Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. broke with President Donald Trump on several key issues during his only scheduled debate against Democrat Rebecca Bennett on Sunday night, and defended his lengthy absence from Capitol Hill earlier this year as he sought treatment for clinical depression.
In particular, Kean said that he would fight Trump’s attempts to block funding for the Gateway rail tunnel and that he strenuously opposed the administration’s plan to open an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in his district.
“I will challenge anybody who gets in my way, including this president,” Kean said Sunday while discussing Gateway.
But Kean defended Trump on the war with Iran, tariffs and the president’s signature tax and spending law, drawing a line between his opposition on the two New Jersey projects and his support for the broader Republican agenda.
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The debate took place days after the Cook Political Report shifted the race from a toss-up to “Lean Democratic.” A recent poll found Bennett leading Kean by 5 percentage points, though the difference was about the same as the poll’s margin of error.
Kean and Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, met for a 90-minute debate hosted by the New Jersey Globe and Rider University in Rahway.
The $16 billion Gateway project would build a new passenger rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River and repair the existing century-old tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York.
The Trump administration attempted to freeze federal funding for the project, but in June a federal judge permanently blocked the administration from withholding the money.
Kean also explicitly opposed the administration’s potential plan to convert a warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey, into an immigration detention center.
“My focus is to make sure we don’t have an ICE facility in Roxbury,” he said.
The federal government said in June that it had abandoned the project and intended to sell the warehouse. But the Department of Homeland Security reversed course in July and said it was again considering converting the property into a detention facility.
Kean also rejected Trump’s decision to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.”
“I call it Lake Ontario,” he said during a lightning round.
During the debate, Bennett called for ending the war in Iran and rolling back Trump’s tariffs, saying both are driving up costs for New Jersey families. She also criticized Kean for waiting until the debate to clearly oppose the proposed ICE facility in Roxbury.
Kean faced additional questions about his nearly four-month absence from Congress, saying he faced a “medical emergency” while receiving treatment for depression.
“We were very clear with our constituents as well as the press that we were seeking medical treatment,” Kean said. “And when things got updated over time, we kept everybody updated.”
He missed more than 140 House votes before returning June 30 and disclosing his diagnosis.
Kean first won the 7th District in 2022, defeating Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski by 2.8 percentage points. He won reelection against Democrat Sue Altman by 5.4 points in 2024, though Trump only narrowly carried the district by just over 1 point.
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