New Jersey's congressional races attracting millions

New Jersey’s Congressional primary candidates have already raised $40.4 million, with 40 percent of that brought in by the men expected to be facing off in November for the U.S. Senate seat on the ballot this year.

The rest of the money, about $24.2 million, was raised by 37 incumbents and challengers for their parties’ nominations for the state’s dozen seats in the House of Representatives. Another 12 candidates either have not filed campaign reports with the Federal Election Commission or indicated they have not raised any money. Significant fundraising is not surprising this year, with two open House seats, as many as three seats possibly in play and the largest field of primary candidates in decades.

So far, the richest district is the 5th, where three candidates have raised nearly $6.1 million through May 16. The lion’s share of that belongs to freshman Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat representing the formerly red district in the state’s extreme northwest corner. Gottheimer, who has no primary opponent, has taken in $4.4 million, 75 percent of it from individuals. Of the two Republicans running, frequent candidate Steven Lonegan, has a significant money lead over John McCann. Lonegan had raised $1.4 million, including $1 million in loans that he kicked in, compared to McCann’s $187,000.

Most expensive race so far

The most expensive race to date — meaning the race in which the most money has been spent, not raised — is for the open seat in North Jersey’s 11th District, where Republican Rodney P. Frelinghuysen is retiring. Five Democrats and five Republicans are vying in the primaries and have spent a collective $2.2 million. Leading all candidates is Democrat Mikie Sherrill of Montclair; she has spent more than $1 million to date in hopes of winning the primary and eventually flipping this longtime GOP district blue. Morris County Republicans Peter de Neufville and Jay Webber, a state assemblyman, are close in their spending, with de Neufville outspending Webber by about $8,000. De Neufville, of Mendham, is largely self-financed, while 97 percent of Webber’s money comes from individuals.

Follow this link for a searchable database of contributions to candidates in 2018 congressional primaries.

There are two other expensive House races. One is in the 3rd District in South Jersey, where neither Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur, nor Democrat Andy Kim has a primary challenger. Political pundits rate this as MacArthur’s race to lose, and the incumbent is taking no chances, having raised nearly $2 million and spent about half that, including on television ads. Kim has promised a strong challenge and has raised $1.3 million. The other is Central Jersey’s 7th District, rated a tossup by the Cook Political Report. Republican incumbent Leonard Lance and likely challenger Democrat Tom Malinowski have each raised more than $1.2 million; Lance has a slight cash edge, $900,000 in the bank to Malinowski’s $782,000.

In the Senate race, Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez has spent slightly more than his likely Republican opponent Robert Hugin, the former Celgene executive, through May 16 and raised slightly less, though three-quarters of Menendez’s funds came from individuals while only 8 percent of Hugin’s did. Hugin has raised $8.1 million and spent $3.7 million; he has loaned his campaign $7.5 million so far but has said he is prepared to spend $20 million of his own money on the race. Menendez raised almost $8 million and spent close to $3.8 million. Both men have token challengers: Republican Brian Goldberg reported $4,066 in income through the first quarter of the year, while the FEC has no reports for Democrat Lisa McCormick.

Menendez spent more than 15 percent of his funds prior to this year on maintaining his campaign apparatus, while Hugin didn’t begin his campaign until February. The Republican has been spending heavily on campaign ads throughout the state, although an exact amount is not yet available as the FEC has not yet updated its site with detailed spending data for the Senate race. Hugin has been running mostly ads attacking Menendez’s ethics, preparing for the fall campaign, and these attacks have largely gone unanswered by the Hudson County Democrat, whose net worth pales in comparison to Hugin’s.

Menendez ‘isn’t able to self-fund like Hugin’

“Because he isn’t able to self-fund his race like Hugin will, Menendez has to wait until September or so before responding and launching his own attack ads focused on Hugin’s record as CEO of a pharmaceutical company during a time when it was accused of several different shady business practices,” said Ben Dworkin, director of the Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship at Rowan University.

“The fall campaign will be very negative, and we’ve already started seeing that with the anti-Menendez ads from Hugin,” he continued. “The Republican’s goal is to presumably reinforce the negative narrative that voters have about Menendez in the aftermath of a corruption trial, even though the jury didn’t vote to convict and the judge threw out any chance of a re-trial. The thinking is that if Hugin can make Menendez so toxic today, the Democrat won’t be able to come back in the fall.”

That strategy may be working so far; the latest Public Mind poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University, issued last week, found Menendez’s former double-digit lead over Hugin has shrunk to just 4 points, essentially the poll’s margin of error. Menendez had the support of 28 percent of registered voters, compared with 24 percent for Hugin; almost half of those surveyed were undecided.

“Senator Menendez’s recent federal trial and bipartisan admonishment by his Senate colleagues are clearly taking their toll. It’s not uncommon for incumbents to cruise to reelection, but these numbers suggest he’s going to have to woo voters like he hasn’t had to in a long time,” said Krista Jenkins, director of the poll and professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

At the moment, Menendez has more money in the bank than Hugin, $5.6 million versus $4.5 million, respectively. But Hugin has and will spend more. His federal financial disclosure form listed his total income for 2017 through March 31, 2018 at $48.4 million and he valued his stock in Celgene alone at more than $50 million. Menendez, meanwhile, lives on his Senate salary of $174,000.

* indicates an incumbent; ** indicates recent report was not available so data is from a prior report.
Source: Federal Election Commission.

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NJ Spotlight, an independent online news service on issues critical to New Jersey, makes its in-depth reporting available to WHYY.