Noticias

A high school student is looking to become one of the youngest elected officials in state history by running for his local school board this fall. 

Zack Metzger, a senior at a school in the Freehold Regional High School District, turns 18 next month. Metzger is competing with Joan Butcher-Farkas for a seat to represent Howell on the Freehold Regional High School District Board.

Metzger said he supports the district’s ban on cell phone use during instructional periods, and also wants to implement a more academically rigorous curriculum.

“I’m running because our schools deserve leadership that’s forward-thinking, fiscally responsible, and unafraid to act,” said Metzger.

He is running under the slogan “Our Students First.”

Eighteen-year-old Robert Fisher took office in the Park Ridge Board of Education in 2024. In 2019, 18-year-old Nick Pawylzyn Jr. was a high school senior when he won a seat on the New Hanover Board of Education. The first 18-year-old to win public office in New Jersey was Walter Nealy, who was appointed to fill a short-term vacancy on the Englewood City Council in 1973.

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Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), ramping up his congressional re-election campaign after his bid for governor failed to work out, has drawn a second Republican challenger in the 5th congressional district.

Sandy Gajapathy, a former sales associate from Paramus, announced this week that she will run against Gottheimer next year; Gajapathy briefly ran for the same seat in 2024, but garnered little support at the Bergen GOP convention and never filed to make the primary ballot.

“I deeply care about the future of our country,” Gajapathy told the New Jersey Globe. “This district is my home, it’s my family’s home, and that’s why I’m running.”

One other Republican, corporate consultant Sean Kirrane, has also launched a campaign for the 5th district. Gottheimer’s 2024 opponent, Mary Jo Guinchard, said in April that she would run against Gottheimer once again, but she withdrew from the race a few months later.

Gajapathy, the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants and a lifelong Bergen County resident, said her campaign will focus on securing the border, stopping corruption, and cutting wasteful spending. And Gottheimer, she argued, has failed to stand up for the residents of the 5th district against Democratic leadership in Washington.

“He says one thing and he does the other,” Gajapathy said. “For example, with [the State and Local Tax deduction cap], he said he’s going to fight to restore SALT, but then he voted for budgets that kept the cap in place. And he also says he’s going to put New Jersey first, but most of the time he sides with Biden and Pelosi in regards to spending over tax relief.”

She also faulted the congressman for running for re-election to Congress last year only to announce a campaign for governor immediately afterwards: “I don’t think the voters that elected him like that he did that,” she said.

But it will be difficult for Gajapathy – or for any other Republican who enters the race against Gottheimer – to make the 5th district competitive next year.

In the 2024 presidential election, fueled by gains among Bergen County’s Asian and Hispanic voters, Donald Trump came within a few thousand votes of carrying the 5th district. Gottheimer, however, defeated Guinchard 55%-43%, and even after pouring millions of dollars into his gubernatorial campaign still has nearly $9 million left to spend on his re-election campaign; the Cook Political Report recently shifted the district into the “Solid Democrat” column.

The post Gottheimer gets second GOP challenger in 5th district appeared first on New Jersey Globe.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is wading into the race for New Jersey’s 7th congressional district, targeting independent and conservative voters with a new digital ad campaign focused on free speech and President Donald Trump.

“[Trump] lied, and he’s not stopping,” the ad’s narrator intones after showing news clips about the suspensions of Stephen Colbert’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s late night shows. “Trump wants to control what you see so he can control what you think.”

The size of the DNC’s investment is not huge: the committee called it a “five-figure” campaign, which means the total buy could be as low as $10,000. The ad also doesn’t ever mention the man Democrats are hoping to beat next year, Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield).

Nonetheless, the ad provides a window into how Democrats are thinking about the race for the 7th district. In 2024, Democratic nominee Sue Altman worked to connect Kean to Trump whenever possible, but then Trump ended up carrying Kean’s district by a narrow margin; by specifically aiming their new ad at conservatives and independents, Democrats are now evidently trying to drive a wedge between Trump and his supporters ahead of 2026.

“Donald Trump’s administration has amassed a chilling record of restricting speech, extorting private companies, and dropping the full weight of the government censorship hammer on Americans simply exercising their First Amendment rights,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “This is no exaggeration, and it’s splintering the coalition that got Trump elected.”

Typically, national parties don’t invest heavily in congressional races until the last few months of the campaign, when TV ad dollars will go the furthest and be top-of-mind for swing voters. In off years like 2025, national committees like the DNC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) will instead spend small amounts of money on digital ad campaigns that test out messaging and keep targeted seats in the news.

So far this cycle, Democratic ads have repeatedly used the same cudgel against Kean: the One Big Beautiful Bill. Two DCCC digital ads that ran over the summer in Kean’s district and other competitive districts around the country blamed rising grocery prices and falling rural hospital funding on the controversial bill; the liberal group Unrig Our Economy also spent $200,000 last month attacking Kean over the bill’s Medicaid cuts.

Republicans, meanwhile, have done the opposite against Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), saying in their own ads that Pou’s vote against the Big Beautiful Bill was a betrayal of New Jersey families. The NRCC ran one ad last spring saying Pou’s vote amounted to supporting a massive tax hike, and launched a new ad campaign just last week blaming a looming government shutdown on Pou’s vote against a stopgap funding bill.

Both districts feature still-unsettled primaries, making it tougher for either party to get fully involved without knowing who their nominee will be: two Republicans are running against Pou, and a whopping eight Democrats are in the race against Kean.

Script
Narrator: Remember when Trump said…
Trump: America is also a free nation… On Day One, I signed an executive order to stop all government censorship.
News anchor 1: CBS is cancelling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert…
News anchor 2: Amid pressure from the Trump-aligned FCC, Kimmel’s show will be off the air…
Narrator: He lied, and he’s not stopping.
Trump: You have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump. They’re not allowed to do that.
Narrator: Trump wants to control what you see so he can control what you think.

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