Trump is motivating people to vote in N.J. That’s bad news for Tom Kean Jr.

Whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s midterm elections, President Donald Trump is likely to have one wish come true.

“In this election, I’m asking you to pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” Trump has said at various rallies for Republicans across the country in the last several weeks.

That is exactly what Bridget Barber of Summit, N.J., said she did when she voted at the New Providence senior center earlier this week. She lives in the state’s 7th Congressional District, where Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr., 58, is facing Democrat and first-time political candidate Rebecca Bennett, 39, of Bridgewater.

“I’m voting against Donald Trump,” Barber said. “That’s the most important thing to me.”

Most voters in suburban Union County who spoke to The Inquirer said Trump has motivated them to vote — but only because they feel compelled to vote against him. And that, by extension, means a no vote for Kean, whom the Cook Political Report called “a clear underdog.”

Two major Republican PACs have pulled funding from Kean’s race.

Bridget Coogan of Summit said her number-one issue was “driving Donald Trump out of office” and “getting more officials elected in Congress that do something about it, unlike Tom Kean.”

Coogan said she is anxious about the election because the stakes are so high.

“The future of the country we are bestowing on our kids — I feel like they are inheriting a really unfortunate situation on a number of levels,” she said.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who, like Bennett, is a moderate and a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, will campaign for Bennett on Monday night in Springfield.

As of Thursday, 61% of New Jerseyans who had cast ballots by mail or in person were Democrats, 22% were Republicans, and 17% were unaffiliated, according to the secretary of state’s office. The 7th District recorded nearly 95,000 ballots, more than any other congressional district in the state.

New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District is composed of parts of Union, Somerset, Morris, and Sussex Counties, and all of Hunterdon and Warren Counties. Republicans outnumber Democrats 218,268 to 202,071.

One Republican voter from Summit who declined to share her name said she voted for Kean, as she has in the past.

“I am not in love with him, but he beats the alternative,” she said. “Less government interference in my life, low taxes, and law enforcement keeping us safe” are her most important issues, she said.

Vietnam veteran John Pritch of Westfield, who spoke to The Inquirer while reading a newspaper outside a tobacco shop in town, said he was voting for Kean. The treatment of veterans is one of the most important issues to him.

“I can assure you the Republicans are better than the democratic socialists. They hate our military, hate our veterans,” Pritch said. “It’s time to keep them out of the government if they hate our soldiers so much.”

(Bennett does not identify as a democratic socialist, as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani does.)

Union County is home to more Democrats than Republicans, even in the more affluent suburban areas. But Kean lives in Westfield and represented portions of the county for nearly two decades in the state legislature before getting elected to Congress four years ago. His name, which he shares with his father, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, is well known. That name recognition and history of public service have counted in prior elections.

But they are unlikely to matter as much this year, said Ben Dworkin, a political science professor at Rowan University.

“Affordability and accountability are the encompassing issues people want to talk about,” Dworkin said. “Given the president’s extremely low approval rating, they want to hold him accountable, and the midterm elections are how you get to do that historically, and certainly this year.”

Kean drew a lot of attention earlier this year when he took a four-month medical leave of absence. He explained in June, when he returned, that he had been treated for depression.

Dennis Allocco of Summit, a lifelong Union County resident, said he thought Kean owed voters more information, and much sooner than he shared it.

“I personally have a problem with the way Kean handled his own personal issues, when he was absent. But then again, I really shouldn’t be surprised because that seems to be the way the Republican Party chooses to conduct itself these days,” Allocco said.

Allocco said “restoring some normalcy to our political environment” matters the most to him.

“Our current situation in Washington is borderline disgraceful. It really is,” said Allocco, a retired postmaster with the U.S. Postal Service. “We have politicized absolutely everything. The two parties are no longer effectively communicating with each other. We have lost sight of compromise.”

The Rev. K.M. Truslow, a pastor in Newark who lives in Scotch Plains, said the economy, “getting this [Iran] war resolved,” education, and immigration reform are the most pressing issues for him.

“All they are doing is deporting people. That’s not reform,” Truslow said.

Josh Graver, who is Coogan’s spouse, said there are many important issues this year, but one surpasses the rest: “restoring the democratic process and the system of checks and balances that has sustained our government since the beginning of the country.”

Democrats winning Tuesday is just one step in the process, the Summit resident said.

“And if we can’t manage that and we can’t have a working process of politics and government, and if the country is just going to backslide into authoritarianism, none of the other things matter,” Graver said.