2018 election: NJ campaigns that could decide control of Congress

It's time for retail politics.

Labor Day means summer vacations are over and kids are going back to school. It also means candidates for Congress who have made New Jersey one of the most intense battlegrounds in the country are shifting gears.

After building war chests, candidates start spending them. If you think there were a lot of political ads on TV already, just wait.

And after lining up support from interest groups that know minute details about legislation and votes, candidates now must sell themselves to undecided voters more worried about traffic on their morning commute.

"Labor Day is the day you realize you're running out of time," said Peter McDonough, a vice president at Rutgers University who was communications director for Gov. Christie Whitman.

"You have to get the candidate out everywhere and tell the world you're taking this seriously. The campaign shifts into execution mode, and you hope that the plans you developed over the summer are realistic," McDonough said.

The party of the president typically loses seats in midterm elections, and this year New Jersey Republicans are running in a state where President Donald Trump had a 63 percent disapproval rating in the most recent poll by Quinnipiac University. 

Midterms traditionally are low-turnout affairs, but one sign voter interest could be more intense this year is that turnout in the June primary was 74 percent higher than it was in 2014.

Democrats need to capture 24 Republican-held seats to control of the House, and they have targeted all five in New Jersey. 

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"I've never seen a race shape up like this in my political lifetime," said Democratic State Committee Chairman John Currie, who believes his party could have a sweep. 

"It boils down to the man sitting in the White House. He's been a disaster for this country, he's hurt the Republican Party, and on top of that the Republicans in Congress have not stood up to him," Currie said.

But Democrats cannot just lie back and wait for the polls to open. Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez is trying to make a comeback after surviving a corruption indictment, and some worry he could be a drag at the top of the ticket.

The economy, as Trump regularly reminds his Twitter followers, is strong, with low unemployment and a soaring stock market. 

And Democrats control both the governor's office and the Legislature in Trenton, so if the state government does anything to upset the public — the price of gas will go up again in October because of a state tax increase, for example — the party's candidates on the ballot could feel it.

Doug Steinhardt, the Republican state chairman, said he views his role as "part cheerleader and part pessimist," and while the GOP faces headwinds, he believes Senate nominee Bob Hugin will have coattails and the party has strong candidates in most districts.

"The reality is you can't paint the state with a broad brush, because if you did, [two-term Republican Gov.] Chris Christie wouldn’t have won, either, and Bob Hugin wouldn’t be in a single-digit race," Steinhardt said.

Here's rundown of where the races stand at the traditional, if not astronomical, end of summer.

Hugin v. Menendez

After an 11-week trial on bribery and other corruption charges last fall ended in a hung jury, a judge acquitted Menendez on the most serious bribery charges and the Justice Department dropped the rest of the case. He was then "severely admonished" by the Senate's ethics committee, which decided he had taken undisclosed gifts in the form of flights on a private jet and luxury accommodations and then advocated for the donor's personal and business interests.

Menendez is trying to win a third Senate term against a millionaire Republican opponent, Hugin, who has already spent more than $10 million, much of it on ads highlighting the Democrat's ethics.

Hugin has taken moderate positions that contrast him with Republicans running around the country, saying he supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage in one ad, and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in another.

Menendez is trying to make the election a referendum on Trump and Hugin. Hugin was a Trump contributor and convention delegate, and made his wealth running a pharmaceutical company that repeatedly raised the price of cancer drugs and fought generic competition.

Menendez had a 43 percent to 37 percent lead in a Quinnipiac University poll released Aug. 22, but that six-point spread shows the toll Hugin's ads took, since the Democrat's lead was 17 points in a March poll. Menendez and a super PAC that supports him only began advertising on TV at the end of August.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also began spending in the state, raising questions about whether Menendez was siphoning resources the party could better use in states Trump won and where incumbent Democratic senators are more vulnerable. Senate control is now 51-49 in favor of the GOP.

Democrats say they remain confident about the race, in part because they expect competitive House races to bring voters to the polls.

Grossman v. Van Drew

The battle to hold onto the 2nd District seat, covering all of Atlantic and Cape May counties and parts of five others, was always going to be tough after Rep. Frank LoBiondo decided to retire after 12 terms.

A fiscal and social conservative, LoBiondo never won less than 59 percent of the vote in a district that only marginally leans Republican and went for Democrat Barack Obama twice before giving Trump a four-point edge over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

After Atlantic City attorney Seth Grossman won the primary, CNN highlighted some of his comments and postings on social media, including a declaration that "diversity is bunch of crap." The revelations led the National Republican Congressional Committee to withdraw its endorsement of Grossman.

Grossman is battling state Sen. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat who got an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association and bucked his party to side with the GOP occasionally in Trenton. Through June 30, Van Drew had $675,000 in his campaign account to Grossman's $56,000.

Kim v. MacArthur

The 3rd District, covering parts of Burlington and Ocean counties, is one of two in New Jersey included among the "25 Districts That Could Decide the House" chosen by the polling and data analysis website FiveThirtyEight.com.

A Monmouth University poll released Aug. 14 found two-term Rep. Tom MacArthur in a virtual tie with Democratic challenger Andy Kim. MacArthur led 41 percent to 40 percent among all potential voters, but when pollsters applied two different models of who is likely to vote, Kim had a slight lead.

Kim had more money than MacArthur on June 30, but super PACs on both sides that can take unlimited contributions — Congressional Leadership Fund for the Republicans and House Majority PAC for the Democrats — have already begun airing attack ads.

And MacArthur, the 19th-richest member of Congress, has shown he'll use his own money if he has to, having spent $5 million in winning the seat in 2014.

MacArthur is most closely aligned with the Trump agenda in the New Jersey delegation, and he benefited from a fundraiser Trump headlined at his Bedminster golf club last summer. 

Kim has been backed by both the Democratic establishment and the most liberal organizations in the party, such as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. He has refused to accept corporate PAC contributions, but does receive money from candidates who take them.

Smith v. Welle

The 4th District, which stretches from beach towns in Monmouth and Ocean counties to suburbs outside Trenton in Mercer County, will be Democrats' toughest challenge if they want to carry off a New Jersey sweep.

Rep. Chris Smith has been in Congress since 1980, and has a long record of winning 60 percent of the vote or more. Democratic challenger Josh Welle also had less than half as much cash in his campaign account as Smith had on June 30. 

Gottheimer v. McCann

National Republicans initially put freshman Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer on their target list, but with dozens of their own incumbents battling for survival, this race has gotten little attention from Washington since challenger John McCann won the primary.

Representing a Republican-leaning district dominated by Bergen County and including parts of Passaic, Sussex and Warren, Gottheimer voted more often than anyone in the state delegation with House Republicans. He also served as co-chairman of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, whose members pledge not to campaign against each other.

Gottheimer's unprecedented fundraising in the 2016 election helped him topple Republican Rep. Scott Garrett, and he has kept it up, building a war chest that had $4.5 million on June 30. McCann had $6,492, and $55,000 in debts.

Lance v. Malinowski

Like the 3rd District, Republican Rep. Leonard Lance's 7th District is seen as ground zero in the battle for House control. The district covers all of Hunterdon County and parts of Essex, Morris, Somerset, Union and Warren counties.

Lance touts his bipartisanship, and notably got the endorsement of former Rep. Gabby Giffords' gun control advocacy group despite a past 100 percent record from the National Rifle Association. He also broke with his party on key issues, voting against efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and overhaul the tax code last year.

He did, however, vote for the health insurance bill in committee. And in a preview of the battle ahead, that committee vote, not Lance's opposition to the final bill, is used in an ad by a Democratic super PAC that says Lance "voted for a disastrous health care bill that would increase costs on older Americans."

The ad also says Lance gets a state pension on top of his congressional salary, even though — unlike three Democrats in the delegation who also served in the state Legislature and get pensions — Lance waived those payments in 2012.

The same ad praises his opponent, Tom Malinowski, a former assistant secretary of state and head of the group Human Rights Watch. But Malinowski is the target of an attack ad by a GOP super PAC accusing him of having "lobbied for terrorists' rights." The Washington Post's fact checker said that ad and five others from the Congressional Leadership Fund against candidates in battleground districts "took a sliver of accurate information and spun it in a misleading way."

The Post, which gave the group a cumulative "four Pinocchios," said Malinowski lobbied for access to the courts for detainees at Guantanamo, something the Supreme Court ordered in 2008. 

Sherrill v. Webber

The January retirement of Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-Harding, touched off a competitive primary in the 11th District, which includes parts of Essex, Morris, Passaic and Sussex counties.

Assemblyman Jay Webber took the nomination to battle Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and prosecutor who shattered fundraising records this year. By June 30, Sherrill had raised more than Menendez during the second quarter, and had $2.9 million to Webber's $172,000.

Webber got a boost from a fundraiser in early August headlined by Vice President Mike Pence, and shored up support from party leaders who had backed his opponents in the primary. 

He's still playing catch-up to Sherrill, who campaigned most of last year expecting to be taking on Frelinghuysen. Webber's advantage is that he has run for and won office before, while this is Sherrill's first time on the stump.