Democratic Rep. Andy Kim was reelected Tuesday to a third term in New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District defeating Republican Bob Healey and holding onto the seat he flipped four years ago, POLITICO has projected.
Kim’s win means South Jersey retains at least one Democratic member of Congress, shoring up New Jersey’s Democrat-heavy House delegation and defying Republicans’ assertions that they would retake the swing district by rebuking “cancel culture” and leaning heavily on inflation and crime messaging.
The race was perhaps the second most competitive in the state behind the 7th District, which pitted Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski against Republican Tom Kean Jr.
Kim flipped the district in 2018 and was reelected comfortably in 2020 despite the two presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, running essentially even in the district.
Kim was slightly favored to win reelection in the run-up to the midterms after redistricting made the 3rd District more firmly Democratic by shedding deep-red Ocean County and picking up more reliably blue areas.
The district includes parts of Burlington, Mercer and Monmouth counties.
Still, in the days before the election, POLITICO’s election analysis had Healey, a former punk rocker who now owns a yacht-building company, closing in but still projected the district would “lean Democrat.”
The Healey campaign had been hoping that redistricting would give their candidate an edge. Healey campaign manager Theresa Furmato Velardi told POLITICO that Kim may have lacked that incumbent advantage for a large portion of the newly drawn district.
Both candidates ran on their party’s core positions without much deviation. Healey’s campaign emphasized the impact of inflation and leaned on positions “standing with law enforcement” and supporting police officers, “securing our border” and tightening immigration laws, and “opposing cancel culture and political correctness.”
Kim, meanwhile, continued to message his legislative record on health care, campaigning on legislation he has supported or sponsored, including Covid-19 relief measures as well as bills to lower prescription drug prices, install permanent funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and increase funding for veterans’ mental health care.
