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After Sherrill’s big win, Democrats eye Republican congressmembers in NJ
By
Mike Hayes
Published Nov 19, 2025
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Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images and Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
By
Mike Hayes
Published Nov 19, 2025
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There’s a saying in politics: You’re never too far from the next election.
Just two weeks after Democrat Mikie Sherrill’s resounding 14-point victory over Republican Jack Ciattarelli in this year’s governor’s race, her party is eyeing a few GOP seats it believes can be flipped in next year’s midterms.
Democrats’ prime target: Republican Rep. Tom Kean, Jr. He was first elected in 2022 after redistricting added 17,000 registered Republicans to the seventh district. But Sherrill won it by one point earlier this month. Now, Kean faces a growing field of well-funded challengers. And whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee is poised to have the backing of national organizations like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Tom Kean should be worried,” said Matthew Hale, a politics professor at Seton Hall University. “The fact that so many [Democrats] are jumping in is because they sense vulnerability, and so they're lining up to take a shot.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew may also be vulnerable. His South Jersey seat has long been a safe Republican stronghold. However, the most recent voter data indicates a shift to the left in the region. Sherrill turned five counties in the state from red to blue – three of them were in Van Drew’s district.
Days after Sherrill’s win, Van Drew told Fox Business that if his party doesn’t deal with affordability issues like rising health care costs, Republicans will get “killed” in the 2026 midterms.
Kean – who’s become notorious for not engaging with the press – declined to comment for this story. Other Republicans expressed confidence in his and other GOP members’ chances in 2026.
Targeting Kean Jr.
Kean’s vulnerability has attracted a robust field of challengers. Eight candidates are currently vying for the nomination.
Rebecca Bennett is among the early front-runners. Like Sherrill, Bennett is a former Navy helicopter pilot. She’s raised the most money of any Dem so far – $1.3 million.
Other notable candidates in the race include Dr. Tina Shah, an intensive-care unit physician who actually outraised Bennett last quarter — raising $600,000 in the third quarter of 2025 compared to Bennett’s $477,000. And Michael Roth, the former head of the Small Business Administration under Joe Biden, is running on having experience in Washington that other candidates lack.
After Sherrill’s big win, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a national organization that recruits and raises funds for Democrats it believes can win key congressional races, says it’s ready to throw its financial support behind unseating Kean.
“Governor-elect Sherrill cleaned Jack Ciattarelli’s clock with a relentless focus on affordability. That’s bad news for career politician Tom Kean Jr., whose record includes voting to jack up New Jerseyans’ electricity bills and failing to prevent health care premiums from skyrocketing. Kean Jr. is making things more expensive, and that’s why he’ll lose next November,” DCCC press secretary Eli Cousin told Gothamist.
One challenge facing Kean will be how closely he’s stayed aligned with President Donald Trump during his second term. The party of the president in power tends not to fare well in the midterms that follow a presidential election. Polling shows that a majority of New Jerseyans disapprove of Trump’s job performance.
Ciattarelli aligned himself closely with the president in his run for governor and was rejected by most voters.
Kean's scorecard from the progressive policy institute Center for American Progress shows he has voted 100% of the time in support of Trump-backed legislation. And despite signing onto multiple letters warning of the energy cost implications of the president’s Big Beautiful Bill, Kean voted to support the legislation anyway.
Some Republicans, however, say they aren’t worried about Kean’s prospects for reelection.
“Tom Kean Jr.’s fundraising and record tells you everything you need to know: He continues to deliver win after win for New Jersey, and voters are fired up to send him back to DC,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Maureen O’Toole told Gothamist, noting that Kean has already raised $2.6 million for reelection this cycle.
Van Drew in trouble?
Simon Persico is confident that Van Drew’s seat is also at risk. He’s a New Jersey Democratic strategist who is currently consulting for Bayly Winder, one of several challengers for Van Drew’s seat.
Persico said he believes the stage is set for a blue wave similar to 2018 when candidates like Mikie Sherrill and — ironically — a then-Democrat Jeff Van Drew, who later switched parties, were swept into office during Trump’s first term.
“ In a Democratic wave environment, Jeff Van Drew goes,” Persico said.
Winder, 33, recently worked at USAID before he was fired during the Trump administration's purge of the agency. Among the four candidates challenging Van Drew so far, Winder has raised the most money by a considerable margin, with over $300,000 in his campaign coffers.
But that still pales in comparison to Van Drew, who has a war chest of over $1 million. Van Drew’s campaign did not respond to a request to comment on the race. Trump won Van Drew’s district by nearly 13 points in 2024. Van Drew himself won that year by almost 17%.
But Sherrill’s performance may signal a larger political shift in South Jersey. Turnout there surged in this year’s gubernatorial election, primarily benefiting the Democrat. Three counties in Van Drew’s district – Atlantic, Cumberland and Gloucester – flipped from red to blue in 2025.
Even in the South Jersey counties that Sherrill didn’t win, she was able to turn out more Democratic votes. In Salem County, Sherrill won nearly 3,000 more votes than Murphy received in 2021, while Ciattarelli added only about 600 more votes there in 2025.
Similarly, in Cape May County, Sherrill bested Murphy’s performance by over 4,000 more votes — compared to Ciattarelli, who added 1,300 votes this time around.
“That's not a good sign for Van Drew. I do think he’s vulnerable,” Hale said.
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new jersey
Mike Hayes
Mike Hayes covers equity and access to opportunity in New Jersey. He joined WNYC and Gothamist in 2023. Before that, he worked as a freelance journalist writing about policing and criminal justice. He has written for ProPublica, CNN, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News and The Appeal. He is also the author of the book, “The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.” In 2019, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
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