Democrats mount primary fight to battle Chris Smith
HAMILTON » Let the games begin.
A competitive primary between two Democratic rivals on Tuesday will fire up the base as the party seeks to unseat Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Chris Smith in November.
Smith has represented New Jersey’s Fourth Congressional District since 1981, but his prospective challengers say he has lost touch with the constituents of Monmouth, Ocean and Mercer counties.
Fellow Democratic candidates Josh Welle and Jim Keady, however, have to first emerge victorious in Tuesday’s primary in order to challenge Smith in the general election. Only one Democrat can get the party’s nomination to compete in the main event, so Welle and Keady are therefore battling it out to determine which one will appear on the fall ballot.
Democrats hope to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives in this age of GOP President Donald Trump, and New Jersey is central to their aspirations that could see the Garden State become bluer in congressional membership.
Welle is a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan and the Middle East, while Keady is a tavern owner and political activist perhaps best known for being scolded by former Republican Gov. Chris Christie. Welle and Keady say they would each be ready to serve on Day 1 as a member of Congress, but only Smith has a proven record of getting federal legislation enacted into law over the last four decades.
The Trentonian has contacted the Democratic challengers and the Republican incumbent to get a flavor of each candidate’s 2018 campaign.
Josh Welle
“I am running for Congress because our country is at a crossroads,” Welle said in an interview, “and if we don’t have leaders of integrity stand up for American values at a time when the Constitution is under attack, when we are not moving forward on safety in schools, when we’re not making everyday Americans have a better life, then we’re going to lose this great democracy.”
Welle, 38, of Rumson Borough in Monmouth County, is married with no children and sees himself as a Conor Lamb, the 33-year-old U.S. Marine recently elected to the U.S. House as a Pennsylvania Democrat.
“As a veteran,” Welle said, “I served and worked in the federal government in the bureaucracy, and I want a federal government that is efficient, that is effective and takes care of Americans here at home and abroad. We live in a dangerous world. If we don’t have people in Congress who understand how to interact with other countries, how to shape foreign policy, how to build bridges with that and keep our alliances strong, then we are going to be less safe here in America.”
Welle is asking Democrats to vote for him in Tuesday’s primary because, he said, he has the vision and the momentum to defeat Chris Smith in November.
“I am the only candidate that can defeat Chris Smith,” Welle told The Trentonian in a recent interview. “We’ve raised more money in less time than anyone in the history of this campaign.”
Welle since September 2017 has raised over $364,000 for his congressional campaign. Keady, by comparison, has raised over $269,000 for his congressional campaign since January 2017, and Smith has collected more than $678,000 for his re-election campaign since January 2017, according to Federal Election Commission data.
Improving New Jersey’s infrastructure and rallying the country toward unity are big planks in Welle’s campaign. He says Smith has been “silent” on the issues that matter to citizens in the district.
“He came in office in 1981 and he has been mailing it in for over 20 years,” Welle said of Smith. “I respect his work in foreign and human rights abroad. I want him to care about the human rights and the safety and wellness of people in Central Jersey. He cares more about the human rights, in my opinion, of people in other countries than he does about the families in Neptune, Red Bank, Freehold and Hamilton.”
Asked whether he would be a Nancy Pelosi progressive or blue dog moderate, Welle brushed the question aside. “To be honest with you,” he said, “I don’t believe in labels, I believe in leadership.”
But Welle is a proud Democrat. “I am a Democrat because I believe we need government to protect our environment, we need government to invest in infrastructure, we need government to make sure health care is affordable, we need government to make sure public schools are the enablers to the American Dream,” he said. “That is what it means to be a Democrat and to believe in our civil liberties and to believe in the Constitution and to protect these institutions that have been slowly eroded by this new GOP party and something that Chris Smith does not stand up for anymore.”
Welle has been endorsed by the Mercer County, Monmouth County and Ocean County Democratic committees, but his rival Keady has been endorsed by the Hamilton Township Democratic Committee.
“As the Democratic Municipal Chair of Hamilton, it is exciting and encouraging for our party to have had three talented and dynamic candidates vying for the opportunity to run in the Democratic Column for the Fourth Congressional seat currently held by Rep. Chris Smith,” Hamilton Democratic leader Barbara Plumeri said in a statement, referring to Welle, Keady and former candidate Mike Keeling, who abandoned his campaign earlier this year and will not appear on Tuesday’s ballot.
“While people are free to support who they choose,” Plumeri added, she is choosing to “abide by the decision of the members of all County Committees and fully support Josh Welle,” she said.
Hamilton Democrat Peggy Nicol, however, is sticking with the no-holdsbarred tavern owner. “My candidate is Jim Keady,” she recently told The Trentonian. “Great guy.”
Jim Keady
“I am running for Congress because we have far too many people in Washington, D.C., that are aligned with and doing the bidding of billionaires and giant corporations,” Keady said in an interview. “It is time that the
people of our district have someone who is squarely in the middle class who runs a main street family business here in New Jersey to bring our bold, progressive Democratic ideas and ideals down to Washington, D.C.”
Keady, 46, of Spring Lake in Monmouth County, is a single father of a 9-year-old daughter and sees himself as a fighter who will stand up for Democratic values if elected to Congress.
“As a freshman congressman, I do not believe I would be thrust into any leadership positions within the party,” Keady told The Trentonian. “What I will do is lend my voice and my votes to policies that are going to improve the lives of everyday people, particularly people in the middle class, the working class, the working poor. We have a president who is advocating for policies that are really just benefiting the incredibly wealthy and giant corporations.”
Keady, who previously served on the Asbury Park city council, would not describe himself as a Bernie Sanders democratic socialist but agrees with the Vermont U.S. senator’s vision on health care.
If elected to Congress, Keady said he would support the Medicare for All Act, saying: “It will give health care to every American. It’s a national embarrassment, our health care system. It is one of the lowest-performing health care systems in the industrialized world, so it is time for us to get up to speed with everyone else.”
“Democrats need fighters down in Washington right now. We don’t need people who are milquetoast center-right Republican-light,” Keady said, dismissing Welle as an unreliable Democrat. Welle is a flip-flopper who changes his political positions “depending on what room he is in,” Keady alleged.
Former Republican Gov. Chris Christie once told Keady to “Sit down and shut up.” That altercation in 2014 has elevated Keady’s profile as a political activist, but he also has experience of operating a family Irish tavern business in Ocean County, among other unique life experiences.
“I know the struggles that main street business owners go through,” he said. “That is another voice that is not heard nearly enough down in Washington. I am a former teacher. I taught at two different high schools in our district. I am a former professional soccer player and Division I college coach.”
Although Keady is firmly committed to progressive Democratic ideals, he said he is willing to reach across the aisle to work with Republicans in a bipartisan fashion on other issues of importance.
“People like Congressman Smith’s international human rights work. They are not going to lose anything with me if I win the primary and I take him on in November on that particular issue,” Keady said, adding he has sat down with Smith’s congressional staff in recent years in support of human rights in Vietnam.
People like Smith for his record on labor rights, too, Keady acknowledged, vowing he will be committed to human rights, labor rights and be a strong advocate of women’s reproductive rights if elected to Congress. Keady is prochoice, while Smith is a strong leader in the prolife movement.
Keady described Welle as a “status quo” politician and described himself as being “unapologetically bold, progressive, squarely in the middle class running a main street family business who is going to go down in D.C. and fight like hell for everyday people.”
Keady encourages independent, unaffiliated voters to vote in the Democratic primary this Tuesday. “A registered voter currently not affiliated with a political party may declare their party affiliation up to and including Primary Election day,” according to the League of Women Voters of New Jersey.
The owner of Lighthouse Tavern in Waretown says he will “fire up” the Democratic base in unprecedented ways for the general election if he wins the primary.
“Chris Smith is the poster boy for term limits,” Keady said of the congressman. “He is a guy who has been in for 38 years who cares so little about the people of our district that he doesn’t even do us the service of living here. He’s lived in Northern Virginia since 1983. He has not had an open-public town hall meeting since my senior year in college in 1993. This is a guy who is out of touch who is trapped in the swamp of D.C.”
Chris Smith
“Smith’s expansive record of legislative achievement and constituent service is a problem for the Democrat challengers and their supporters who continue to try and deceive the voters about who Chris Smith is and about his record of integrity, hard work, bipartisan legislative accomplishment and success in fighting for the people of his district and state,” Mary McDermott Noonan, a Smith spokesperson, said Friday in a statement.
Smith, 65, of Robbinsville, is a married father of four with several grandkids and is the author of major bipartisan legislation such as the International Megan’s Law to Prevent Child Exploitation and Other Sexual Crimes Through Advanced Notification of Traveling Sex Offenders and the Sean and David Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act of 2014. Former Democratic President Barack Obama signed those measures into law.
A search on Congress. gov shows Smith has sponsored 43 individual pieces of legislation that have been enacted into law during his 38-year career as a House Republican.
“Chris, a lifelong New Jersey resident, is the second most successful lawmaker in turning bills into laws in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Noonan said in her statement. “He is the author of more bipartisan laws than the entire New Jersey delegation combined and he has been awarded and endorsed by numerous New Jersey groups including veterans, seniors, advocates for children, labor, and health care advocacy and small business groups for leadership on behalf of the people of the district and New Jersey.”
The congressman and his wife Marie Smith bought a Robbinsville condo on Wyndham Place in 1998 and sold that property in 2003, according to property records. He previously declared the Wyndham Place property as his address of record for election purposes but nowadays lists his address as being P.O. Box 3184 Hamilton, NJ 08619.
New Jersey’s Fourth Congressional District has been redrawn over the years to become more Republican-friendly. For example, Smith easily won re-election in 2000 against then-Democratic challenger Reed Gusciora back when the district included the entire City of Trenton and parts of Burlington County.
Smith’s district currently comprises parts of Monmouth, Ocean and Mercer counties, including Hamilton and Robbinsville townships. The district stretches across Central Jersey from the Delaware River to the Atlantic Ocean and no longer includes Trenton, which got fully absorbed into the 12th Congressional District in 2011.
In the 2016 general election, Smith received a whopping 211,992 votes or 63.72 percent of the 332,684 votes cast that year. Smith’s 2016 Democratic challenger Lorna Phillipson received 111,532 votes or 33.52 percent of the votes cast that year, according to Federal Election Commission records.
A majority of the voters in the Fourth Congressional District also voted for Trump in the 2016 general election over Democrat Hillary Clinton, and a majority of the district’s electorate voted for 2017 Republican gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno over current Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, showing it will not be easy for Democrats to defeat Smith in the 2018 midterms.
Highlighting his crossover appeal, Smith in the lead-up to Tuesday’s primary has received the official unanimous endorsement from all 15 separate unions in the New Jersey State Building and Construction Trades Council for his “longstanding commitment to supporting working men and women, their families, a strong economy and the creation of well-paying, sustainable jobs in New Jersey,” according to Smith’s re-election campaign.
“Chris Smith has the drive, commitment, record and character that continue to earn him the trust and support of voters,” Noonan said in her statement. “His landslideafter-landslide victories show that voters are not fooled by campaign trickery.”
Smith is running unopposed in the Republican primary. Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, June 5.