What voters need to know about New Jersey’s 1st District candidates: Teddy Liddell, Donald Norcross, Robin Brownfield

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New Jersey’s 1st Congressional District includes Camden County, and parts of Gloucester and Burlington counties.

The Garden State has 12 congressional districts. Though the congressional delegation leans Democratic, the 1st District is one of three currently represented by a Republican. It is also one of two GOP districts that did not experience major shifts when a bi-partisan state commission redrew the map in 2021.

Registered Democrats outnumber both unaffiliated voters and Republicans in the 1st District.

Teddy Lidell, Republican

Attorney Teddy Lidell, a Chicago native, is a veteran who graduated from West Point. He has a master’s degree in business administration from Columbia College and a law degree from St. Louis University. He is licensed to practice in New Jersey and Illinois. This is the first time Lidell has run for Congress. He was a Republican candidate for the state’s General Assembly in 2013. Liddell and his wife, Releshia, have been married for about three decades and have six children, with ages ranging from eight to 27.

His campaign platform calls for a secure border, reducing taxes and a stronger, “more strategic and effective” military.

Liddell is calling for the border to be closed. He also wants to fix the immigration system, which he described as “already broken,” blaming both Democrats and Republicans.

“There are some legal immigrants who still don’t have full citizenship because they’re waiting; the system’s broken,” he said.

Liddell said he is not happy with how politicians have been talking about immigrants, adding that the speech people use in the discussion needs to change.

“They are people who come over and they have some real, real needs, and they come over because maybe they want to escape the government, or they come over because they want a better life,” he said.

While people can have compassion, Liddle said that has to be balanced with justice.

“While undocumented immigrants come over and break the law to do so … we gotta answer the question, who’s paying to clothe them, to house them, to feed them, to provide health care? And that’s a huge, huge bill that taxpayers are paying for,” he said.

Liddell makes no qualms about standing with Israel, calling the nation a friend of the United States “for so many years.” He believes Israel has a right to defend itself, and wants to work toward the safe return of the Oct. 7 hostages.

“We cannot have peace until the hostages are returned,” he said. “The reason why I keep bringing it up is because there were hostages that they had, they were alive, and they have since then died in captivity.”

Liddell, a devout Christian, is pro-life and pledged to be the voice for the unborn. He said it’s important to have fewer abortions and that he would support a law that provides for exceptions rape victims, incest victims or to save the life of the mother.

He called a complete ban on abortion “wrongheaded.”

“I think making a woman pay twice — hey, she was raped; she was a victim of incest — so now you’re going to actually require her to actually have that baby? I think that’s wrong,” he said.

Donald Norcross, Democrat

Donald Norcross, the Democratic incumbent, is running for a sixth term in Congress. He won his first term in 2014, while simultaneously winning a special election to finish the term of Rob Andrews, who resigned earlier that year. An electrician by trade, Norcross rose through the ranks to union leadership. He previously served in the state Senate.

He is the brother of Democratic power broker George Norcross, who has been charged with racketeering, extortion and other offenses along with another brother, Philip.

A spokeswoman for Norcross said he was unavailable for an interview. His campaign issues include raising wages, improving health care access and expanding education opportunities, according to his website.

Norcross stood with Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and has since supported military aid and assistance for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. During Donald Trump’s presidency, Norcross  called for a compromise on immigration reform to be worked out.

As a member of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, Norcross has vowed to fight for abortion access and has been outspoken on laws that ban abortion or severely restrict access.

Regarding his brothers, Norcross told New Jersey Globe only, “I love my brothers, and they will have their day in court.”

Robin Brownfield, Green Party

Brownfield is a former union organizer with the United Farm Workers. She also taught sociology at Rutgers and Rowan universities and Camden County College. The Collingswood resident said she is “fairly well known” in Philadelphia’s art community, practicing mosaic art after becoming disabled.

Brownfield identifies herself as Jewish and said she is also the only candidate “opposed to the genocide in in Gaza in the West Bank, and the expansion of military actions into Lebanon and Iran.”

“Israel is committing a war of imperialism,” she said. “It’s engaging in ethnic cleansing, cleaning out the people, murdering the people who are indigenous to that region so that they can make it one Israel and a Jewish state.”

Israel has repeatedly denied that it has committed genocide in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict that began last October.

A report from the University Network for Human Rights released in May concluded Israel violated the Genocide Convention of 1948. The International Court of Justice found in January that Gaza genocide is “plausible,” but could not make a final determination that Israel was guilty of genocide.

Brownfield called Israel “an occupation of primarily European and American immigrants who have decided to take that land as theirs.”

“Yes, they were granted that by, you know, that back in 1948, but they have taken the land by killing and expelling the people who were indigenous to that land,” she said.

On Ukraine, Brownfield said NATO and the United States are interfering to “further inflame animosities and conflict” between Ukraine and Russia. She does not support continued military aid to Ukraine “as long as [Ukraine is] bombing [Russia] 300 miles beyond the border.”

On domestic issues, Brownfield said she would “basically scrap” proposals to reform the immigration system from Democrats and Republicans.

“The general sentiment is that we have to stop people from entering this country,” she said. “They both fall back on the stereotypes of drug lords coming into the country when we know that most drug trafficking is done by white Americans.”

She said she would do away with a border wall and put “welcome centers” in its place to screen people and provide a legal way into the country.

Brownfield also supports codifying Roe v. Wade in federal law.

“Abortion is solely, and should solely, be a woman’s choice, and the state has no business dictating what somebody does with their body,” she said. “Until the state is … willing to guarantee that people have livable incomes and affordable housing and free medical aid, they have no standing.”