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Tale of 2 Tom Keans? Republican in NJ-7 congressional race shows right-wing side on hidden webpage
By
Nancy Solomon
Published Sep 18, 2022
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(Photo by Jeff Fusco/Getty Images)
By
Nancy Solomon
Published Sep 18, 2022
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The Tom Kean Jr. for Congress campaign website includes a hard-to-find, seemingly hidden-away page that outlines staunchly conservative positions on voting issues — in stark contrast to more moderate views the Congressional candidate promotes on the rest of the site.
There’s no link to the page in the site’s navigation. The campaign for Democrat Tom Malinowski — fighting to hold onto the 7th Congressional District seat after flipping it blue in 2018 — says the website's URL has been emailed directly to some voters, though Gothamist hasn’t seen those emails firsthand. A voter who received the email tipped off Malinowski, the Democrat’s campaign says.
Tom Kean Jr. is a former state senator and the son and namesake of a popular former governor in New Jersey. His father earned a reputation as a moderate who appealed to independents and even many Democrats.
Kean Jr. came within 5,000 votes of defeating Malinowski the last time they faced off in 2020. And the 2021 redrawing of congressional maps has transferred an additional 30,000 registered Republicans into the district. That led The Cook Political Report to classify the race as leaning Republican, making it one of the races around the country that could help Republicans take majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
On TomKean.com, the campaign says Kean Jr. would end wasteful spending, promote American industry, support middle-class tax relief, and back energy independence — palatable positions for most voters.
But add a slash and “kean-conservative” to the URL, and the platform takes a turn to the right.
On that page, Kean Jr. says he wants to stop critical race theory in schools. He laments criminals and drugs coming across the border. And he takes a stand on abortion.
“Tom is a fierce defender of the sanctity of life, fighting every step of the way to protect the unborn from egregious abortion laws proposed in New Jersey, and will continue to do so in Congress,” the hidden page says. The New Jersey Legislature affirmed the right to abortion earlier this year. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation that provides legal protections to people who travel from other states for abortions.
Voters only have so much to go on beyond what they see on the site. So far, the only public event Kean Jr. has held was for donors — reporters were not allowed in. And he hasn’t responded to requests for an interview.
The Malinowski campaign says its own analysis shows Kean Jr.'s hidden page has been up since the June primary, unchanged. The “Wayback Machine,” which shows the history of websites on Archive.org, only started recording snapshots of it in early September. That site’s archives of the Kean Jr. website overall don’t show any time the page was ever accessible through the site’s navigation.
US Rep. Tom Malinowski during a 2019 press conference. The Seventh Congressional District has 30,000 more Republican voters after recent redistricting, making Malinowski's race against Republican Tom Kean Jr. this year a highly competitive one.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
“Kean is trying to have it both ways,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “It can't be true at the same time for him to say he's going to protect the unborn from egregious abortion laws and at the same time, he believes in a woman's right to choose with reasonable restrictions.”
Kean Jr.’s website is mostly focused on inflation, and doesn’t mention abortion at all outside of the hidden page. But the June decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn abortion rights has placed the issue squarely in the minds of voters.
“People want to know where you stand on abortion. And if voters are just going on what the campaign is saying, they could be very confused,” Rasmussen said. “He's trying to say different things to different people. And so it's hard to pin down where he is on this.”
Republican strategist Mike DuHaime isn’t working on the Kean Jr. campaign, but he’s been a good friend of Kean Jr.’s for many years. He said the fact that Kean Jr. is being criticized by the Malinowski campaign for his abortion stance shows he’s a moderate who is in line with the district.
Kean Jr. has sometimes been hit from the right for not being conservative enough, DuHaime said.
“I'm not surprised that he's gonna be hit ... from the left right now for being too conservative,” DuHaime said.
For Malinowski’s part, he’s been eager to portray Kean Jr. as a secret MAGA-style Republican who hides his true positions from moderate voters.
At a recent campaign event, he talked about being in the U.S. Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Then he held up a photo of a Kean Jr. mailer.
“And down here, it says, ‘No matter what Trump does, Kean has his back,’” Malinowski told the crowd, citing a line the ad quoted from a Star-Ledger editorial (which, in its original context, had criticized Kean Jr.). “Think about that. 'No matter what?'”
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