Tom Kean Jr.’s Campaign Playbook Appears To Be Backfiring

Rep. Tom Kean Jr. has never looked comfortable in front of the cameras.

His voice is soft. His speech, halting. He sometimes meets difficult questions with silence or a stare, or the rote repetition of a scripted point, rather than the slick deflection of a well-practiced politician.

The two-term Republican congressmember had always been able to bank on two things: relatively little scrutiny from the national press and a name that evokes his father, Tom Kean Sr. — the most popular former New Jersey governor in living memory.

But that was before Kean went dark for four months, retreating from congressional votes and public appearances to treat what at the time was an undisclosed illness that he would later reveal to be severe depression. His reticence, amplified by the absence, has given Democrats who had long complained about Kean’s lack of in-person town halls and minimal debates a potential messaging breakthrough in one of a handful of races that will decide the House majority.

Now Kean faces a tough Democratic opponent, Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot very much in the mold of Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who trounced her Republican opponent last year, rather than the far-left candidates rising in other New Jersey congressional districts and around the country. And with each passing election, there are fewer voters who remember his father.

“Kean’s tried-and-true strategy has been to remain inoffensively beneath the radar. And now because people are paying close attention to him, his story doesn’t hold up to scrutiny,” said progressive activist Sue Altman, who ran against Kean in 2024 and lost by about 5 points. “The lack of town halls, the lack of press availability, the closed-door nature of his fundraising and other types of events — these have been the longstanding nature of Tom Kean’s political strategy. Now it’s finally backfiring.”

Kean, in a floor speech following his four-month absence, explained his silence by saying he is a "private person by nature."

Since his return to Congress, Kean has actively campaigned by attending many public events and knocking on doors across his district. But his campaign has also sought to assure a friendly audience.

A stark example came Friday, when the Kean campaign denied Tracey Tully, a New York Times reporter who has aggressively covered the congressmember’s absence, access to his fundraiser with House Speaker Mike Johnson at a golf club in his district.

Campaign fundraisers are often closed to the press. But Kean’s campaign had invited Fox News, a conservative New Jersey blogger and a Pennsylvania TV news station that covers the western, rural and more conservative part of Kean’s district. The rest of the press wasn’t even told of it, though reporters knew that Johnson was coming to the district.

Tully, who was blocked from entering by a Kean campaign official, sat in her car in the parking lot with the intention of trying to interview Kean and Johnson after the event. That’s when a police officer showed up, according to her article.

Tully wasn’t arrested or forced to leave the parking lot, she wrote. And police records POLITICO obtained through a public records request show that a golf club employee placed the phone call to police. But the New York Times story about the flap immediately ricocheted across the internet, further highlighting Kean’s sometimes awkward public events.

Some of Kean’s critics think his approach to the campaign just shows he’s not cut out for the job.

“With no judgment of his character, Tom Kean Jr. never had the qualities that suit a person for public office, and it’s only gotten worse,” former Rep. Tom Malinowski, who defeated a challenge by Kean in 2020 and lost to him in 2022, after their district was redrawn and became more Republican. “Those who keep pushing him to do it because he’s their meal ticket, while hiding the truth about him from the public, should be ashamed of themselves.”

Bennett, his Democratic opponent, wanted to debate Kean in all six of the district’s counties but he agreed to just one, in late September. She instead plans to hold all six events by herself and open them to the press.

“From what I’ve been hearing from people this entire campaign is they’re frustrated [Kean’s] not showing up, he’s not present, he’s not hearing directly from people,” Bennett said in a phone interview. “We deserve someone who’s going to show up and listen.”

Kean’s campaign pushed back against that criticism, saying he meets people “where they are” and fields more press requests and participates in more debates than any of New Jersey’s 12 House members.

“We’re proud of his accessibility and his commitment to honest, accountable public service,” spokesperson Harrison Neely said in a statement. “Rebecca Bennett can keep reciting the safe, consultant written script. Tom Kean will keep showing up, answering questions, and doing the work.”

Meanwhile, Republicans in Kean’s 7th Congressional District are at least projecting confidence, satisfied at least that Kean is back on the campaign trail rather than incommunicado.

“I think he’ll be fine. He’s out there working. We’re out there working for him,” said Union County Republican Chair Carlos Santos, who credited Kean with successfully working to partially restore the State and Local Tax Deduction, which President Donald Trump ended in his first term. That’s particularly important in a wealthy district in the state with the nation’s highest property taxes.

“This district deserves an effective leader like Tom,” Santos said. “He’s consistently building independent coalitions to deliver wins like the SALT restoration.”

Johnson, in a 10-minute appearance with Kean on the conservative website Save Jersey from the fundraiser, seemed to acknowledge Kean’s limited public engagement by saying that there’s a lot of “performative art” in politics right now.

“There are show ponies and there are workhorses,” the speaker said. “This guy defines workhorse.”

But Kean’s public reticence makes it difficult to differentiate himself from the increasingly-unpopular Trump in the type of wealthy, well-educated district whose demographics, once solidly-Republican, are increasingly turning away from the party in the Trump era. He’s done little to separate himself from Trump politically and policy-wise, and pinned the president’s endorsement of him to his campaign X page.

Republicans nonetheless see strength in Kean’s chances of holding the seat despite the factors that seem against it.

“I still feel like all the fundamental things that are in Tom’s favor are good,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican consultant who has known Kean for decades. “The challenging pieces for him are that he’s coming back from an absence. And the bigger challenge is the president: What are the president’s job approval numbers on Election Day. Those are the bigger issues than whether Tom has done an interview with the press.”

Kean’s official statements boast of bipartisanship. But even when Republicans in his district have gone against the Trump administration, Kean has struggled to draw a contrast. He has avoided taking a firm position on a massive proposed ICE facility in Roxbury, a Republican town in his district, even as the Department of Homeland Security has given mixed messages on whether it plans to convert a warehouse to detain immigrants.

For years, Kean’s name has done much of that contrast for him. Tom Kean Sr. was a genial figure whose inclusive rhetoric and outreach to minorities — he wrote a book called “The Politics of Inclusion” — won him the biggest gubernatorial landslide in New Jersey history for his 1985 reelection. And Kean retained relevance in the 21st Century, chairing the widely-lauded 9/11 Commission.

But no voter under the age of 36 was alive when the elder Kean was governor, and the youngest voters weren’t even alive when the 9/11 Commission issued its report in 2004. A 2024 poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University found Kean Sr. was extremely popular with those who remembered him. But only 32 percent of those surveyed had an opinion of him.

“Tom Kean’s politics were reaching out to all kinds of different constituencies and building a very strong and broad center. That’s why he was reelected with such an astounding margin in 1985. That’s a feat for a New Jersey governor,” said Fairleigh DIckinson University poll founder Peter Woolley, a professor of government. “But certainly with a different demographic, a younger demographic - the kind of people who are mobilized into voting because of Donald Trump, that crowd is simply not going to be influenced by the family reputation of the Keans. They don’t care.”

—Daniel Han contributed reporting