A Marine combat veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has made a bid to oust a vulnerable Democrat from his position as U.S. representative from New Jersey.
Republican Marine veteran Nick De Gregorio has officially launched a campaign to oust New Jersey Democrat Representative Josh Gottheimer. The Republican challenger is a lifelong resident of Bergen County, New Jersey.
According to analysis from the National Republican Congressional Committee, Gottheimer’s seat is one of many Democrat-held positions that is going to be vulnerable in the 2022 midterm elections.
In a statement announcing his candidacy, De Gregorio stated: “Right now, Washington just isn’t listening to us. Democrats like Josh Gottheimer, led by Nancy Pelosi, are shoving through inflationary spending bills with trillion-dollar price tags that Garden State families pay for in the form of skyrocketing grocery bills, rising energy costs, and pain at the pump.”
He also called out Joe Biden, stating that he “recklessly withdrew from Afghanistan, endangering American lives, and opened the southern border wide open with no regard to the humanitarian crisis he needlessly created.”
De Gregorio isn’t just targeting Gottheimer, he is coming after Democrats in general, saying that they are trying to “remake America in a woke, socialist image that replaces parents with government bureaucrats and robs future generations of the American Dream.”
In a campaign launch video, the Republican challenger spoke about how the events of 9/11 effected him, as he was a 16 year old high school student at the time that the World Trade Center – just 12 miles away from his hometown – was attacked.
“None of us will ever forget that day,” De Gregorio said in the campaign launch video. “We could hear the roar of the fighter jets over our classroom and we could see the thick black smoke coming from the skyline. … That was the day I decided to take action and serve my country in uniform.”
He spent nine years in the Marines, and now he’s planning to serve his country in another way, though he did state: “I didn’t think I’d ever have to serve again.”
“Our country is dangerously off course,” he added. “Washington is leaderless. It’s run by career politicians, radicals, socialists, who care more about their own political agenda than they do about than the people that they’ve sworn an oath to serve.”
In the video, when De Gregorio says the phrase “career politicians,” pictures of Gottheimer are shown.
According to reporting from Fox News:
“Gottheimer, an attorney who worked as a speech writer for then-President Bill Clinton and a political adviser on the John Kerry and Hillary Clinton Democratic presidential campaigns, was first elected to the House in 2016. He represents New Jersey’s 5th Congressional District, which includes parts of suburban Bergen and Passaic counties as well as rural areas in Sussex and Warren counties in the northern part of the state.
The NRCC lists Gottheimer, who won reelection last year by seven points – down from a 13-point victory in 2018 – as one of 70 House Democrats it deems vulnerable in next year’s midterms, when the GOP needs a net gain of just five seats in the 435-member chamber to win back the majority.”
