Stock trades again at center of campaign for 7th District House seat

Years after attacks over stock trades helped push Rep. Tom Malinowski out of office, candidates in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District are again in a squabble over securities.

The contest between Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R) and Democratic challenger Rebecca Bennett is veering into the financial as the candidates trade barbs over their investments. Kean is seeking a third term in what is widely considered to be New Jersey’s swingiest House district as his party is nervous about retaining control of Congress after November’s midterm elections.

Bennett, a first-time candidate, is hitting Kean over hundreds of thousands of dollars in individual stock trades made, including during a prolonged absence from Congress this year that he said was due to depression. Kean contends he does not make individual stock trades because his portfolio his in the hands of an independent financial manager.

“I’ve not traded an individual stock since I’ve been a member of Congress,” Kean said during a debate Sunday hosted by the New Jersey Globe, adding, “I’ve got a blind structure in which I have no involvement.”

This is the third election cycle in a row in the 7th District where stock trades are a flashpoint.

While seeking his seat in 2022, Kean repeatedly attacked Malinowski, who was then the incumbent, over a House Ethics Committee probe into Malinowski’s late reporting of stock trades. Kean’s Democratic opponent in 2024, Sue Altman, dinged Kean over belated reporting of his family trust’s stock trades.

Bennett, who formerly worked at the digital health companies Noom and Oshi Health, has stressed that she divested individual stocks last year in favor of purchasing index and mutual funds.

Index funds batch stocks on a given index, like the S&P 500 or the Down Jones Industrial Average, into a single product, while mutual funds are groups of specific stocks chosen by investment managers who aim to beat market returns.

Stuart Green, a distinguished professor of criminal law at Rutgers Law School who previously advocated for limits on congressional stock trading, said that sort of divestment creates a strong firewall between insider information obtained through membership in Congress and the trading floor.

“If you really are divesting yourself of your holdings and putting them in some kind of an index fund, then it seems like you’ve completely severed the connection between your own portfolio and the information that you’re privy to,” Green said. “If I understand correctly what’s involved there, that sounds like that’s the most drastic sort of solution.”

A blind trust, a legal arrangement where an individual gives full control over their investments to a manager who oversees them without informing or consulting the individual on trades, also eliminates unfair advantages members of Congress may have by virtue of their position, Green said.

Before he joined Congress in 2023, Kean pledged to put his considerable holdings into a blind trust that would insulate his lawmaking from his investments, but years later that trust never materialized. Kean said Sunday his net worth was roughly $10 million, counting real estate.

“I want to be clear here: There are two ways to divest your personal interest from stocks. Number one is to do what I did, which is divest all your individual stocks. Number two is to put your assets into an actual blind trust,” Bennett said Sunday. “My opponent, Congressman Tom Kean Jr., has done neither of those things.”

Kean proposed a blind trust to the House Ethics Committee but it rejected his plan because he sought to control it by barring investments in firms with ties to American adversaries or prohibiting the short sale of stock in U.S. firms, Kean’s attorney said in a letter to the committee, according to the New Jersey Globe.

It’s not clear what level of entanglement with a foreign adversary would meet Kean’s bar to be excluded from investment. A bill he sponsored in 2024 listed China, Cuba, Iran, Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela as adversaries whose involvement would bar members of Congress from investing.

Now, Kean’s investments are managed by an outside firm without his input, the attorney said. Those investments include some in companies like Amazon and Microsoft that do business in China, according to periodic stock disclosures.

Harrison Neely, a spokesperson for Kean, did not return a request for comment.

Kean’s arrangement appears to mirror the one Malinowski had when his stock trades became a political sore spot, and it’s not clear Kean’s arrangement bars him from directing investment managers to buy or sell specific stocks.

Under federal law, members of Congress are required to report stock trades within 45 days of the transaction or 30 days of learning about the trade. Kean certifies the accuracy of his periodic disclosures each month.

Malinowski missed that deadline for hundreds of trades over two years, prompting an ethics inquiry that proved a drag on his reelection campaign. He later placed his assets in a blind trust. He sought to rejoin Congress this year in the 11th District but lost the Democratic primary to Rep. Analilia Mejia.

There has been scant public polling on the Kean-Bennett race. An Insider NJ/StimSight Research survey from earlier this month gave Bennett a five-point edge over Kean. Last week, Cook Political Report shifted its rating of the race to say Bennett is now favored to win.

As Bennett attacks Kean over his stocks, he is accusing her of downplaying her wealth in advertisements where she has called herself middle class, pointing to a personal financial disclosure that showed she had more than $264,000 in earned income in 2024. Bennett declined during Sunday’s debate to say what her net worth is. TV ads attacking her call her “millionaire Rebecca Bennett.”

Bennett’s campaign called the attack a desperate distraction.

“Tom Kean Jr. is stooping to personal attacks against Rebecca because he knows he’s in big trouble with the people he’s supposed to serve,” said Carly Jones, a spokesperson for Bennett’s campaign.