| A longtime friend of Tom Kean Jr. and veteran Republican strategist admitted to POLITICO that the vulnerable congressman is in deep trouble because he “has not separated himself from a president who is deeply unpopular at home.”
The Kean Jr. ally admitted that “it was already going to be tough” for him to win re-election, but that he has only made things harder by not doing “enough” to break from his D.C. party bosses and stand up for New Jersey.
DCCC Spokesperson Eli Cousin:
“Even Tom Kean Jr.’s own friends know he is a profile in cowardice. Whether it’s his silence on Gateway or his votes for historic health care cuts, cost-spiking tariffs, and skyrocketing electricity bills, Kean Jr. has betrayed his community by putting his D.C. party bosses first and New Jersey last.”
Read for yourself why POLITICO says Kean Jr. is “in a bind”:
 POLITICO: Trump is causing a midterm headache for this New Jersey congressmember
By Matt Friedman and Madison Fernandez | March 2, 2026
- Tom Kean Jr. faces the same problem as every other vulnerable Republican in the midterms: Donald Trump.
- But the president is making it extra hard for Kean, a soft-spoken House member who has a cavalcade of Democrats seeking to oust him in his wealthy suburban New Jersey district, which includes the Bedminster golf course that doubles as a summer retreat for Trump.
- Even people close to the two-term congressmember acknowledge that Kean has not separated himself from a president who is deeply unpopular at home — especially in a year where Republicans are trying to hold their razor-thin majority in the House.
- “It was already going to be tough because midterms are tough for the party in power. And I think on issues like this, Tom would be safe to carve a little space between him and the president,” said Mike DuHaime, a veteran strategist of many Republican campaigns.
- But DuHaime, a longtime friend of Kean, acknowledged that the congressmember’s brand of behind-the-scenes advocacy may not work now. “I don’t know that it has been enough yet. Since Tom has gone to the national level, he has been less prone to kind of stick out from the majority,” he said.
- […] in 2025, when Democrat Mikie Sherrill won a landslide victory in the governor’s race over Republican Jack Ciattarelli, she carried the district by a little more than 1 point.
- Like many Republicans in swing districts, Kean, who is running for his third term, finds himself in a balancing act when it comes to how closely to run with the president. […] Democrats have repeatedly sought to tie the two together, including pointing to votes Kean has made in support of tariffs. Trump endorsed Kean for the first time this cycle.
- Democrats last year won Assembly seats long held by Republicans in two districts that partially overlap with Kean’s. That includes the 21st District, which Kean represented for two decades.
- “It’s so obvious when you look at the poll of Trump, you look at the Jack Ciattarelli catastrophe, you look at losses in my district that we haven’t lost in decades,” Bramnick said, stressing he was commenting on Trump hurting Republicans in New Jersey generally and not specifically on Kean. “I’ve got Republicans who tell me ‘You’re just anti-Trump.’ No, no no. I am anti-losing.”
- The ICE facility is especially politically troubling for Kean, said pollster Patrick Murray, who sees a “pincer movement” of heightened Democratic enthusiasm in the district’s denser eastern suburbs and potentially depressed Republican enthusiasm in its exurban western portions. Trump’s approach to immigration is largely unpopular among New Jerseyans, according to a recent survey conducted by the Stockton Polling Institute.
- “Republican voters are feeling the negative impacts of the Trump administration and he’s not standing up to it. That’s going to cost him,” Murray said.
|
