levels of business.
Kennedy has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Penn State University and a master’s degree in environmental education from Nova Southeastern University. She was born in Atlantic City and grew up in Pleasantville and Absecon.
“It’s clear that in times of crisis, voters want leaders who won’t turn their back on their communities. This pandemic has underscored what I want to do in Congress and has truly shown the fault lines in our economy, the disparities in our health system, and how we undervalue industries like child care, health care workers and other front-line responders,” Kennedy told The Sentinel during her campaign. “As a former public school teacher and mental health advocate, my focus has been to address the inequities in access to health and mental health care. With the spread of COVID, we are continuing to see just how unjust this system has been, not only to vulnerable communities, but to those who are working on the front lines, and my commitment to addressing these issues remains a constant priority.”
Van Drew served as a mayor and freeholder in Cape May County before being elected as a state representative and then a state senator in the First District. He beat Republican Seth Grossman in the 2018 congressional election for the seat vacated by Congressman Frank LoBiondo, who served from 1995 to 2019 before retiring. Before that, Democrat Bill Hughes, of Ocean City, was the Second District congressman.
This story will be updated after more election results are posted in the sprawling Second Congressional District, which encompasses Atlantic, Cape May, Salem and Cumberland counties and parts of Burlington, Gloucester, Camden and Ocean counties.