In A New Jersey House Race, Trump Is Putting A Centuries-old Family Legacy At Risk

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, New Jersey — Tom Kean Jr.’s political career is hanging by a thread. His possible demise could end a powerful political dynasty and close the door, for good, on the aristocratic politics that used to dominate the New Jersey Republican Party.

Should Kean Jr. lose Tuesday in one of the country’s most closely watched House races, it will be in no small part because of his alliance with the unpopular President Donald Trump. And it will not be lost on his critics that he lashed himself to a president whose policies and divisive political style clash with the Kean brand of moderation, civility and inclusion honed over generations — particularly by his father, the popular former Gov. Tom Kean Sr.

Kean’s fight for survival comes as the old order of New Jersey politics is coming apart. The “county line,” a ballot layout that gave party bosses’ preferred candidates an advantage in primary elections, is gone. The Democratic power brokers who divided influence between North and South Jersey have lost much of their clout. And the patrician Republican families that supplied generations of elected leaders have steadily lost their foothold.

The wealthy and upper-middle-class suburbs that sustained those Republican families have shifted dramatically in the Trump era. Former Republican bastions like Somerset County, a large part of which is in Kean’s 7th Congressional District, have turned blue. If Kean Jr. loses, it would be at least the third New Jersey Republican dynasty tossed or chased out of office since Trump came on to the political scene.

Kean Jr. pitches himself as a bipartisan statesman in the mold of his ancestors. His first TV ad this year was narrated by his father, who vouched for his son as “a leader we can all be proud of.”

“The most important thing that I have experienced, and have led the fight on, is to make sure that everything is bipartisan,” Kean Jr. told POLITICO after greeting voters in the light-blue suburb of Berkeley Heights. “Things that are bipartisan from the very inception are things that last and stand the test of time.”

The two-term Republican, however, is widely seen as the underdog for reelection against Democratic challenger Rebecca Bennett; the only public poll of the race found him trailing, and national Republicans have cut off financial support in the election’s final weeks.

That echoes Trump’s first midterm, which brought down two other family dynasties in New Jersey.

Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen — the scion of another family that went back to the nation’s founding — opted to retire in early 2018 rather than face the surging first-time Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill, who won the seat by a landslide and was elected governor last year. That same year, Republican Rep. Leonard Lance, whose state lawmaker father played a role in drafting New Jersey’s 1947 constitution, was defeated by first-time Democratic candidate Tom Malinowski, who then lost to Kean in 2022.

Bennett hopes to join that cohort of successful Democrats soon. A former Navy helicopter pilot and first-time candidate, she points to Kean Jr.’s mostly party-line voting record as evidence that despite his last name, he’s first and foremost a Trump Republican, and many voters who might have once supported Kean Sr. aren’t on board with his son.

“They voted for his dad, but that Republican Party doesn’t exist anymore,” Bennett said during a meet-and-greet with supporters in Basking Ridge.

Kean Jr. drew national attention when, earlier this year, he vanished from the public eye for four months before eventually revealing he had been diagnosed with depression. The disappearance dovetailed with a longtime Democratic talking point about Kean Jr.: that he’s not especially accessible to the media or his constituents.

But what threatens Kean Jr. more than anything else is Trump, who has severely damaged Republicans’ standing in the wealthy, well-educated suburbs that once formed the bedrock of the Kean coalition. Kean Jr.’s hometown of Westfield gave Mitt Romney 48% of the vote in 2012; in 2024, Trump got just 34% of the vote there.

“I say, immodestly, that I’d probably still be in Congress if it weren’t for the fact that President Trump is not popular in this part of the nation,” said Lance, the former 7th District representative. “We’ll see whether that’s truer now than it was in 2018 — I guess only time will tell.”

And although he touts his bipartisan record, Kean Jr. has mostly been a reliable Trump ally in Congress, voting for most of the president’s priorities and promoting a Trump endorsement on social media. If polls are correct about just how much voters have soured on the president since electing him two years ago, that could spell Kean Jr.’s downfall.

“When he was first elected, Kean Jr. had a choice: he could become a Trump Republican, or he could follow in the footsteps of Tom Kean Sr. And he made his decision to hitch his wagon to Trump,” said Sue Altman, the unsuccessful Democratic nominee against Kean Jr. in 2024. “It’s a really sad story, because in many ways, the old Kean brand could have been a reinvention of the Republican Party.”

Fifty years ago, Kean Jr.’s grandfather published a book with a dedication to his descendants “present and future.”

“With the hope that they will find our ancestors and their families worthy to emulate, and that they will remember that the important thing is ‘not so much whether you are proud of your forebears, but would they be proud of you,’” wrote the former Rep. Robert Winthrop Kean in 1974.

Alvin Felzenberg, Kean Sr.’s biographer, didn’t stake a position on whether Kean Jr. is living up to that Kean legacy. But he said the “character and service” reflected in Robert Winthrop Kean’s book dedication is what defines it.

“It’s not fame. It’s not power. It’s not name dropping. It’s not social position or wealth. It’s the person you were and the contributions you made,” Felzenberg said. “I’m not being corny. I think that’s true.”

A Revolutionary legacy

The Kean name goes back more than a century in New Jersey politics — and Kean Jr.’s American ancestors go back even further. William Livingston, a Founding Father and the state of New Jersey’s first governor, is a Kean relative. So too is Hamilton Fish, the U.S. Secretary of State under Ulysses S. Grant. The family’s political forebear is John Kean, a South Carolina merchant who was imprisoned by the British during the Revolution, then appointed by George Washington as cashier of the Bank of the United States.

In the 20th century, starting with Senator Hamilton Fish Kean, the Kean name became associated with the particular style of genteel Republican politics that dominated in New Jersey’s tony suburbs and that appealed even to some members of the other party.

Though Hamilton Kean, Kean Jr.’s great-grandfather, was attacked by a political opponent over a Ku Klux Klan endorsement, he escorted Black delegates onto the floor of the 1924 Republican National Convention after they had been barred, and in the 1930s sponsored anti-lynching legislation. His son, Robert Winthrop Kean, was a vocal advocate in the House for doing more to help European Jews during World War II, warning in a 1943 floor speech that millions would die if the U.S. and Britain did not do more millions would die.

Kean Sr. in particular became known for his personable approach to politics and his successful outreach to New Jersey’s growing minority communities, authoring a memoir titled “The Politics of Inclusion.” A 2024 Fairleigh Dickinson University poll found that Kean Sr., who won accolades after his governorship for his work as co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, was New Jersey’s most popular former governor by a landslide.

The former governor lamented in a phone interview that in today’s political atmosphere, saying “it’s pretty hard to advise young people to consider politics” and that Trump played a role in the bitterness and division.

“He’s contributed to the atmosphere, no question about it. So have others,” Kean Sr. said.

In rhetoric, Kean Jr. espouses the same moderate politics as his forebears. Speaking to voters at the Berkeley Heights fall festival, Kean Jr. touted the money he’d brought home for local flood control projects while noting his disagreements with Trump on things like the Gateway tunnel project and aid for Ukraine.

That makes for a tricky balancing act, though, since on a number of other high-profile issues, Kean Jr. has done little to distance himself from the president even when it comes with political costs. When the Trump administration began building an immigrant detention facility in the 7th District, Kean Jr. steered clear of criticizing the plans, earning the ire of local Republican elected officials. (Kean Jr. said in a debate earlier this month that he opposes the facility.)

Speaking with POLITICO, Kean Jr. sidestepped questions about whether he thinks Trump has been good for New Jersey, instead reiterating his own bipartisan bonafides.

Still, Kean Jr. managed to do better than Trump in the 7th District in his last three House campaigns, and his allies think voters are still interested in the type of politics he and his family have to offer.

“I come from a tradition — as does Congressman Kean, as does his father — of the international wing of the Republican Party,” said Lance. “I hope there will be a recognition that there continues to be and there needs to be moderate Republican representation from this part of the country.”

Facing headwinds

Trump may have other ideas. The president’s low standing among voters is threatening Republicans all over the country — even those as well-established as Kean Jr.

Bennett, a first-time candidate, has no family legacy to fall back on and a relatively brief footprint in New Jersey: a Texas native, she moved to the state seven years ago after leaving active duty in the Navy. But Kean Jr.’s deeper family ties to New Jersey, Bennett argues, won’t save him from voters’ frustration at higher costs, foreign wars, and Trump himself, who sported a dismal 29% approval rating in New Jersey in a recent poll.

“What I hear from people is that they are deeply frustrated with the fact that he is unwilling to stand up to this Trump administration,” Bennett said. “I have not heard him make a compelling case for why anybody should reelect him.”

As a military veteran and young mom, Bennett fits a mold that has worked well for Democrats since the 2018 midterms, when several candidates with similar profiles helped Democrats win the House. One of those candidates was now-Governor Sherrill, a fellow ex-Navy helicopter pilot.

Kean Jr., meanwhile, spent the spring waylaid by medical issues rather than solidifying his advantage. From early March through the end of June, Kean Jr. was entirely absent from the public eye, and his office provided scant updates on where he was and when he’d be back. He’s since returned to both Congress and the campaign trail, but questions about exactly what happened during those four months still linger.

“I was very clear, and we updated every couple weeks or so, that it was a medical issue,” Kean Jr. said when asked whether he wished he had handled his absence differently. “It was a medical emergency, and I was very clear on the House floor that it was depression.”

The medical issue has made its way into Democratic attack ads, which claim that Kean Jr. continued taking a taxpayer-funded paycheck and trading stocks while he was absent. Kean Jr.’s own ads paint Bennett as a “lying millionaire” who harmed patients, citing her past work in the health care industry and her stumbling answer at a debate about her net worth.

The one independent poll of the race put Kean Jr. at a five-point disadvantage, but more telling is the fact that most Republican groups pulled out of the district weeks ago, making Kean Jr. one of the first incumbents to be triaged. Kean Jr. insists that he’s “fully funded” for the race’s closing stretch, but as Republicans try to salvage dozens of tough House races around the country, their decision to abandon the 7th District was hardly a vote of confidence.

In other words, the Kean dynasty may be coming to a pause or a permanent end, depending on what Kean Jr. chooses to do if he loses and what the next generation of Keans are hoping to accomplish. Much like Trump ended one cohort of New Jersey Republicans’ careers in 2018, he’s now putting the next at serious risk.

Kean Jr. says whatever may come, he stands by his record. Kean Sr. agrees.

“The best way you can convince people that politicians are decent — and this is something you can do with your life — is to set the example,” Kean Sr. said. “I think he’s done that.”