How a Republican in a Blue State Is Trying to Stay Close to Trump and Still Win

TOMS RIVER, N.J. — The New Jersey Republican congressman who has stood closest to President Donald Trump on some of his most divisive issues was sounding a familiar refrain as he tried to make his case to voters.

“Take this caravan,” said Rep. Tom MacArthur, referring to the thousands of migrants making their way north in Mexico. “Even if the majority of them are just trying to look for a better life, it is a wide open door for others who have bad purposes to slip in.”

Applause and cheers greeted his remarks — then came the conspiracies.

“I believe that this caravan is a planned caravan,” shouted one woman in the room, citing a “Facebook post or whatever” as her source. “There are no children. You have them totally clean. They travel all the time. They’re organized. They’re fed.”

MacArthur put his hands up.

“That’s more than I know,” he said, dodging the unfounded theorizing, before attempting to strike a more conciliatory tone. “There is no shame in being both compassionate and having the rule of law. Those two things can exist at the same time.”

As he seeks a third term, MacArthur embodies the challenge facing many suburban Republicans across the country who have remained staunch allies of the president. Their wealthy and once-reliably Republican districts have become battlegrounds since Trump’s triumph in 2016 galvanized an angry Democratic electorate.

MacArthur has been forced to walk a fine line in a polarized district. He helped lead an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which has helped drive down or contain health care costs for many residents, and voted in favor of the federal tax plan, which imposed a limit on local tax deductions and is deeply unpopular in New Jersey. At the same time, MacArthur likes to tout his bipartisan record, citing his work on the opioid epidemic and his opposition to offshore drilling.

Though Trump won the district, which stretches from the Jersey Shore toward the suburbs of Philadelphia, it has not translated into an advantage for MacArthur, who is trying to defend his seat against a well-financed challenge from his Democratic opponent, Andy Kim, who worked in the Obama administration on national security issues.

A recent poll from Monmouth University found that MacArthur and Kim were in a statistical tie.

“Trump remains more of a motivating factor for his opponents than for his supporters in this particular race,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Poll.

MacArthur acknowledges the challenge he faces and points to the layout of his district to illustrate the political dynamics at play.

“I try to remind people that I have to straddle the Pine Barrens,” he said in an interview. “The 1.1-million-acre Pine Barrens that runs through the middle of the state divides my district in half. On the one side is Ocean County, where Trump won by 93,000 votes. And on the other side is Burlington County where he lost by 16 percentage points. I have to straddle that.”

On a swing through the heavily Republican oceanside town of Toms River, MacArthur interspersed his allegiance to the president with evidence that he is not simply a rubber stamp for Trump or the party.

There was “something malign in the bosom of the Democratic Party,” MacArthur said starkly, while adding that nevertheless, “I probably spend most of my time working with Democrats.”

MacArthur voted in favor of a bill that required all states to recognize concealed-carry gun permits from other states. But, he explained, the legislation also contained a provision opposed by the National Rifle Association that requires a more rigorous background-check system. “We don’t have that today,” he said. “That is more dangerous.”

And though he has supported much of Trump’s tariff policies, he said he successfully lobbied the administration to drop one tariff that would have harmed a chemical company in Burlington County.

“I’m not saying that the president’s popularity has no impact on my race,” MacArthur said. “Of course it does. But I can look people in the eye and say I work with the president when I can.”

MacArthur seems exasperated at times with the anger directed at him for his willingness to side with Trump. But that anger is what has lead to a tectonic shift in this district, which has been represented by Republicans since 1993 except for two years when a Democrat won by riding the coattails of Barack Obama’s historic first victory.

The recent Monmouth Poll found that an equal number of voters approve and disapprove of Trump, which differs from the picture statewide, where the president is intensely unpopular. “To the degree that hard-core Trump supporters are congregating anywhere in New Jersey, it’s in Ocean County,” said Benjamin Dworkin, a politics professor at Rowan University. “So MacArthur being as supportive of Trump as he is, it’s as much a political necessity as anything else.”

But MacArthur’s votes, especially on health care, have been frequent targets of Kim on the campaign trail and in political advertisements. His vote on the federal tax plan not been as big an issue as it has been elsewhere because the cap deductions has less of an impact on the district.

Kim has focused on an amendment to the Affordable Care Act that MacArthur helped draft and that critics say would undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

“What the voters are concerned about is that my opponent is someone who stood alongside the president and his administration on gutting pre-existing condition protections, on essential benefit protections, and the tax bill,” Kim said at a recent candidate forum.

MacArthur has denied trying to erode safeguards for pre-existing conditions, one of the pillars of health care reform, but Kim’s line of attack has resonated in the district, with surveys showing that health care is by far the most important issue.

That is especially true in Ocean County, which has the largest population of older people of any county in the state.

“The cost of medicine, Medicare, anything that has to do with health and well-being of the senior citizens are my top issues,” said Sandra Chmielewski, 74, who went to hear MacArthur’s stance on health care. “I have to hear more about it. I would like to be informed about things before I make a judgment call.”