Tina Shah, a practicing physician and former Obama and Biden administration appointee, today announced she would seek the Democratic nomination for Congress in New Jersey’s 7th district in a bid to unseat two-term Rep. Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) in one of the most competitive districts in the nation.

“I’m running for Congress because America is in critical condition and enough is enough,” Shah said.  “As a physician I took an oath to first do no harm, but when I go to work in the Intensive Care Unit, I’m up against a system that is designed to make patients broke and sicker, prioritize insurance companies’ profits above all else, and burn out a workforce trying to save lives.”

Shah joins a large field of Democrats who want to take on Kean: former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett; former Biden administration official Michael Roth; businessman Brian Varela; and former Summit Councilman Greg Vartan.

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes), now the Hunterdon County Democratic chairman, will not seek a rematch with Kean, who ousted him in 2022.  Instead, he is eyeing a run in the next-door 11th district next year if Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) is elected governor.

Her campaign begins at the start of the third fundraising quarter, giving her three months to show her ability to raise money as Democrats mull who they want to take on Kean in a district that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and narrowly for Donald Trump in 2024.

“We’re in an unprecedented time.  We’ve gutted medical research.  We’ve gutted things that keep people alive,” Shah told the New Jersey Globe.  “I’m a doctor and I’m going to prosecute the case against Tom Kean, Jr.  No one else can do this.”

She tagged Kean as a career politician, claiming he’s failed to lower healthcare costs or expand access to care.

“Instead, he’s dodging his constituents while casting the deciding vote to gut Medicaid and attacking access to essential care, including abortion, in New Jersey,” she said.

She told a story of a recent emergency room patient who had a life-threatening abscess in his spinal cord that she needed to remove.  Shah said he was homeless and would require months of care that Medicaid would pay for.

“It’s hitting home very hard for me,” Shah said.  “No one deserves to go into debt.”

A New Jersey native, Shah is triple board-certified in internal medicine, pulmonology, and critical care medicine, practicing at RWJ Barnabas Health, and often appears on national television as a healthcare expert.  Four years ago, she became a senior advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General and developed a national strategy to address worker burnout and departures in health care in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the Obama administration, Shah served as a White House Fellow and a special advisor to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, becoming the first director of Clinician Wellbeing.

Shah slammed Kean for supporting Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., “who, with no medical training, are actively gutting lifesaving medical research and putting vaccine deniers in charge of our vaccine system.”

“If we keep going down this road, there’s only one outcome: people will get hurt. What we do next is critical,” Shah stated.  “I’m running for Congress to fix what is fundamentally broken and stand up for my patients, my neighbors, my community, and New Jersey.”

Shah has already assembled a campaign team and secured financial and community support.

Her strategist is Mollie Binotto, who ran Sherrill’s first congressional campaign in 2018 when she flipped a seat that had been in Republican hands for 34 years.  Binotto managed Gov. Phil Murphy’s 2021 re-election bid and worked on Herb Conaway’s 2024 House race.

Rachel Berlowe Binder will be Shah’s campaign manager.  She has run congressional and local races in Pennsylvania, as well as on campaigns in New York, Michigan, Iowa, and North Carolina.

Shah received a medical degree from Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University and a master’s degree in public health from Harvard University.  She also served as chief medical officer of an AI company that “cut red tape for doctors and nurses, freeing them to focus on patients and outcomes instead of paperwork.”

Kean, the son of former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, served as minority leader of the New Jersey State Senate before he unseated Malinowski in 2022 by three percentage points.  He held the seat by five points in 2024.

“My goal is to demonstrate that I am the right candidate, and I intend to outperform everybody on day one,” she said.  “People know I can beat Kean.”