Bill Morrissey, a lifelong Republican, did his homework before voting on Tuesday in New Jersey, as he always does.
As he read the ballot, he saw a familiar name: Representative Thomas Kean Jr., a Republican who lives half a mile away from his house in Westfield, N.J., and has been missing from Congress for nearly three months with little explanation.
The secrecy surrounding Mr. Kean’s absence from Congress, Mr. Morrissey said, was troubling. “What are they trying to hide?” he said.
But he pushed the box next to Mr. Kean’s name on the touch-screen anyway.
“I could have skipped it,” said Mr. Morrissey, 75, noting that Mr. Kean was running unopposed in the primary. “But it wouldn’t have made a difference. That’s the problem.”
Helen Raczkowski, a self-described “card-carrying Republican” from a neighboring town, Mountainside, made a different choice. She left the box blank in protest. She said she was concerned about Mr. Kean’s ability to do his job and what she sees as his willingness to “kowtow” to President Trump.
“Look at the price of gas. Look at the price of food,” Ms. Raczkowski said. “And all of this money going to a war with what end?”
The votes cast by Mr. Morrissey and Ms. Raczkowski in New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District will not matter much. Mr. Kean, 57, is assured of winning the nomination to compete in November against the winner of Tuesday’s four-person Democratic primary.
But interviews with two dozen Republican voters in Union, Morris and Somerset Counties on Tuesday and during the state’s six-day early voting window hint at fissures within the party and the headwinds that Mr. Kean is likely to face as he seeks a third term.
Mr. Kean has been absent from Congress since the middle of March as he recovers from what his aides have described only as a “personal medical condition.” Hours before polls closed, his spokesman released a statement attributed to the congressman in which Mr. Kean vowed to eventually be “completely transparent” as to the nature of his condition.
“I look forward to sharing my experience with the public,” he said.
But he seemed to suggest that it could be several more weeks before he returned to public life.
“Right now I am focused on my recovery,” he said, “and under the advice of health care professionals I will transition from virtual work to in-person work within a matter of weeks.”
Earlier on Tuesday, in a perhaps encouraging sign for Mr. Kean’s supporters — who have suggested that he has enough time before November to make up lost ground — several Republican voters said they weren’t even aware that he had been absent from Congress.
A few said that all that mattered to them was President Trump’s endorsement, which he reiterated Monday night on social media. “We have our faith in the president,” said Ann Sharp, who lives in Bedminster, not far from Mr. Trump’s golf club. “He was dealt a bad hand and now he’s getting us out of it.”
Others, however, said they saw Mr. Kean, the scion of a prominent Republican family in New Jersey, as insufficiently MAGA.
“Did I have a choice?” Patrick Esposito, a retired Marine from Roxbury, asked after voting somewhat grudgingly for Mr. Kean, whom he sees as “one of those liberal Republicans.”
“Everybody’s running against Trump,” he added. “I don’t know why they would do that.”
Sue Grubb, 70, of Bedminster, said she was “dissatisfied with government in general” but hopeful that Mr. Kean would “step up to the plate and not just vote along party lines.”
Neither she nor her husband, Timothy Grubb, had been aware that Mr. Kean was facing a medical issue that had sidelined him from Congress, but they seemed skeptical of the long absence.
“Medical issues have never gotten in the way of my ability to get work done,” said Mr. Grubb, 72, who just had surgery on his knees.
But he said that revelation would not affect his “willingness to vote” for Mr. Kean, who he noted is under a lot of pressure as he runs in one of the country’s most competitive midterm elections.
“A lot of out-of-state money is pouring in to get him out,” Mr. Grubb said. “He has a target on his back.”
That target was precisely what drove Ed McGuire of Scotch Plains to the polls on Saturday, during early voting. Mr. McGuire, 65, said he was having surgery on Tuesday and did not want to miss the chance to vote for the entire Republican ticket.
Mr. McGuire was once a Democrat. But he said he was now fully aligned with Mr. Trump and his efforts to restore “law and order.”
“He’s the man,” Mr. McGuire said. “Crazy in a good way.”
He is less familiar with Mr. Kean, but recalled his father, a former New Jersey governor with the same name, as a “great man.”
“I’ve been hearing he hasn’t been around,” Mr. McGuire said of the congressman, acknowledging that it might seem odd to vote for Mr. Kean so enthusiastically anyway.
“I’d rather have an empty seat,” Mr. McGuire said, “than a Democrat.”
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
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