The Republican candidate challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski in a key New Jersey swing district apologized this week for helping raise campaign cash for a local GOP candidate who has
Tom Kean Jr., who’s running for Congress in Central Jersey’s 7th District as a moderate Republican with bipartisan credentials, was the “special guest” at a fundraiser last Saturday for local council candidates Jesse Wilson and Joseph Nicastro. Wilson has made several posts to a local Facebook group in which he denigrated Blacks, gays and women — both under his own name and what the Malinowski campaign alleges was a pseudonym.
The controversy — which erupted after Malinowski highlighted the posts — shows how difficult it is for Kean to run as a kinder, gentler Republican in the Trump era while also trying not to alienate a GOP base that embraces and sometimes expands on the president’s racist rhetoric.
One meme Wilson posted shows several Black people running out of a Target store with goods, insinuating looting, with the text “Community in Mourning over the loss of George Floyd.”
Wilson also shared a post calling “white guilt” the “new virus in America” and shared a photo of himself with the text “It’s okay to by white.
” A post written under the alleged pseudonym, “Jerome Biggums,“ states that hate speech “does not exist” and that “some of us aren’t okay with teaching our kids homosexual history … Some of us don’t care about your pronouns.”“Some of us want our country great again,” the post by “Jerome Biggums” states.
After Malinowski publicized the posts, Kean’s campaign said it was unaware of them when Kean visited Garwood, a tiny community in Union County that borders Kean’s hometown of Westfield. Malinowski’s press release featured a photo of Kean at the fundraiser standing with Nicastro and Wilson, who wore a red hat emblazoned with President Donald Trump‘s name.
“Senator Kean strongly condemns racism and bigotry in all its forms. First and foremost, our campaign apologizes for aiding Mr. Wilson’s candidacy,” Theresa Winegar, Kean‘s campaign manager, said in a statement Tuesday evening. “Senator Kean is calling for him to step off the ballot. Had the campaign been aware of these social media posts, Senator Kean never would have attended the event.”
Kean has sought to run as a bipartisan uniter while refusing to criticize Trump, which would risk alienating the GOP base. He has avoided directly answering some questions about Trump while modeling himself after his father, Tom Kean Sr., a popular moderate Republican who was governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990.
Kean Jr. has said he regrets voting against same sex marriage as a member of the state Senate and declared “black lives matter” in a June op-ed. But he has not directly criticized the president’s rhetoric that has stoked racial tensions, and even attended a Trump campaign rally in South Jersey in January, though his campaign has not highlighted the attendance.
“Hateful ideologies flourish when people like Tom Kean Jr. validate instead of condemn them,” Malinowski said in a statement. “In the House, I’ve worked with Republicans and Democrats to combat white supremacy and hate-filled ideologies on the right and left. Someone who embraces their proponents has no place in Congress.”
In a brief phone interview, Wilson would not say whether “Jerome Biggums“ was his pseudonym, but said he would address the Facebook posts in a statement later Wednesday.
The wealthy, well-educated 7th Congressional District was represented by Republicans for decades, but is home to many moderate, suburban voters the GOP has been losing in the Trump era. In 2018, Malinowski, who’s unabashedly anti-Trump, defeated Republican Rep. Leonard Lance, who was one of the few House Republicans willing to openly criticize the president.
The Kean-Malinowski race is considered one of the most most competitive congressional races in the country this year. Democrats and Republicans are expected to spend millions on the race, which POLITICO rates as a “toss-up.” The Cook Political Report rates it as “lean Democratic.“
Kean has attacked Malinowski for voting overwhelmingly with Democrats, and his campaign in its statement attempted to tie him in with two other Democrats, members of the so-called “Squad” who have used semi-veiled anti-Semitic tropes about Israel’s political influence.
“We would hope Congressman Malinowski will take an equally strong stand and urge Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rashid Tlaib and others who have spread racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric and media to also step off the ballot,” Winegard said.
Malinowksi spokesperson Benji Schwartz said the congressman has never attended a fundraising event for Omar or Tlaib and that “the only way he's met them would be in passing, due to serving in the same body.”
Schwartz didn’t buy the apology from the Kean campaign.
"He’s not telling the truth, and he didn’t apologize,” Schwartz said. “Tom Kean Jr. represents this community. He headlined Wilson’s fundraiser, and he accepted Wilson’s endorsement. He had to know. The only thing he’s apologizing for is that he got caught.”
With social unrest sweeping the country, Trump playing on fears that Black people will move into traditionally white suburbs and the far left and far right engaging in increasingly violent clashes on the streets of some cities, it’s hard if not impossible for Kean to walk the fine line of not alienating the Republican base while at the same time not turning off moderate voters.
“It is impossible to avoid any association with the president unless you are completely disavowing all connections,” said Krista Jenkins, a pollster and political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University who lives in 7th District. “I’m not going out on a limb when I say Trump has normalized a lot of behavior we would not have been likely to see just a few years ago. There’s an acceptance of people putting things on social media that are inflammatory.“
Added Jenkins: “I guess what’s surprising is in this day and age is that somebody on Kean’s side would not have done the due diligence of vetting the people Kean was there in support of.”