Norcross says something dumb

Good morning!

With just eight days until Election Day, we were overdue for a candidate to say something incredibly stupid on the campaign trail.

This time it would be Rep. Donald Norcross (D), who is seeking reelection in the 1st District and used a campaign rally in Gloucester County on Saturday to compare Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R) to Adolf Hitler.

“That haircut: If it was darker, that’s Hitler’s haircut. That tells you who he really is. And those things he used to wear in his pocket, those three things. … The Klan hats he used to wear there, remember that? This is the real Jeff Van Drew,” Norcross said in front of about 200 Democrats gathered in Westville, per Aliya Schneider at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Norcross isn’t even running against Van Drew, but Norcross isn’t super worried about his own reelection while South Jersey Democrats are hopeful that a big enough Democratic wave next week could end Van Drew’s career.

After Schneider asked about his comments, Norcross’ spokesman said he apologized directly to Van Drew — “Whatever implications there were from my comments, I did not mean them that way,” Norcross said, which suggests there may have been other implications to comparing Van Drew’s hair to Hitler’s and saying “that tells you who he really is” — and Van Drew says he’s accepted the apology, though he noted that he was “profoundly disappointed” by Norcross.

Still plenty of time for another candidate to say something dumber. Who’s next?

Election 2026: Early in-person voting opened on Saturday, signaling the start of the final lap of this year’s general election. Rebecca Bennett, the Democrat hoping to unseat Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R) in the 7th District, rallied with union workers in Rahway as polls opened. “There is no other alternative than flipping this seat and taking back the House,” she said. “We have to do it. And just like in the military, we are on a no-fail mission and we’ve got to get this done.” We wanted to catch Kean, too, but his campaign wouldn’t tell us where he was.

More: New Jersey Democrats hoping to help flip control of Congress say they want to curb data center development and the AI industry if they win back the House next month. Adam Hamawy, the Dem hoping to succeed Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman in the 12th District, spent Sunday with environmental activists pushing to stop a South Brunswick data center.  “We need to slow down. We are moving too fast,” Hamawy told us in an interview last month. “It’s uncontrolled.”

D.C.: ICYMI, the Trump administration filed a lawsuit late last week seeking to stop the certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race if incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) loses by a smaller margin than the votes earned by another candidate on the ballot also named Dan Sullivan. Republicans claim the other Dan Sullivan’s placement on the ballot is Democratic trickery to confuse Alaska Republican voters and boost the Democrat in the race, Mary Peltola. "President Trump is not trying to take over a state election in any way, shape, or form," Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday.