Carpetbagging is flourishing in New Jersey. Should voters care?

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Bonnie Watson Coleman has represented Princeton’s residents in Congress since 2015. Now she’s retiring, and 17 Democrats have declared that they are running for her seat in June’s primary. Would it be better if N.J.-12 was represented by a candidate with ties to Princeton who understands the federal issues long faced by the University, or by a candidate who moved to the district yesterday? Or does it not matter? This is a choice that voters will soon have to make.

That’s because of New Jersey’s new carpetbagging craze. Take the case of Former U.S. Representative Tom Malinowski. Of the 11 Democratic candidates who participated in the recent special primary to fill the congressional seat vacated by New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill in N.J.-11, only Malinowski had served in Congress before. But there was a catch — Malinowski had represented a different congressional district than the one he was running in this time. Rather than try once more to unseat Republican Thomas Kean Jr. in N.J.-7, Malinowski bet his fortunes simply on swapping constituents. It almost paid off. He finished second to the race’s winner.

Malinowski is hardly the only candidate in New Jersey who has recently sought to move to a new, more convenient congressional district to which he doesn’t have any ties. Brian Varela, after trying four years ago to run for Congress against Rob Menendez in N.J.-8, has also swapped districts. Varela is now running against Kean in N.J.-7. Meanwhile, Sue Altman, whom Kean defeated in N.J.-7 in 2024, has declared that she’s running for Congress in N.J.-12 — even though Altman has no real ties to this district.

What’s going on here?

For starters, state and federal candidates are treated differently when it comes to their durational residency requirements. Under New Jersey’s constitution, members of the state Senate and General Assembly must be residents of their districts for at least one year before being elected, while New Jersey’s governor must be a resident of the state for seven years. By contrast, the federal Constitution requires that a member of the U.S. House only be an “inhabitant” of the state “when elected.” This means congressional candidates do not have to reside in their congressional districts. In addition, they are free to swap districts at will.

Moreover, the demise of the “county line” ballot system has encouraged more candidates to run for office in New Jersey. Rather than party bosses determining where a candidate’s name will appear on the primary ballot and challengers being relegated to “ballot Siberia,” the state’s primary ballots now treat all candidates equally.

But the new ballot system — combined with the rule that a primary winner only needs to secure a plurality of the vote — has created new incentives for carpetbagging. Well-heeled candidates know they can helicopter into a safer district, list their names on a crowded ballot, and make it to Congress simply by securing one more vote than the second-highest candidate. In N.J.-12, as little as 20 percent of the vote may be enough to win in June — so long as one’s opponents all receive less. For candidates like Malinowski and Altman, who have a ready list of donors and a campaign infrastructure in place from their previous runs, carpetbagging becomes irresistible.

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It also helps that carpetbagging is a well-worn tradition in the United States. To take one particularly egregious example, James Shields first represented Illinois in the U.S. Senate in 1849. When another term failed to materialize, Shields moved to Minnesota, becoming a U.S. Senator from that state in 1858. At the end of his life, in 1879, Shields was again a member of the U.S. Senate, only this time representing Missouri. Robert F. Kennedy and Hillary Clinton both represented New York in the U.S. Senate, despite not being from that state. And Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, had no qualms about moving 2,000 miles west when a U.S. Senate seat became vacant in Utah.

While Malinowski and Altman might be classic carpetbaggers, their actions are mild in comparison to these folks. They’re not swapping states, just districts.

Should voters care?

That depends on what they want from their congressional representative. According to one school of thought, voters elect public officials to be their “trustees,” and these officials are to use their judgment to follow the course of action they believe is best. If voters buy this view, Malinowski’s and Altman’s carpetbagging may not matter, and these candidates need not explain why they’ve switched districts. Representative and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all perform their duties as trustees. Each has a national profile, and few Americans can tell you which district in Louisiana, California, or New York elects them. Perhaps that’s the kind of representative Malinowski hoped to be. So that the country could benefit from his foreign policy expertise, he was essentially telling voters N.J.-11 that they should let his lack of ties to their district slide.

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They didn’t buy it.

That’s because another view of representation suggests that elected officials ought to act as mouthpieces for their constituents. Accordingly, politicians have no authority to act on their own. Instead, they serve as “delegates” for their constituents and are elected to carry out their wishes in Congress. If you happen to be a voter who wants your member of Congress to focus on the unique problems of your district, you may be less likely to vote for someone like Malinowski or Altman. A candidate who moved into the district yesterday is less likely to be familiar with its problems than someone who is homegrown.

New Jersey’s small size and population density ensure that its congressional districts are more geographically compact than those of most other states. Because of this, New Jersey’s federal candidates often enjoy name recognition across district lines. In turn, this makes it easier for them to switch districts. But it also makes it harder to stop voters from asking why the candidate has chosen to do so in the first place. In 2018, when Senator Andy Kim ran for Congress in N.J.-3 against Republican incumbent Tom MacArthur, Kim repeatedly emphasized his ties to his congressional district. He had grown up there, he told voters, while MacArthur was the classic carpetbagger who had moved to N.J.-3 for no reason other than to win a seat in Congress.

Increasingly, voters across New Jersey are being asked to figure out whether their members of Congress should be homegrown — or if the need for them to have local ties is a relic of the past.

Eugene D. Mazo is a law professor at Duquesne University, a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project, and the editor of “The Oxford Handbook of American Election Law.” Professor Mazo has twice been a congressional candidate in New Jersey.

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