In a move that appears to assure Assemblyman Sean Kean (R-Wall) another term, Democrats are focusing on winning a second term for Assemblyman Avi Schnall (D-Lakewood) and not making a play for a second seat in the heavily Republican 30th legislative district.
Democrat Claire Deicke withdrew from the race a few weeks ago; the 82-year-old former Belmar council president was always just a placeholder as he party decided if it was going to try a two-seat strategy and attempt to take out Kean.
For a while, it looked like Kean, 62, could be in trouble, but the veteran lawmaker – he served in the Assembly from 2002 to 2007, in the Senate from 2007 to 2011, and then as an assemblyman again when redistricting ended his upper house career – but the Wall Republican has done his constituent service with the Orthodox Jewish community that dominates Lakewood and surrounding towns and they had no bone to pick with his record.
The decision was to focus on re-electing Schnall, who faces a rematch with former Assemblyman Ned Thomson, 72, whom he ousted in 2023. To replace Deicke, Democrats went with Joanne DeBenedicts, a 75-year-old retired public fifth-grade teacher from Belmar.
Two years ago, Schnall didn’t enter the Assembly race until late August, and went on to crush Thomson, a former Wall mayor who had entered the Assembly in August 2017 and won three races without much trouble.
Democrats focused on Thomson in 2023, leaving Kean alone. Kean won 37,450 votes and defeated the Democratic sacrificial lamb, former Jersey City police detective Sal Frascino, who worked security for the Lakewood school board, by 28,582 votes.
Schnall, a Rabbi who was the New Jersey director of Agudath Israel of America, received 29,482 votes to 18,076 for Thomson, a member of the Assembly GOP leadership team.
Under normal circumstances, the 30th district wouldn’t be remotely competitive. It backed Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 28 points in the 2021 gubernatorial election, and hasn’t elected a single Democratic legislator since 1992, when the district first became based in Lakewood.
But Orthodox Jewish leaders saw an opportunity to defy those statistics and elect a member of the Democratic majority caucus. To do so, they had to supercharge turnout in Lakewood and get vast numbers of Orthodox voters to pull the lever for Schnall, a longtime Orthodox leader and a former Republican.
They also needed to avoid provoking a backlash in Howell and Wall, two other 30th district towns that are quite Republican but have minimal Orthodox populations – and in fact were liable to be hostile to Schnall’s Orthodox-focused messaging.
