Inside a Push to Turn Out Voters and Flip New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District

New Jersey’s seventh congressional district has been the scene of closely fought races over the past few election cycles. These races tend to be high profile, too, thanks to NJ-7’s proximity to the New York City media market. It is the seat formerly held by Democrat Tom Malinowski, who in 2022 lost a narrow rematch with Thomas Kean Jr. after defeating him by less than one percentage point in 2020. Democrats see a golden opportunity to win the blue state seat back this year, and are running Sue Altman, an Oxford-educated former Executive Director of the New Jersey Working Families Party. 

Winn Uyen Khuong, the founder and executive director of Action Together New Jersey, is enthusiastic about Altman, whom she referred to as a “star candidate” in a recent Blue Tent briefing. Altman’s political allure is one reason Khuong cited as to why ATNJ is optimistic about flipping NJ-7 this year and is going all out in this bellwether district. 

Why Sue Altman Can Beat Thomas Kean Jr. in NJ-7

“She’s a former basketball player,” said Khuong, referring to Altman’s career playing shooting guard at Columbia University and internationally. “And with Caitlin Clark in the news, all the kids are super excited.” 

Khuong went on to list Altman's many impressive qualifications, including her multiple degrees and experience with the New Jersey Working Families Party. 

“Malinowski leaves a big gaping hole, but we could not find anyone better than Sue Altman for this district,” she said.

Altman will be running against Kean Jr., now an incumbent Republican after his 8,691 vote margin of victory in 2022. Khuong noted that the “unique” gerrymandering of NJ-7 in 2022 likely tipped the scales slightly toward Kean during that year’s election against Malinowski. The state commission added rural areas in the northwest portion of New Jersey to the district that had previously been in NJ-5. The district had already been idiosyncratic, spanning from New Jersey’s northwestern border with Pennsylvania all the way east to the New York City suburbs. The 2022 redistricting, in fact, also expanded the district further eastward, bringing its easternmost border to the shores of New York’s Staten Island.

“You go from the east where you have a lot of dense urban areas,” explained Khuong. “To out west where it’s very rural. So we have a momentous task in this district, to go districtwide, to be sure that we get everybody. And we’re up to the task.”

Targeting and Turning Out Democratic Voters in NJ-7

NJ-7 includes parts of six counties: Hunterdon, Morris, Somerset, Sussex, Union, and Warren. In all six counties, ATNJ plans to engage what they call “infrequent Democratic voters.” Using an independent database, ATNJ has identified 25,847 voters who fall in this category. It is also collaborating with the Center for Voter Information and the Voter Participation Center to reach thousands of other voters across all of NJ-7’s six counties.

Khuong described an approach involving three phases in the work to motivate and activate the voters ATNJ is targeting. The first phase, which took place between May and June involves what she calls the “sticky note squad.” 

“We don’t do mass mailers,” explained Khuong. “It would be cheaper for us to do so, but what we end up doing is, we actually go to the office in Hillside, we pick [the mailers] up, we deliver it to our volunteers' homes, and we're building a community on the ground.”

The “sticky note squad” is named for the personalized post-it messages ATNJ attaches within its mailers to targeted voters. 

“You don't have to donate anything,” said Khuong of entry into the sticky note squad. “You don't have to bring a book list of stamps. You just come, meet new people, enjoy some goodies, and get some work done.”

The next phase, taking place in August and September, will involve postcarding and canvassing. “We'll look at the list of around 25,000 voters,” detailed Khuong on phase two. “We'll see how many of those actually signed up for vote by mail. If they haven't, then we use our remote volunteers throughout the state. They do postcards. We send them the list of voters, and then our local volunteers in the six counties will door knock.”

The final phase, door knocking, will take place during the sprint to the electoral finish line in November. 

Reaching Unaffiliated Voters and Young People

But the efforts being made to turn out its list of more than 25,000 voters is not the full extent of ATNJ’s work. It is also working to engage the 216,428 New Jerseyites in the seventh district who are registered to vote as “unaffiliated” or independent. In particular, the organization is eager to communicate with these voters in the western, more rural parts of the district through the use of pro-Altman billboards along New Jersey’s famed highways. 

But even that is not all. For six years ATNJ has also been promoting civic education for young voters.

“What we have is a nonpartisan civics handbook teaching [young people] how to vote,” said Khuong.  “Last year we sent it to over 10,000 17-year-olds who voted for the 1st time in the general [election]. We want to do that again, and we want to target the bottom-ranked zip codes between 20 metrics, including median income, health, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity.”

All in all, ATNJ’s efforts to boost Altman against Kean Jr. are robust and forward-looking. In doing the work to flip back one of the country’s most evenly divided districts, it is also looking beyond the singularity of an isolated electoral cycle by promoting connectedness between neighbors, educating young people, and engaging in good faith with voters who may otherwise check out of the process.