Jeff Drew is a conservative Democrat, one of the two Democrats to oppose proceeding with impeachment. He is, however, a ferocious organizer on behalf of Democrats in a Republican area. He got himself elected as State Senator and then Congressman. He got Democrats elected to the NJ House as well.
Tom Malinowski interned for New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley. He went west for university and earned a Rhodes Scholarship at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked for New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then left to earn an M.Phil. from Oxford. He worked for the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and then the Ford Foundation. He worked in the State Department writing speeches for Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madelaine Albright. Under Clinton he became Senior Director of the National Security Council managing international communications and writing foreign policy speeches for the President. With Democrats out of office, he became the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. For over a decade, he was a leading opponent of the US use of torture, of tyranny in Myanmar, and of groups like the Taliban.
Andy Kim is the son of poor immigrants from Korea. They expected a lot of him and got a lot. He went to the unusual and rigorous Deep Springs two year College and then to the University of Chicago where he earned a Truman scholarship. He went to Oxford, earned a Rhodes and a PhD. He went from Oxford to Washington and Kabul. He worked with generals in Afghanistan, then as he Iraq Country Director for the State Department and the Director for Iraq at the National Security Council.
Bob Menendez is back. He originally entered politics fighting corruption in Union, New Jersey. He has returned to his position as ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. is vulnerable. Federal prosecutors have just dropped plans for a second corruption trial after the first one ended with a hung jury. Dropping the second corruption trial does not guarantee that Bob Menendezwill have an easy time being reelected. Some people claim there is fire where there is smoke.
Mikie Sherrill A graduate of the Naval Academy, she flew helicopters in the Middle East and in Europe. Married to a fellow Annapolis graduate, they now have four children. A Russian desk officer for the Navy in London, she added a Master's Degree from the London School of Economics. A graduate of Georgetown Law School, she has served as a prosecutor in the US Attorney's Office in New Jersey. She has proved to be a strong candidate and has raised a lot of money.
Jeff Van Drew is the candidate that locals wanted. He is the candidate that the establishment wanted. He is a state Senator. Has been a state Senator since 2008, representing a district that covers South Jersey -- a pretty large piece of territory for an urban, eastern state. He won by 10 points the first time, 20 points the second time, and 30 points the third time. He may be the best liked dentist in the state.
Josh Gottheimer has been in the page to intern to Congressman pipeline. When he was 16, he was a page for Senator Lautenberg of NJ. While at West Essex High School, the University of Pennsyivania, and Harvard Law School, he was able to get internships with C-Span, with the Secretary of the US Senate, and with Tom Foley when he was Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was on Bill Clinton's Rapid Response Team for the 1996 reelection campaign and then joined the administration as a speechwriter. In 2004, he worked, first for the Wesley Clark presidential campaign, then for the John Kerry Campaign. In 2008, he worked for the Hillary Clinton campaign. In 2016, he targeted NJ CD 05 and won by less than 15,000 votes.