Kean Won't Concede As Malinowski Speaks: 7th Congressional Race

CENTRAL JERSEY — Republican Tom Kean Jr. says he will not concede after The Associated Press declared Democratic incumbent Tom Malinowski the winner of the 7th Congressional District on Tuesday night.

"It is WAY too early to call this race," Tom Kean Jr.'s Campaign Manager Harrison Neely told Patch. "Tom Kean Jr. is not out of it yet."

Neely said there are still many ballots that need to be counted, which he believes are primarily Republicans who waited to vote on Election Day.

"The trend we saw leading up to Election Day is that we saw a heavy Republican turnout and expect a heavy Republican turnout on Election Day as well," Neely said. "The early ballots are probably Democrat and ballots counted in the coming days will be mostly Republican. There is not enough information to make a determination on this race."

Specifically, Neely noted that in Somerset County roughly 142,000 ballots were counted out of the 180,000 ballots expected to be cast in total based on the ballots sent.

With 386 of 639 precincts reporting in the 7th District on Tuesday night, or 60 percent of the districts, The Associated Press declared Malinowski the winner over Kean Jr.

Union County is reported 124,304 ballots were counted as of Tuesday night out of 372,854 registered voters. Union County will not be updating their results tally until Saturday.

Here are the latest vote totals, according to The Associated Press as of 12:20 a.m.:

• Democrat Tom Malinowski: 147,264
• Republican Tom Kean Jr.: 118,863

Malinowski delivered a speech on his projected re-election on Wednesday, which was streamed to Facebook live on his page - facebook.com/malinowskifornj.

"For me personally this is even more gratifying than my first win in 2018. Back then voters were placing their trust in us for a promise I made. This time voters were making a judgement on what we actually did in the last 2 years," Malinowski said.

Malinowski also touched on Presidential Election noting that "New Jersey did its part," alluding to the fact the Garden State voted in favor of Joe Biden.

"We voted clearly to crush this pandemic because that is the only way to restore this economy. Not to mention to protect our health and lives. We voted for leaders who when addressing this pandemic are going to be guided by science and not by some guy on YouTube," Malinowski said. "We voted to fire Trump and keep Dr. Fauci. And I hope that and believe the majority of the American people are with us on that."

Malinowski also commented on President Donald's Trump tweet declaring victory of the election.

I will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!

Watch the full live speech below:

For full coverage of the 2020 election in New Jersey, click here.

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