Josh Gottheimer

Joshua S. Gottheimer (born March 8, 1975) is an American attorney, writer, and public policy adviser who has served as the U.S. representative for NJ's 5th congressional district since 2017.

The district stretches along the northern border of the state from New York City's densely populated metropolitan suburbs in Bergen County northwest through exurban and rural territory in northern Passaic and Sussex Counties.

A member of the Democratic Party, Gottheimer was a speechwriter for Bill Clinton and served as an adviser to the presidential campaigns of Wesley Clark, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton.

He has also worked for Burson Cohn & Wolfe, the Federal Communications Commission, Ford Motor Company, and Microsoft.

Gottheimer was born in Livingston, New Jersey, on March 8, 1975.

Gottheimer is the son of a preschool teacher and a small business owner.

Growing up, Gottheimer stocked shelves at his father's store.

At the age of 16, Gottheimer served as a U.S. Senate page for Frank Lautenberg, a senator from New Jersey.

Through high school and college, Gottheimer held internships with C-SPAN, the Secretary of the Senate, and Tom Foley, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gottheimer graduated from West Essex High School, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School.

He was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.

While at Penn, he served on the "rapid response team" for Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign.

After Clinton's reelection, Gottheimer attended Pembroke College, Oxford, on a Thouron Award, studying toward a Ph.D. in modern history.

Gottheimer joined the Clinton administration as a speechwriter in 1998, at age 23, working in the administration until its end in 2001.

While attending law school, he worked as an adviser for Wesley Clark's 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, and Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.

After the 2004 election, Gottheimer worked for the Ford Motor Company, then became an executive vice president at Burson Cohn & Wolfe.

From 2010 to 2012, he worked for the Federal Communications Commission, where he led an initiative related to broadband internet.

He subsequently became a strategist at Microsoft.

The 5th had historically been one of New Jersey's more Republican districts, but redistricting after the 2010 census made it slightly more Democratic by pushing it further into Bergen County.

The race was characterized by the media as "intensely personal", "marked by negative advertising", and "one of the region’s most bitter political races".

Demonstratively, Garrett criticized Gottheimer "...for taking a donation from Ibrahim Al-Rashid, the son of a Saudi multimillionaire who pleaded guilty in 2014 to simple assault of his estranged wife"; Garrett also ran ads exaggerating a withdrawn civil claim against Gottheimer that alleged he intimidated and threatened a neighbor, in 2007, at his Washington, D.C., apartment building; and the end of the campaign season saw a flyer circulating that depicted Gottheimer with devil horns, which was interpreted as antisemitic, and that the Garrett team denounced but suggested may have been a "political ploy".

Meanwhile, Gottheimer falsely accused Garrett of being investigated for legislating in favor of payday loans after receiving campaign contributions from the industry, and national Democrats consistently portrayed Garrett as a bigot, arguing that, particularly due to comments he made against openly gay Republican candidates and his opposition to same-sex marriage, Garrett was too socially conservative for the district.

The Associated Press summarized the policy distinctions of the race as Gottheimer pitching, "...himself as a fiscal conservative who is socially liberal, promising not to raise taxes while also pledging to fight for LGBT and abortion rights...[and claiming] Garrett forced local residents to pay higher taxes by not fighting for federal grants," whereas Garrett, "...touted his record of battling to shrink government and uphold the Constitution, and warned that Gottheimer was another big-spending Democrat who would ultimately force higher taxes".

Gottheimer defeated Garrett, primarily on the strength of a strong showing in the district's share of Bergen County, home to over three-fourths of the district's voters.

He won Bergen by over 33,800 votes, more than double his overall margin of almost 14,900 votes.

It was the most expensive House race in New Jersey history.

Gottheimer's campaign's 2015 financial filings, which reported raising around $1 million through the end of September, showed that "about one dollar in six came directly from fellow alumni of the Clinton White House and campaigns...or from major donors and employees of consulting firms tied closely to the Clintons."

Among those who donated were three former Clinton press secretaries and two former Clinton chiefs of staff.

Gottheimer also received significant support from super PACs, including the National Association of Realtors' PAC, which spent $1.3 million to promote him via television ads, and the House Majority PAC, which allocated $1.6 million to anti-Garrett ads.

In the 2016 elections, Gottheimer ran for the House of Representatives in NJ's 5th congressional district, a seat held by Republican Scott Garrett.

Cory Booker joined him when he officially announced his candidacy.

Gottheimer attracted more attention than previous challengers to Garrett due to his fundraising ability and ties to the Clintons; he was eventually nicknamed the "Human Fundraising Machine".

The New York Times ran a prominent article about his Clinton ties, describing him as a protégé of the Clintons and noting that Bill and Chelsea Clinton had appeared at a recent Manhattan fundraiser for Gottheimer, at which Chelsea introduced him as "something of a family member".

He was sworn in on January 3, 2017– the first Democrat to represent the district since 1981, when it was numbered the 7th District (it has been the 5th since 1983).

In Gottheimer's first three months in office (in 2017) he raised $752,000, setting a New Jersey record for funds raised by a freshman congressman in this timeframe; during the second quarter of the 2018 cycle Gottheimer raised $1,500,000.

The race was characterized mostly by McCann painting Gottheimer as an establishment Democrat (especially one connected to Nancy Pelosi) while Gottheimer defended himself as bipartisan and moderate, citing his work with local elected officials, votes for Republican legislation such as Kate's Law, and a "common ground" oriented approach to Donald Trump and fixing the Affordable Care Act.

The race became particularly inflamed when a Gottheimer campaign sign displayed by a supporter on their property had a swastika and the phrase "vote MAGA" spray painted on it; McCann was criticized for connecting the vandalism to, "Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters [spreading] messages of hate" whereas Gottheimer was called out for fundraising off the incident and having subsequently denied doing so.

Gottheimer faced John McCann, a former Cresskill councilman, in his first race for re-election in 2018.

Gottheimer was reelected in 2018, defeating John McCann with 56% of the vote.

While he lost three of the district's four counties, Gottheimer won his second term on the strength of carrying the district's share of Bergen County by over 51,000 votes, more than his overall margin of 41,300 votes.