Rebecca Bennett, a Democrat who stressed her experience as a Navy helicopter pilot, has unseated Representative Thomas Kean Jr., the scion of a prominent New Jersey Republican family, according to The Associated Press.
As in other competitive swing districts across the country, Mr. Kean’s record as a reliable vote for the House’s Republican majority and his strong support for an unpopular president overshadowed much of the campaign. But questions over Mr. Kean’s health and his fitness for office also influenced the race after he vanished from the public eye this spring with little explanation.
When he returned to Capitol Hill at the end of June, Mr. Kean, 58, said his nearly four-month absence had been linked to a long-term hospital stay for depression.
He indicated that he had fully recovered, but his campaign never bounced back.
Ms. Bennett, 39, ran an energetic and well-funded race. A first-time candidate, she emphasized her 15 years of military service and her experience as a health care executive while campaigning on a platform centered on lowering costs for New Jersey families.
She significantly outpaced Mr. Kean in fund-raising during the race’s final two quarters, and his efforts to tarnish her with a barrage of negative advertising largely fell flat. After polls showed him trailing Ms. Bennett, two Republican super PACs pulled funding from the race.
In June, more than 600 of the Republican Party’s most loyal voters chose to write in the names of alternative candidates on primary ballots rather than vote for Mr. Kean, who was running unopposed for the nomination for the Seventh Congressional District seat, county election records show.
Attitudes toward President Trump guided many voters’ decisions.
Richard Dodds, a Republican from Hunterdon County in western New Jersey, said he broke with his party and voted for Ms. Bennett because “it’s time for a change.”
“If we could roll back virtually everything that’s happened since Donald Trump took office,” Mr. Dodds, 67, said, “that would be a good start.”
Kim Dial, 72, said Mr. Kean’s long absence from Congress played a role in her decision to support Ms. Bennett, who she hopes will bring “new, fresh insight” to the job. “We’re in a state of chaos right now,” said Ms. Dial, a retired teacher from Basking Ridge. “I want some stability.”
Mr. Kean’s loss will mark at least a temporary end of an era of public service for one of the state’s most prominent political families. A son of a former governor, Mr. Kean served in the State Legislature for two decades before being elected to Congress in 2022 on his fourth try. His grandfather and great-grandfather also served in Congress, and the state’s first governor, William Livingston, was a distant relative.
But even after so many years as a politician, he had never appeared comfortable in the public eye. He refused to release a campaign schedule in advance and met questions from reporters with stony silence. In August, when a New York Times reporter showed up at a golf club where Mr. Kean was set to address donors alongside the House speaker, Mike Johnson, his campaign asked a club employee to call the police to have her removed from the parking lot.
Harrison Neely, Mr. Kean’s political adviser, told a sergeant who responded to the call that “some of the folks were uncomfortable having her here,” according to police body-worn camera footage. He added: “It just kind of, like, escalated into: ‘Let’s get rid of her.’”
Ms. Bennett lives in Bridgewater with her husband and their two young daughters but grew up in a Republican household in Texas. She joined the Democratic Party in 2016, when Mr. Trump was first running for president.
Her centrist policy prescriptions and military background made it harder for Republicans to label her a tax-and-spend liberal, though they did try. Mr. Kean and groups aligned with the Republican Party spent more than $15 million on advertising — $4 million more than Democrats, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.
Throughout the campaign, Ms. Bennett remained disciplined in her messaging, stressing her goals in Washington of ending the war with Iran and bringing down costs, including freezing child care expenses at 7 percent of a family’s income.
She emphasized Mr. Kean’s wealth and the stock trades he signed off on while missing from Congress from March through June. She also made it clear that she was not likely to align with the far-left faction of the Democratic Party in Congress, noting in a debate that she would not vote for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York City progressive weighing a run for president.
Mark Bonamo and Tammy LaGorce contributed reporting.
