Healthcare fight in the 7th

Good morning!

We are just 22 days away from Election Day, and the House race in our 7th District continues to be the one to watch.

Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R) is seeking a third term against Rebecca Bennett (D), with healthcare costs and Medicaid cuts becoming a chief focus for both campaigns as Nov. 3 nears.

Lilo Stainton takes a look at this today, zeroing in on Bennett’s attack on Kean for supporting a bill President Donald Trump signed last year that is expected to boot hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans off Medicaid and on Kean’s allegations that Bennett is a wealthy executive who has put profits over patients in her work for a healthcare company.

Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, said while healthcare is a driver of this conversation, for voters it may come down to another topic, Trump himself.

“In a nationalized midterm environment where voters are really thinking along the lines of either two more years of Trump or checking and balancing Trump, the main motivating factor of most voters is either to give him more runway, or to take the runway away from him,” he said.

Read more from Lilo.

Today: Later this morning, we are launching “Who I Am Meant To Be,” a video series that looks at the lives of transgender New Jerseyans at a time when their community feels under attack. The videos, from our own Anne-Marie Caruso, will debut weekly throughout the fall. Stay tuned!

Transit: NJ Transit train riders regularly gripe about the transit system’s service, and now they have an extra problem for the next few weeks. Via Stefanos Chen at the New York Times, five weeks of service cuts and disruptions have begun as part of the move to replace the century-old Portal Bridge, a key rail link from New Jersey to Manhattan. Crews are in the final phase of moving equipment and wiring to the bridge’s new replacement.

ICYMI: From Friday, Nikita Biryukov looks at a big story out of Roselle, where Police Chief Stacey Williams was fired from his job over using an anti-gay slur at work before the state Civil Service Commission ordered him reinstated. A panel of appellate court judges said he should be fired after all and criticized the commission for giving Williams a 30-day suspension.

Election 2026: Jonathan Shorman from our DC bureau looks at prediction markets and some state officials’ worry that they are opening the door to a new era of gambling on elections, a practice many states have long banned. “They jeopardize people’s trust in government and government decision-making. They jeopardize people’s trust in elections,” said Minnesota state Rep. Emma Greenman. The industry argues that the federal government, not states, has the power to regulate them.