In what is turning out to be the longest-to-be-decided House race in the nation, the “New York Times” withdrew its projection of ten days ago that Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski was re-elected in New Jersey’s 7th District.
On election night, first-termer Malinowski led State Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean, Jr. by 28,000 votes when the “Times” called him the winner.
But in a district in which nearly all ballots were mail-in, the race turned out to be far from over.
By last Friday, with 97 per cent of the vote counted, Malinowski’s margin had dwindled to 4,327 votes out of more than 412,000 cast—or about 1 percent of the total.
Over the weekend, 157 hand-counted overseas ballots from Morris County slightly increased Malinowski’s lead by 123 votes and thus brought his margin over Kean to 4,462.
A former assistant secretary of state under Barack Obama, Malinowski became the first Democrat to represent the 7th District since 1956 when he unseated Republican Rep. Leonard Lance two years ago.
Centrist Republican Kean is the namesake-son of a former two-term governor of the Garden State. His grandfather Robert Kean was a twenty-year Republican U.S. Representative from New Jersey and great grandfather Hamilton Fish Kean was U.S. Senator from the state from 1928-34.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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