Jefferson Van Drew

Jeff Van Drew has represented South Jersey in one form or another for nearly 30 years — as a Cape May County mayor, a state legislator, and, since 2019, a member of Congress.

He arrived as a Democrat and is now a Republican, and the district, by every available measure, has gone right along with him.

And yet, as Democrats head into their June 2 primary to select a nominee to challenge Van Drew in this fall’s congressional midterms, they’re hoping something has shifted. President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have softened nationally. Anti-Washington sentiment is spiking in even conservative-leaning districts. A handful of national Democrats have started paying closer attention.

The sprawling district covers Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Salem counties, along with portions of Gloucester and Ocean, encompassing Atlantic City’s struggling casino corridor, blueberry farms and the Pinelands, the tourist towns of Cape May’s coastline and the outer edges of the Philadelphia suburbs.

It holds Democratic pockets but remains largely conservative. Trump won it by 12 points in 2024. Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat who swept the state by 14 points in last year’s governor’s race, still lost the district to Jack Ciattarelli.

Van Drew, 73, has won re-election twice, by 19 points in 2022 and by 17 points in 2024. He entered this year with five times more campaign cash than the best-funded Democrat.

So a wave big enough to put district in play this November would have to be more of a tsunami.

The four Democrats agree on the broad strokes — affordability, health care access, lowering costs for working families, limiting corporate influence — but differ sharply in their backgrounds, their resources, and their theories of how to win.

Here’s what you need to know about them.

Tim Alexander

South Jersey lifer. County party favorite. Perennial candidate.

Alexander, a Galloway resident, civil rights attorney, and former Atlantic County detective captain, is the most familiar name in the Democratic field.

He won the primary in 2022, lost to Van Drew by 19 points, narrowly lost the primary again in 2024, and is now making his third consecutive run for the seat.

That persistence has earned him real loyalty among South Jersey Democratic activists; he won four of the district’s six county party endorsements and has the backing of Atlantic County Democratic Chairman Michael Suleiman.

What it hasn’t earned him, though, is money. Alexander has raised just over $66,000 this cycle, less than a twentieth of what Van Drew has on hand.

He has pushed back on the importance of fundraising, arguing that proximity to voters and earned trust matter more.

“You can’t win unless you have connections in the community,” he told the New Jersey Globe last summer.

His campaign took a damaging turn this week when the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Alexander’s website had been touting a lengthy endorsement falsely attributed to the former mayor of West Cape May.

Carol Sabo, who’d already publicly endorsed one of Alexander’s opponents, told the Inquirer that she hadn’t written the statement on Alexander’s website and had been shocked to see it.

Alexander called it “a mistake, plain and simple,” saying his team had drafted the statement in anticipation of her endorsement, and that it was posted in error.

Bayly Winder

Former State Department. Flush with cash. New to the district.

Winder is the best-funded Democrat in the race, and the one betting that federal experience can outrun local roots.

He has raised more than $600,000 since entering the race last summer, a significant sum for a district that rarely attracts national attention.

He is also the only candidate benefiting from super PAC support, with South Jersey Leadership spending roughly $36,000 on his behalf, according to campaign filings.

Winder, 34, was born in England and grew up in Princeton. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins, Oxford, and Georgetown Qatar, and a Fulbright recipient.

He worked on Iran policy at the State Department during both the Obama and first Trump administrations, consulted for the FBI on cybersecurity, and served at USAID during the Biden years.

He also moved to Mays Landing last spring, registered to vote there last June, and launched his congressional campaign shortly after.

That last part of his biography has attracted scrutiny.

Winder pushes back on the accusation that he’s parachuted into the region solely to run for office, pointing to family roots that stretch to his great-grandfather’s immigration from Lebanon to Princeton in the 1920s, and saying he attended New Jersey public schools for middle and high school.

“Attacking my childhood and my family is what other candidates do when they have no new ideas,” he told NJ.com.

His central issue is data center development, which he blames for rising utility costs across the district. He has held town halls, released a moratorium proposal, and cast himself as the candidate best positioned to take the fight to corporate power in Washington.

Winder said data centers were a high-priority issue for South Jersey residents,noting he’d heard concerns about them “being built at such a rapid pace without any community input, with no information on how this will impact utility costs, our water usage, and the noise impact.”

Local activists who have organized against a Vineland data center say they appreciate the attention but have distanced themselves from Winder, with some describing his involvement as more self-promotional than substantive.

“It reads very much to me like ‘I want attention for this,’ not ‘I care about this,’” one told the Inquirer.

A super PAC mailer inaccurately claiming he stopped the data center entirely has not helped.

Zack Mullock

Cape May mayor. The DCCC’s pick. Late entrant.

Mullock, the mayor of Cape May since 2021, is the candidate national Democrats appear most interested in.

He jumped into the race in February, later than his opponents, and has had to play catch-up ever since, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been in contact with his campaign, according to the Globe’s reporting.

His pitch is executive experience: as the mayor of a small coastal city shaped by flooding, seasonal economics, and tourism-dependent livelihoods, he argues that the everyday challenges of governing in South Jersey have prepared him for Congress in ways that Washington experience cannot replicate.

In early May, Winder’s campaign publicly called out Mullock for being the only candidate not to release his personal financial disclosure, which House Ethics rules require candidates to file at least 30 days before a primary.

Winder’s team also noted that while Mullock announced that he’d raised close to $200,000, campaign finance records showed $110,000 of that sum came from a personal loan he’d made to his own coffers.

Mullock filed his financial disclosure the following day.

He has endorsements from Sabo, the former West Cape May mayor, and former NJ-2 candidate Amy Kennedy. He also has the support of the Cape May Democrats.

Where the other three candidates have clashed openly — most sharply over Winder’s residency and his campaign’s petition challenge against candidate Terri Reese — Mullock has largely stayed out of it, telling the Globe he remains focused on the general election.

Terri Reese

Progressive. Single mom. Underdog.

Reese, a lifelong Atlantic County resident, is running as the field’s most explicitly progressive candidate.

Born and raised in Northfield, she worked in retail management for 30 years while raising two children as a single mother, she told the Ocean City Sentinel. She left her career to care for her mother after she was diagnosed with dementia.

Reese has centered her campaign on the economic and health care realities facing working families — a living wage, expanded tax credits, universal coverage, and lower prescription drug costs.

Her campaign had raised a little over $14,000 as of mid-May.