SEA ISLE CITY, New Jersey — Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew conceded defeat on Tuesday night, November 3, to Democrat Zack Mullock, the mayor of Cape May, clearing the way for Mullock to represent New Jersey's 2nd Congressional District after one of the biggest upsets of the 2026 midterms. Van Drew, who was seeking a fifth term in Congress, acknowledged Mullock's victory in remarks to supporters even before the Associated Press had called the race. The AP count, updated at 2:20 a.m. on Wednesday, put Mullock at 128,162 votes, 51.1 percent, against 120,190 votes, 47.9 percent, for Van Drew — a margin of 7,972 votes — with 487 of the district's 546 precincts reporting, 89.19 percent of the estimated vote counted. Independent candidate Ramon Mora Jr. was also on the ballot and took most of the remaining vote. Results remain unofficial until the counties canvass them.
Source: Associated Press
Standing before supporters at the Oar House Pub in Sea Isle City, Van Drew confirmed he had already telephoned his opponent. 'I've already conceded about 10 minutes ago, I called Zack Mullock and I conceded his victory. He is and will be our new congressman for the next two years,' he said. 'I wish him the very best. I wish him success. His success is our success.' The New Jersey Globe had reported Mullock leading 52.6 percent to 46.5 percent at 10:10 p.m., and the South Jersey Press projected Mullock the winner the same night.
Source: Cape May Daily / New Jersey Globe
A seat rated safe — until it wasn't
The 2nd District had been considered safely Republican heading into the election, and most forecasters rated it Likely Republican only weeks ago. Van Drew won re-election in 2024 by nearly 17 percentage points, and President Donald Trump carried the district by about 12.6 points the same year. It is the largest congressional district in New Jersey by geography — six counties and 93 towns, covering Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Salem counties along with parts of Gloucester and Ocean counties. It takes in Atlantic City, Vineland and much of the southern Jersey Shore, a mix of casino and resort towns, farming communities and year-round working-class boroughs.
Source: Jersey Vindicator
The county map shows where the upset was built. According to the AP results, Mullock carried Atlantic County by 12.3 percentage points, Cumberland County by 13.4 points and the district's portion of Gloucester County by 26.3 points — margins in Van Drew's own backyard that a shore-county incumbent was not supposed to surrender. A Democrat has not held this seat since Van Drew himself first won it — as a Democrat — in 2018.
Source: Wildwood Video Archive (AP results)
The mayor who beat him
Mullock is a Cape May business owner serving his second term as mayor of the shore town at New Jersey's southern tip. He has spent eight years on the city's governing body, including six as mayor, and previously worked as construction manager for the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May. He made affordability his top campaign priority, supporting Medicare for All, expanded federal incentives for affordable housing, and higher taxes on large corporations and wealthy Americans to fund programs aimed at lowering costs for working families — a message the New Jersey Globe said he rode on the same affordability concerns that powered Tuesday's wider Democratic surge.
Source: Jersey Vindicator
Democrats poured money into the race in the final weeks as the opportunity became clear. The Democratic-aligned super PAC Project 218 committed $1.5 million to television advertising aimed at defeating Van Drew; the New Jersey Globe reported that Governor Mikie Sherrill, through her Mission to Deliver organisation, and South Jersey Democratic powerbroker George E. Norcross III helped raise a late super PAC expenditure of more than $1.5 million, alongside the Laborers' International union. Sherrill also campaigned alongside Mullock in Cape May County on Saturday, three days before the election, as Democrats made a final push to unseat him.
Source: Jersey Vindicator / New Jersey Globe
Van Drew: the Democrat who became Trump's man in New Jersey
Van Drew, 73, a retired dentist from Dennis Township, has spent more than three decades in South Jersey politics — mayor of Dennis Township, Cape May County freeholder, and a member of both the New Jersey General Assembly and the state Senate before winning his congressional seat in 2018. A former Democrat, he switched to the Republican Party in 2019 after breaking with his party over efforts to impeach Trump; at a White House meeting announcing the decision he pledged his 'undying support' to the president and became one of Trump's most prominent allies in New Jersey. In Congress he defended the administration's immigration enforcement, including conditions at Delaney Hall, the privately operated immigration detention centre in Newark: he chaired a congressional hearing in July that disputed reports of mistreatment there, saying his visit showed detainees received adequate food, medical care and recreation, an account challenged at the same hearing by Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, who testified about detainees reporting medical neglect and unsafe food.
Source: Jersey Vindicator
After his defeat, Van Drew attributed the loss to a national political wave rather than dissatisfaction with his own performance, in remarks to a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. 'There's no Watergate issue, but it's kind of like Watergate, where it's larger than life, and just swept people along with it that weren't necessarily doing anything wrong or did a bad job,' he said. He said he had no regrets about switching parties, describing himself as more Republican than he had ever been a Democrat, emphasised his friendship with Trump, and compared his defeat to that of former Republican Rep. Charles Sandman, a Cape May County congressman who lost his seat in the 1974 post-Watergate Democratic wave after remaining loyal to President Richard Nixon.
Source: Jersey Vindicator (Philadelphia Inquirer remarks)
New Jersey is one of the heartlands of the Punjabi and South Asian diaspora in the United States, and its congressional delegation votes on the immigration enforcement, health-care and cost-of-living questions those families follow most closely. Van Drew was a prominent defender of the Newark Delaney Hall detention centre's conditions; his defeat, on the same night Democrats also flipped the state's 7th District, leaves Rep. Chris Smith as the only Republican in New Jersey's 12-member House delegation. For truckers, the 2nd District's corridors — the Garden State Parkway, the Atlantic City Expressway and Routes 40 and 322 — are working shore and freight routes whose federal funding and toll politics now have a new voice in Washington.
What happens next
The Associated Press had still not formally called the race in its latest update, and New Jersey counties will continue counting late-arriving mail-in and provisional ballots before each county canvasses and certifies its result, so the certified margin may move even though the incumbent's concession settles the outcome politically. With Van Drew and Rep. Tom Kean Jr. both beaten on Tuesday, the New Jersey Globe noted that Rep. Chris Smith will be the only Republican representing New Jersey in the House. Mullock is due to be sworn in with the new Congress on January 3, 2027, joining a House that Democrats won nationally on Tuesday night — and a first-term mayor-turned-congressman will immediately face the question every upset winner faces: whether a wave election's promises on affordability can survive contact with governing.