Two Weeks on the Clock: Updates on ALL New Jersey’s KEY Battlegrounds (with Monmouth University’s Patrick Murray)
The ugliest statewide collision in recent memory features two candidates bludgeoning each other with negative ads and messages. At a press conference in the Ironbound earlier today, Republican challenger Bob Hugin said he’s run a substantive campaign. That was a day after he released a Fox News video called “Swamp.”
Dragging the encumbrance of a hung jury corruption trial and a senate ethics committee admonishment, the Democratic Party machine-reliant Menendez has tried throughout to muddy Hugin, branding his rival as a big pharma phony and Princeton eating club-schooled Trump acolyte.
While Hugin has thrown $26.2 million at the race (compared to $11.1 by Menendez), the Democrat’s allies trust the combination of a million more registered Democratic voters than Republicans in New Jersey and overall Trump horror will propel their candidate across the finish line.
In terms of Menendez’s potential to weigh down on congressional party members running in battleground districts, Democrats trust in the overarching Trump narrative to maintain blue wave atmospherics.
“He’s a drag everywhere,” said Monmouth University Pollster Patrick Murray, in reference to the president, noting that down ballot, in CD-11 and CD-7, “you have a significant number of women and moderate republicans” motivated to vote in opposition to Trump.
Murray notes that Trump polls better in Ocean (half of the 3rd District) than he does in the bulk of the 7th District, or even the 11th.
That helps incumbent U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-3).
But the other half of the district – Burlington County – is why MacArthur is having trouble finishing off Democratic challenger Andy Kim.
“In that portion of the district, MacArthur is running well behind; he’s still strong in Ocean County,” said the pollster.
InsiderNJ caught up with Frank Luna, MacArthur’s campaign adviser.
Luna said T-Mac is in head-down GOTV mode for the duration.
As for Kim, campaign spokesman Forrest Rilling offered the following:
“Tom MacArthur does what his special interest donors want, and New Jersey families are the ones who pay the price. MacArthur took more than $400,000 in campaign contributions from prescription drug companies and the insurance industry and authored a bill that would gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions like asthma, cancer & diabetes and allow insurance companies to charge people 50 and older up to five times more for health care – what the AARP called an age tax. He was the only New Jersey Congressman – Republican or Democrat – to vote in favor of the new tax law that hits New Jersey harder than any other state. The law slashes our state and local tax deduction, and gives 83% of the tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthiest one percent – the same people bankrolling Tom MacArthur’s campaign.”
Here’s Luna’s rejoinder:
“As the Burlington County Times pointed out in endorsing Tom, he has represented a difficult and demanding district with dignity and determination. Tom’s focus has always been the people of South Jersey and he’s delivered for our region time and time again. His work across party lines brought millions of dollars per year for Deborah Heart and Lung Center, secured the future of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, and secured real resources to fight the addiction epidemic. No amount of liberal super PAC money changes the fact that Andy Kim has lied about his resume, has no substance on key issues, and is simply in over his head on a debate stage with Tom MacArthur. Andy Kim is running to protest Donald Trump. Tom is running to deliver real results for South Jersey residents, whether they like Trump or not.”
Incumbent U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance is trying to hold off Democratic challenger Tom Malinowski, a former assistant secretary of state.
Murray said Trump is polling as low in Somerset as he is in some parts of Hudson.
This is severely complicating the incumbent’s chances, and Murray sees Malinowski winning.
Republicans – including Somerset County GOP Chairman Al Gaburo – have tried to counterpunch with the argument that their county doesn’t like Menendez.
But Murray notes that those dynamics will produce a mix of results.
“Some people who are vehemently anti Trump will hold their noses and vote for Menendez,” said the pollster. “There are a significant number of voters who will skip the senate race.”
How can he make a prediction like that?
“The differences we’re seeing in the senate and house races,” he said, referring to the passion uptick voters express for the district contests.
In their debate last week, Lance gave Trump a “B,” but if Hunterdon likes Trump and Union hates him, Murray is convinced that Somerset, once the home of the late U.S. Rep. Millicent Fenwick, doesn’t want any part of a party led by its least favorite vacationing son.
An obdurate conservative who scorns flamboyance, Assemblyman Jay Webber (R-26) nonetheless welcomed the support of President Donald J. Trump, who obliged, overseeing late fundraising for the Republican running for the seat left behind by retiring U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11). Webber and Trump are in fact not at all far apart on the issues.
When InsiderNJ asked the GOP candidate about Trump, he cited a hyperkinetic twitter feed as the worst of the President’s transgressions. While Democratic rival Mikie Sherrill oversees a core of galvanized anti-Trump backers cohered by the #me2 movement, her campaign has taken pains to define herself as a pragmatic problem-solver. Webber has tried throughout to brand her as a “Nancy Pelosi liberal,” but Sherrill doesn’t back Pelosi for speaker and burnishes a professional record as a Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor.
Webber wants voters of the longtime Republican district to remember that his opponent is running as a member of the party that held onto a corruption trial-damaged U.S. Senator Bob Menendez. But if Trump is indeed that Gateway Tunnel opposing nativist who contributed to driving Frelinghuysen out of office and alienated CD11 women and moderate Republicans, Webber’s late lip lock with the White House plays to the very financially well-connected Sherrill’s political strengths.
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