The Sentinel is profiling the four candidates running in the Democratic primary for the Second Congressional District seat.
This may or may not be the year one of them can topple incumbent Republican Jeff Van Drew, and if they do, they’ll be overcoming the voter registration that gives Republicans a big edge and the power of incumbency.
Beyond that, they can thank Democratic leaders in New Jersey for making this a steeper climb.
Tim Alexander ran unsuccessfully for Congress against Van Drew before. Bayly Winder and Terri Reese announced their intentions to seek the Democratic nomination early. Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock came to the party late, but should be putting on a full-court press to get known beyond the far southern tip of Cape May County and around this big Second District.
One of them will be elected in the Democratic primary on June 2 and go on to challenge the incumbent.
Van Drew comes with a big home court advantage in Cape May County that includes but goes well beyond name recognition. He represented it for decades as a mayor, on the county board of freeholders (now commissioners), as a state assemblyman and a state senator. He did all that as a Democrat and got elected to Congress as a Democratic, but switched late in his first year to a more fitting home in the Republican Party.
The move wasn’t a shock to us. Van Drew was always a conservative Democrat and broke with his party throughout the years on some major Democratic planks. When he switched parties and pledged his undying loyalty to President Donald Trump, however, he went hard right in a late-in-life political metamorphosis.
We had hoped when he got elected that he would have worked to bridge the ever-widening chasm between the parties and work in the problem-solvers caucus with a focus on accomplishing things in a bipartisan way, much like GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of southeastern Pennsylvania.
However, Van Drew did the calculations. Rather than muck about in the middle, in potential obscurity, he found it easy to get face time on conservative media by going hard touting the singular party line. That plays well to a large swath of the district, though not to the Democrats who kept him in office for years.
The fact is there are more registered Republicans than Democrats in the district and more unaffiliated voters than in either party, but the voters overall have gone for Republicans (except that one time for Van Drew). Since then, Van Drew has won handily, with 58 or 59 percent of the vote. The district almost bends over right.
And then there’s the power of incumbency shown in the newspaper as Van Drew announces $99 million in funding for beaches in the district. You can’t do that as a challenger.
Finally, when Democrats did their most recent redistricting, they were keen on protecting the seat in the Third District and shifted borders to make the Second District more conservative and the Third District less. The strategy kept the Third District in Democratic hands for Andy Kim and his successor after Kim was elected a U.S. senator.
But it won’t make it any easier for the winner of the June Democratic primary.
There would have to be a lot of people upset with President Trump to put his emissary here in the district at real risk.