Josh Gottheimer

Of the possibility of impeaching Trump, Gottheimer said, “We need to make sure this is fact-driven and evidence-based. You can’t prejudge something that is so solemn and obviously could have a big historical impact on our country, and you need to keep the country together.”

Gottheimer was reelected in 2018, defeating Republican nominee John McCann with 56% of the vote. While he lost three of the district's four counties, Gottheimer won a 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.

He is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, the New Democrat Coalition and the Climate Solutions Caucus. In the first session of the 115th United States Congress, Gottheimer was ranked the eighth most bipartisan member of the House by the Bipartisan Index, a metric published by The Lugar Center and Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy to assess congressional bipartisanship. In January 2018 Gottheimer was one of six House Democrats who voted with Republicans for a short-term spending bill in an attempt to stave off a federal government shutdown.

Gottheimer said that he thought President Donald Trump "took the appropriate steps" in response to the 2018 situation in Syria. "There's room the president has to deal with a crisis, and I believed, if you looked at the heinous crimes and atrocities committed, poisoning your own children, that demanded a response, and I'm glad he responded."

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. When he was sworn in on January 3, 2017, he became the first Democrat to represent what is now the 5th since 1981 (most of this district was the 7th District prior to the 1980 Census).

In 2017, he was the Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

On April 15, 2017, Gottheimer announced that he would be introducing the "Anti-Moocher Bill," under which states receiving more federal dollars than they contribute to the national treasury would pay their "fair share." "Why should Alabama get our federal tax dollars and get a free ride, while we're left holding the bag with higher property taxes?" he asked. "It just doesn't make sense."

On November 8, 2016, he defeated incumbent Republican Scott Garrett. On November 6, 2018, Gottheimer defeated his Republican challenger John McCann by a double-digit margin.

In the 2016 elections, Gottheimer ran for the House of Representatives in New Jersey's 5th congressional district , a seat held by Republican Scott Garrett. Gottheimer's friend Cory Booker joined him when he officially announced his candidacy. Gottheimer raised funds for his challenge with the help of Clinton allies and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Ben Ray Luján.

His campaign's 2015 financial filings, in which Gottheimer 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. It was the most expensive House race in New Jersey history.

In an August 2015 op-ed for the Times of Israel, Gottheimer explained his inability to support President Obama's Iran deal, saying that it was not "in the best interest of the United States or our allies in the region," mainly because it would "not preclude Iran from developing a nuclear weapon." He challenged what he described as five myths that had "developed around the deal," among them that it would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and that without the deal Iran would "be left to operate without any economic sanctions."

During the campaign, 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." Gottheimer and national Democrats attacked Garrett for his social conservatism, particularly comments he made about openly gay Republican candidates, arguing that these views showed Garrett was too conservative for the district.

In the 116th Congress he is serving on the following committees:

He is also co-author, with Mary Frances Berry, of Power of Words (2011), a book about Barack Obama's speeches. "Even those who don't agree with his policies can recall the first time they heard Obama, the candidate, thunder away to a crowd of adoring listeners," wrote Berry and Gottheimer in their introduction. "Obama's words helped create a movement. Americans hung on his every word."

The 5th had historically been one of the more Republican districts in New Jersey, but redistricting after the 2010 census had made it slightly more Democratic by pushing it further into Bergen County. John McCain carried the old 5th with 54 percent of the vote in 2008, but would have won the new 5th with only 50.5 percent of the vote. In 2012 Mitt Romney won it with 50.9 percent.

Gottheimer is a native of North Caldwell, and he resides in Wyckoff. He is Jewish and a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He married Marla Tusk in 2006. Together, they have two children. Gottheimer has a net worth between $2.3 million and $10.3 million.

Gottheimer graduated from West Essex High School, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School. While at the University of Pennsylvania, he served on the "rapid response team" for Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign. Following Clinton's reelection, Gottheimer attended Pembroke College, Oxford on a Thouron Award, studying toward a DPhil in modern history. He joined the Clinton administration as a speechwriter in 1998, at the age of 23, working in the administration until its end in 2001. While attending law school, Gottheimer 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, and then became executive vice president for Burson-Marsteller. From 2010 to 2012, he worked for the Federal Communications Commission, where he led an initiative related to broadband internet. He then joined Microsoft as a strategist.

Joshua S. Gottheimer (/ˈ ɡ ɒ t h aɪ m ər / ; born March 8, 1975) is an American lawyer, writer, and public policy adviser serving as the U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 5th congressional district . The district includes a swath of exurban and rural territory west of New York City.

Gottheimer was born in Livingston, New Jersey, on March 8, 1975. At the age of 16, Gottheimer served as a United States 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 United States Senate, and Tom Foley, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

He is the editor of Ripples of Hope (2003), a collection of American civil-rights speeches. The text of one of the speeches included in the book, which was delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma on January 25, 1965, was previously unpublished. Gottheimer acquired the text from an Alabama police consultant who had transcribed it from FBI surveillance tapes.