District 7 Primary Election 2022: Tom Malinowski

DISTRICT 7, NJ — Incumbent Tom Malinowski is running for re-election in the House of Representatives 7th Congressional District primary election on June 7. He is running against eight other candidates.

This would be Malinowski's third term. He is running against Democrat Roger Bacon in the contested primary. There are also seven other Republicans including Kevin B. Dorlon, Erik Peterson, Thomas H. Kean, Jr., Philip Rizzo, John Henry Isemann, Sterling I. Schwab, and John Flora competing on the Republican ticket.

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Tom Malinowski

Age: 56

Town of Residence: East Amwell, NJ

Position Sought: 3rd term re-elect for New Jersey's 7th Congressional District

Party Affiliation: Democrat

Family: (left blank)

Education: B.A., University of California, Berkeley, M.Phil., Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar)

Occupation: Your Congressman, representing New Jersey's 7th Congressional District

Previous Elected or Appointed Office: Your Congressman, representing New Jersey's 7th Congressional District

Why are you seeking to run for District 7?

I am not a career politician, but a life-long public servant who ran for Congress for the first time in 2018 because I wanted to give something back to the country I love. I’m running for reelection because I want to continue the work we’ve done in bringing America’s economy back from the pandemic, and to make that economy more fair for hard working people struggling to pay for health and child care. I want our country to be less dependent on dictatorships like China and Russia for the goods and technologies that power our prosperity, and a model of democracy, tolerance, and respect for law for freedom loving people across the world.

Do you feel flooding is an issue in the district? How would you like to address it?

Tropical Storm Ida made clear, once again, the urgent need to protect people, homes, and businesses in New Jersey from extreme weather. With major storms becoming more frequent, it can’t simply be that we apply to FEMA for help to fix our homes every five years, or that we keep building ever higher and higher floodwalls. For the long term, we need additional investments in the infrastructure that keeps our rivers and streams from flooding. I’m proud to have helped pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which includes $17.1 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers to address our water infrastructure challenges, including inland flooding from storms. And it includes billions more for resilience, wastewater, and stormwater management. We’ve already secured $1 billion for New Jersey water projects through the infrastructure bill and the post-Ida disaster funding bill. And there’s more to come.

Additionally, we've got to recognize that climate change is not some abstract, future threat. It is happening today. It is four feet of water in your basement, and flash floods that kill our neighbors. The cost of not dealing with it is much greater than the cost of America leading the world to clean energy.

How do you feel about Roe v Wade potentially being overturned?:

Overturning Roe would take us back to a time when the government denied women the right to make their health care decisions — a time when many women risked their lives to get black market abortions. This is already beginning to happen in states that have passed or proposed radical abortion bans, some of which would treat women and doctors as criminals for conducting abortions from the moment of conception, while giving even rapists the power to sue their victims who seek to terminate a pregnancy.

Americans are tired of conflict and division and of having our lives upended. The last thing we need right now is for the Supreme Court to suddenly rip up 50 years of settled law that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe should remain in place.

The stakes this November cannot be higher. I support a woman’s right to choose. My likely opponent Tom Kean Jr. has consistently opposed it. His election would virtually guarantee a House majority that would impose a nationwide abortion ban. The voters of the 7th district can and will prevent that this November.

What other issues do you feel must be tackled in the district?

The biggest issues my constituents raise with me right now is gas prices and rising cost of living. Thanks to the policies we put in place to rescue the economy in 2020, we now have the lowest unemployment in decades. But having saved all those millions of jobs, we now have to save the paychecks that go with those jobs, and help people who are struggling to pay the bills.

Inflation happens when people have money to spend, but that money is chasing too few goods. I’m happy that Americans are spending and traveling more today. What we need to do now is to increase the supply of the goods we buy, and to protect ourselves from global supply chain disruptions caused by war and disease. I helped write a bipartisan bill moving through Congress now that will bring manufacturing of critical goods like microchips and batteries back home to America, so that we aren’t as dependent on countries like China. I also support a windfall profits tax on big oil companies, to fund rebates to help consumers afford the price of gas, subsidies to lower health care and child care costs for working Americans, and letting Medicare negotiate lower drug prices for our seniors.

What sets you apart from the challenging candidates?

What sets me apart is that I have actually delivered for our district in the last few years, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill that will fix our roads and provide high speed internet to rural areas, the American Rescue Plan that allowed towns in NJ-07 to keep paying our cops, firefighters, and teachers without raising property taxes this year, and the successful campaign to stop the Penn East Pipeline.

Unlike other candidates, I show up and listen — having held more than 100 public town hall meetings since I was elected in 2018. I’m also the only candidate in the race who believes the Affordable Care should be preserved, not repealed; the only one who supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose; the only one who’d let Medicare negotiate with big Pharma to get drug prices down; and the only one who believes corporations like Amazon should pay their fair share in taxes.

What else would you like to share about yourself or your campaign?

The biggest threat to democracy in America is the willingness of some politicians to promote of hatred, mistrust, misinformation, and even violence to win power. I don’t care if we’re Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives — we have to be willing to debate issues based on facts, and to respect the outcome of elections, whether we win or lose. I believe in reaching across the aisle, and am a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, the only truly bipartisan group in the House of Representatives. But I’m also willing to call out extremists on all sides, and to condemn the horrific attacks on police officers and our democracy that happened on January 6th, and the divisive, hateful cable news rhetoric that leads to mass shootings in America. Those who refuse to do so have no business holding an office of trust in America.