On issues like abortion and immigration, candidates in New Jersey’s tightest congressional race clashed in the campaign’s only head-to-head debate Sunday night.
Democratic challenger Sue Altman and one-term incumbent Republican Tom Kean Jr. each labeled the other too “extreme” for their district’s constituents over issues like abortion and immigration.
For Kean, the target was Altman’s role as former head of the left-leaning progressive Working Families Alliance.
“She supported defunding the police,” he said in his opening statement. “She supported letting cop killers out of jail. She supported legalizing narcotics. Those are extreme positions — they’re out of step with the people in the 7th Congressional District.”
Altman shot right back: “Tom Kean Jr. has an unsolvable problem. The values of his voters and the values of his donors are not the same. His donors, the national Republican Party and extremist billionaires represent an insane point of view.”
Altman said that she’s broken with many on the left over defunding the police and now supports a comprehensive approach to public safety. She also said she never backed legalizing narcotics.
On another galvanizing issue, the two candidates slammed each other’s positions on abortion. Kean said he’s pro-choice and opposes a national abortion ban. Altman said Kean had labeled protecting women’s health as “extreme.”
The 7th Congressional District includes all of Hunterdon and Warren counties and parts of Morris, Somerset, Sussex, and Union counties.
It leans Republican, and both candidates in the debate struck more moderate stands on several issues. But the differences were apparent when Kean was asked about Trump’s controversial plan to deport immigrants who had entered the country illegally.
Kean answered by calling for more border patrol agents and further construction of a border wall, without addressing Trump’s policy.
Altman pounced: “You just dodged the question. [The moderator] asked you, “Would you support deporting migrants — yes or no?”
The congressman stared silently ahead for about 10 seconds without commenting on Trump’s policy.
NJ Spotlight News spoke on Monday with Republican strategist Chris Russell, and he said it wasn’t the best look for Kean. He added, “I think it was part of her strategy… She wants this to be a referendum on her race to be a Trump-Harris referendum.”
Russell said it was Altman’s best shot to reach a wider audience, but he said Kean successfully kept his cool.
Democratic strategist Dan Bryan agreed that Altman had to establish herself, noting, “I think that you’re seeing two very different energies from the two different candidates right now. One is being aggressive, being energetic going for the throat, when she has to.”
But will this debate, organized by the New Jersey Globe and the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, actually move the needle? Ben Dworkin, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University, called it a draw.
“The first rule of political debates is, do no harm,” Dworkin said. “It’s like the Hippocratic Oath — just make sure you don’t do something really bad that hurts your campaign. And so I think they really both accomplished their goals for the evening for the debate.
“I’m not sure whether it’s going to make much of a difference,” he said.
