An unapologetically progressive New Jersey community organizer is running against Republican incumbent Tom Kean Jr. in a Congressional district that’s flipped parties three times since 2018. And she’s throwing out the usual playbook for a Democrat running in a purple district, even while control of the House hangs in the balance.
Sue Altman, the challenger for the 7th Congressional District, is an activist and former director of the progressive New Jersey Working Families Alliance. Unlike many Democrats who’ve flipped Republican seats, she isn’t recasting herself as a moderate – the traditional strategy for winning a seat in a competitive district.
Altman — the only candidate on the Democratic primary ticket, already focused on the general election — said she doesn’t believe it necessarily takes a centrist to win in a politically diverse district.
“I’m not sure that the narrative right now is so much left, right or moderate progressive. I actually think it’s about bigger issues,” Altman said. “It’s about democracy and fighting for New Jersey. And so my entire career I’ve fought against both parties. I’ve fought against corrupt Democrats and I fought against people like [former Gov.] Chris Christie who were cutting money to schools.”
In 2015, when Altman was a school teacher, she got into an argument with Christie, who was the Republican governor at the time, at a town hall meeting. When Altman interrupted Christie, which he rarely tolerated at any of his events, he tossed his microphone to her. A former basketball star, she caught it with one hand, eliciting applause from the audience.
The exchange got attention around the state, and can be seen now as the beginning of Altman’s political career.
In 2019, Altman challenged the most powerful Democratic Party boss in the state, George Norcross, calling attention to a series of tax breaks that went to companies he’s affiliated with. She was part of a large group of activists who attended a legislative hearing at the state capitol when Norcross gave testimony about those breaks. Right before he spoke, state troopers arrived and dragged Altman out of the building, even though she was standing quietly.
Those instances earned Altman a positive reputation among progressive Democrats in New Jersey. But now she’s taking on an incumbent Republican in a district that is purple, yet has roughly 30,000 more registered Republicans.
Democrats have been able to win some politically diverse districts around the country, but candidates have often been political moderates with military backgrounds. In 2018, at least nine such candidates flipped Republican seats.
Tom Kean Jr. and other Republicans have already tried to paint Altman as too liberal for the district, saying in one fundraising letter that she “represents the most extreme aspects of her party,” including claiming she wants to “defund the police” — though Atlman’s own website says she wants ensure “our local police are fully funded to keep our communities safe.”
Kean hasn’t responded to a message seeking comment.
Altman said her top priorities include fighting corruption, protecting reproductive freedoms and bolstering workers’ pay and rights. She advocates for more investment in public schools, and protecting open spaces from development and warehouse sprawl.
Atlman’s progressive activism, sometimes directed at her own party, didn’t hurt her primary campaign. She quickly dispatched two other moderate Democratic candidates and is now the presumptive nominee.
She has been added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” program, which provides funding for Democrats who have a chance at flipping a Republican seat. Altman is also receiving resources from the House Majority PAC, which works to get Democrats elected.
Mike Smith, the PAC’s director, said he believes Altman is able to connect with voters in a way that transcends party lines.
“Sue doesn’t come across as a typical politician, and we’ve seen the most successful candidates everywhere in the country, and that’s from New York to California to Indiana to Illinois,” Smith said. “The ones that don’t fit a typical politician model are actually the ones that are most successful and I think that’s where Sue kinda fits.”
Kean was elected in 2022 when he defeated the incumbent Democrat Tom Malinowski, who had unseated a Republican in 2018 and just barely fended off an earlier challenge from Kean in 2020. But in the 2021 redistricting, the 7th Congressional District received more than 30,000 additional registered Republicans.
The district stretches from its eastern edge of urban Rahway, a small post-industrial city that lies just south of Newark Liberty International Airport, through a swath of affluent suburbs and then on to a rural area along the Pennsylvania border.
Kean served in the New Jersey state legislature for 21 years, has a strong base of support in the district and is the son and namesake of a popular former governor, Tom Kean Sr.
Although the district has long been a bastion of moderate Republicanism, Kean was recently endorsed by hard-right Speaker Mike Johnson and has largely voted with his party since he arrived in Washington in 2023.
Some of those votes might cause him problems. When he campaigned two years ago, Kean told voters he would protect abortion rights.
“I support a woman’s right to choose. I have a 20-year career in the legislature reflecting that fact,” he said during a debate.
But since then, he has voted with his party to oppose abortion rights. He voted against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified the reproductive freedoms overturned by the Supreme Court. He also voted for the “born alive” bill that restricts what doctors can do in the rare event that an aborted fetus is alive after the procedure.
Sandy Suarez, 29, is a teacher in Westfield, which is Kean’s hometown. She said she hadn’t yet made up her mind who she will vote for in November, and didn’t want to say if she’s a member of a party. But she said she is paying attention to Kean’s votes, and she cares about reproductive freedom.
“I feel like because I’m a woman myself, we should have the voice to say what we want to do with our bodies,” Suarez said. “So, to see that a lot of men are the ones that are, you know, advocating for us, it’s kind of upsetting because they’re not the ones that deal with what comes with being a woman.”
The 7th Congressional District has about 208,000 registered Republicans, an edge over the 191,000 registered Democrats. Butthe largest number of voters — nearly 216,000 — are unaffiliated. The challenge for both candidates will be to win over those coveted independents.
Kean won the last election by 8,691 votes that gave him a 51% victory. So far, Altman raised more money than Kean in the first quarter of this year.
“Being part of the Working Families Party is going to be more of a difficult sell in the conservative parts of her district,” said Matthew Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University, in South Orange. The New Jersey Working Families Alliance is not a political party, but an independent group that is allied with the party. “But she works really, really hard, she’s a grassroots organizer, she’s going to knock on plenty of doors. So, you know, there’s that as well.”
Altman is part of a loose-knit coalition of progressive activists, unions and advocacy groups, many of which recently mobilized against the candidacy of Gov. Phil Murphy’s wife, Tammy Murphy, for U.S. Senate. Those activists put the issue of nepotism at the front and center of their opposition, and Murphy ultimately dropped out of the race before the primary vote. Altman didn’t oppose Murphy herself, but her role in a winning battle against machine politics could work against Tom Kean.
“Certainly people will see Tom Kean as a nepo baby, right? His father was governor of the state of New Jersey,” said Hetty Rosenstein, the recently retired New Jersey director of the Communications Workers of America, which represents 70,000 workers in the state. “Sue is the opposite of that. So it will be a hard race, but it’s winnable.”
Clarification: This post has been updated to indicate Sue Altman did not oppose Tammy Murphy’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate.