By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
The upcoming primary election will be unlike any conducted before in the United States, which will have its eyes on the hotly contested race for New Jersey’s Second Congressional District.
As the nation works to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions put in place by Gov. Phil Murphy limit the size of gatherings and require social distancing, making it difficult to hold elections in the standard way. Therefore, the vast majority of voters will be casting their ballots by mail in the election July 7, more than a month after the originally scheduled date.
The race for the Second District — which covers Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Salem counties, as well as parts of Burlington, Camden, Gloucester and Ocean — is being watched locally and nationally after incumbent U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew abruptly and publicly changed parties from Democrat to Republican amid the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
Now the freshman in the House of Representatives is facing a challenge from within his own party as well as a slew of candidates lining up to challenge the primary winner in the general election.
Van Drew won the seat for the Democratic Party in 2018, marking the first time it had been out of Republican control in nearly 25 years.
Former U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo held the seat from 1995 to 2019. He first won the seat in 1994 after incumbent Democrat William Hughes chose not to run for re-election. LoBiondo won every election until he announced that he would retire from Congress at the end of his term and not seek re-election in 2018.
Van Drew was a lifelong Democrat who served on Dennis Township Committee beginning in 1991 and as mayor from 1994 to 1995 and 1997 to 2003, later served on the Cape May County Board of Chosen Freeholders from 1994 to 1997, in the state Assembly from 2002 to 2008 and in the state Senate from 2007 to 2017.
Van Drew won the Second District seat as a Democrat in 2018 after LoBiondo retired, leaving the seat wide open. He defeated Republican Seth Grossman of Atlantic City with 53 percent of the vote to 45 percent.
On Dec. 19, 2019, Van Drew announced that he would be joining the Republican Party in opposition to House Democrats’ successful efforts to impeach Trump, and officially did so Jan. 7, 2020. He is now seeking the Republican nomination for a second term.
Challenging Van Drew is Robert W. Patterson, a Republican with homes in Camden County and Ocean City, where he spent summers in his youth.
Patterson is running as a “true conservative” and supports many of Trump’s initiatives, something Van Drew has not done, according to his voting record, despite vowing “undying support” for the president in a highly publicized switch to the GOP.
According to his campaign website, Patterson is running for Congress “to protect our conservative values from the liberal elite and make South Jersey great again.” He believes “we need to protect American jobs, restore manufacturing in South Jersey, put an end to unfair trade deals and secure our border.”
Patterson worked as a senior adviser to the Trump administration and acting associate commissioner at the Social Security Administration. Patterson also served in former President George W. Bush’s administration as a senior speechwriter.
Five candidates are vying for the Democratic nomination in the Second District: Will Cunningham, John Francis III, Brigid Callahan Harrison, Amy Kennedy and Robert Turkavage, who switched from the GOP after losing his bid to win the nomination to Grossman in the previous election.
Cunningham is a graduate of Vineland High School, Brown University and University of Texas-Austin School of Law. He spent two and a half years as a policy staffer for Sen. Cory Booker and since 2016 has worked in the House of Representatives as a chief investigator for the late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings.
Cunningham supports universal health care, expanded unemployment akin to a universal basic income and sick leave benefits. He said he believes the COVID-19 pandemic, and the systemic problems it has brought to light, demonstrate the need for a progressive policies to best serve average Americans.
“What we’re seeing now in this great time of crisis is that our government is more and more leaning on progressive policies to remedy the situation,” Cunningham said. “If we know what is going to do the most good and help the most vulnerable populations, then we need to use this moment to really create systemic change. We’re going to need our government to respond to the crisis in direct proportion to the severity.”
Francis, a West Cape May commissioner since 2018, has been an environmental advocate since 1971, when he witnessed a tanker collision and oil spill in San Francisco Bay, according to his campaign website. He gave up the use of motorized vehicles and began to walk wherever he went. Several months later, he took a vow of silence that lasted 17 years.
In 1991, known as the Planetwalker, he was appointed as the United Nations Environment Program’s Goodwill Ambassador to the World’s Grassroots Communities. He also served as project manager for the U.S. Coast Guard Oil Pollution Act staff of 1990 in Washington, D.C. Over the years, Francis has walked across the country and walked and sailed through the Caribbean, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile.
Today, Francis is visiting associate professor at the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is teaching graduate and undergraduate seminars in environmental studies. He is also the first education fellow at the National Geographic Society where he has published two books, “Planetwalker: 17 Years of Silence, 22 Years of Walking” and “The Ragged Edge of Silence: Finding Peace in a Noisy World.”
Francis said his focus is on “protecting the environment and providing education and economic equity.”
“Our survival depends on love, kindness and cooperation, not only in our relationships but in our politics and social institutions,” he said. “This pandemic has laid bare the fallacies and frailties of our social and economic system. Today, universal health care, a tighter social service net and a guaranteed income may not seem so absurd or too progressive.”
Harrison, a native of Runnemede, is a political science professor at Montclair State University who grew up in Absecon. Harrison is the author on a book about American government and democracy, “American Democracy Now.”
According to her campaign website, she supports greater access to quality, affordable health care, investment in infrastructure, relief for families facing student loan and vocational school debt and removing corporate special interest money from politics.
For the past two decades, she has taught political science and law at Montclair, researched and championed women in politics, moderated New Jersey gubernatorial and Senate debates and been regularly featured in local, statewide and national media for her political analysis, according to the website.
“I am running for Congress because Jeff Van Drew chose to put his own political career and Donald Trump before the district. We need a fighter for South Jersey,” she said. “Since the pandemic struck, we have seen this concern develop far more significantly. Instead of fighting for more COVID-19 testing, caring for our seniors or addressing the immediate needs of our boardwalks, Jeff has chose to blindly support Donald Trump and his way of dealing with this crisis. This pandemic has only reinforced our need for change — and our need to strengthen the community’s voice in Washington. And in its aftermath, we will need someone who will make our economy recovery a top priority and fight for South Jersey’s fair share of federal spending.”
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 holds 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. She and her husband, former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, live in Brigantine.
“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. “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.”
Turkavage is a retired FBI agent who lives in Brigantine with his wife, Sarah, an island native.
He has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Southeastern University in Washington, D.C. He worked for the FBI for more than 32 years as a supervisory special agent of both the Public Corruption and Government Fraud squads.
According to his campaign website, Turkavage has been involved in a variety of volunteer activities in Atlantic and Cape May counties, serving as a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for children in foster care and providing transportation services to senior citizens living in Brigantine. He is a member of the St. Thomas Church choir and has volunteered at various open-water swimming events in Brigantine and Atlantic City. Turkavage is also a member of the Brigantine Knights of Columbus and is active in matters affecting our veterans.
In 2012, Turkavage ran as an independent candidate for Senate. In 2014, he sought the Republican nomination for Senate. Turkavage campaigned in New Hampshire and New Jersey for then-presidential candidate John Kasich in 2016 and unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in 2018 for the seat occupied by Van Drew. Turkavage changed his affiliation from Republican to Democrat in December 2019.
Turkavage’s top priorities protecting the national security of the United States and ensuring that all laws passed by Congress are fair to all citizens.
“In my opinion, COVID 19 exposed a national security weakness or ‘gap.’ In its simplest terms, there are three components to dealing with (national security) threats: threat identification; preparedness (availability of sufficient manpower, other resources and an operational plan); and plan execution. The Trump administration bears responsibility for lack of preparedness and for a haphazard execution of the response plan. Congress, in my opinion, likely shares responsibility for lack of preparedness due to a lack of sufficient congressional oversight of a national security matter of which they were likely made aware,” he told The Sentinel.