New Jersey’s Seventh District: The Seventh is a northern suburban swing district and it’s the only GOP-held district in the state that Hillary Clinton won in 2016, though she did so by just about 1 percentage point.
Running for reelection is Rep. Leonard Lance (R), who was first elected to Congress in 2008 and has regularly beaten his Democratic challengers by double digits. After a few somewhat hapless attempts to defend the House GOP’s Obamacare repeal attempt, Lance ended up voting against both the health bill and the tax bill.
Still, he’s facing a potentially strong Democratic challenger in Tom Malinowski, who served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor in the Obama administration, and is competitive with Lance in fundraising.
New Jersey’s Third Congressional District: This district went to Obama in 2008 and 2012 but then swung toward Trump, who won it by about 6 percentage points.
Since 2015, it’s been represented by Tom MacArthur. Last year, MacArthur was instrumental in reviving the prospects of the GOP’s Obamacare repeal bill, striking a deal that helped it pass out of the House. That may not have helped him politically — MacArthur was soon driven to step down as co-chair of the House GOP’s moderate Tuesday Group because its members were unhappy with his deal, and the deeply unpopular bill ended up failing in the Senate anyway.
The Democratic nominee, who was unopposed in the primary, is Andy Kim. Kim hasn’t run for office before, but he was a National Security Council staffer in the Obama administration who’s worked in Afghanistan and has raised more than $1.3 million. He’ll need it — MacArthur has put millions of his own money into his past campaigns.
New Jersey’s Fifth Congressional District: Trump won by about 1 percentage point.
This district was one of Democrats’ rare 2016 House pickups, as lawyer Josh Gottheimer defeated the deeply conservative, longtime incumbent Scott Garrett by a little over 4 percentage points.
With an eye on reelection, Gottheimer has racked up a relatively moderate voting record. Still, Republicans hope they can take back the seat, and longtime conservative activist and former Mayor Steve Lonegan faced off against former Council member John McCann in a GOP primary that, at press time, hadn’t yet been called. In a year looking tough for Republican candidates, though, the Cook Political Report currently rates the race as a likely Democratic hold.
