12 takeaways from a new kind of New Jersey primary season

When the county line was struck down a little over two years ago, it promised to bring about a new kind of New Jersey political system, one less deferential to party bosses and more responsive to voters. The 2026 primary elections were the first ones fought entirely within that new reality, from beginning to end.

And what did they produce? A slate of nominees that includes a stridently left-wing new (presumptive) congressman, a blockbuster matchup in the state’s most competitive district, and all sorts of other interesting political characters. Here are 12 takeaways on Tuesday’s primary results.

There is no one takeaway. It would be nice to have a single, clean conclusion to draw from the 2026 elections, but there isn’t one. Progressives, moderates, and conservatives all won some races; the party machine dominated in some places and faltered in others; super PAC spending was decisive for a few candidates and wasted on many.

This is, of course, the future that New Jersey’s political reformers were hoping for when they axed the county line. No longer can party bosses predetermine election outcomes and create a tidy narrative in their favor – a victory for democracy and a headache for armchair pundits.

The left is on a roll. New Jersey Democrats have elected plenty of progressive members of Congress over the years, but 2026 marked the first time that they’ve nominated candidates who are truly of the left – and they did it twice.

And while Analilia Mejia’s victory in the February special primary for the 11th district came as a shock, Adam Hamawy, likely the next congressman from the 12th district, actually went into Tuesday’s primary as the frontrunner. The fact that he managed that as a proud left-winger and Israel critic who had never run for office before would have once been unthinkable in New Jersey politics, and certainly signals a broader shift in the Democratic primary electorate.

Mejia and Hamawy are distinct phenomena, however. The former is a product of the New Jersey progressive movement, one who toiled in the trenches here for years and was rewarded with a local grassroots army when she embarked on her first campaign for office; the latter is far more closely tied to national progressives, earning few local endorsements but winning off a wave of out-of-state supporters and super PAC spending. Whether that makes a meaningful difference on how they vote in Congress remains to be seen.

Democrats were ruthlessly tactical in swing districts. The progressive energy that Democrats have witnessed in safely blue districts was supplanted by an entirely different energy in swing districts: the desire to win at all costs.

In the 7th district, Rebecca Bennett spent months arguing that she was the most electable option against GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr., and national Democrats tacitly signaled that they agreed. Even though Bennett faced three strong, well-funded foes, the results speak for themselves: she won with nearly 46% of the vote, more than 25 points above her nearest rival.

“I want to congratulate the Republican Party for lighting $650,000 on fire over the last two weeks,” Bennett said in her victory speech, referencing a last-minute GOP-linked effort to take her down. “You know what that tells us? They know that I am our best shot at flipping this seat in November.”

Even more striking was the 2nd district, where Zack Mullock got in the race late, had never run for office outside his hometown of Cape May, and raised half as much money as one of his competitors – but still won on the message that he alone could unseat Rep. Jeff Van Drew. Nominating Mullock was probably the pre-condition for Democrats to have any interest in the district at all; now that he’s the nominee, they’ll have to decide whether they want to put their money where their mouth is.

Candidate quality matters. Hamawy, Bennett, and Mullock – as well as Rosie Pino, the Republican nominee for the 9th district – are very different candidates from very different backgrounds, but they all have great stories to tell.

An Army combat medic who helped to save Senator Tammy Duckworth’s life and then volunteered to provide medical aid in Gaza. A former Navy helicopter pilot now raising her two daughters in Central Jersey. A small-town mayor looking to take his bipartisan governance to Congress. A local city councilwoman, cancer survivor, and former Democrat who says that her old party stopped listening to voters like her. Endorsements and money and all the rest have roles to play, but they’ll only click if the candidate can actually connect with voters, and those four did it best this year.

Republican voters weren’t quite as tuned in. Although they were the only ones with a contested statewide election, New Jersey Republicans are currently being outvoted by Democrats by a 70%-30% margin. That’s not a big surprise, and it doesn’t necessarily portend anything for November, but it does show that Republicans aren’t nearly as tuned into this year’s elections as Democrats are.

That was made pretty clear by the party’s two biggest primaries, both of which turned out to be very close contests: Justin Murphy’s victory in the four-way primary for U.S. Senate, and Pino’s narrow defeat of Tiffany Burress for the right to challenge Rep. Nellie Pou. Little money was spent in either race, and most voters simply defaulted to voting for their county party’s endorsed candidate; in the Senate race, even the randomized order of candidate names seemed to give Murphy a potentially decisive boost. (One sign of how low-profile the Republican races were: Pou, running uncontested, won more than twice as many votes as Pino and Burress got combined in their primary.)

The ordering of names on the ballot seemingly played a role in some Democratic races, too. Insurgent county commissioner candidates beat the local party’s pick in Essex, Mercer, and Cumberland Counties – and all three had the good fortune to be listed first.

Incumbents fared fine, but there were some warning signs. Despite nationwide anti-Congress sentiments on both sides of the aisle, only four New Jersey incumbents – Reps. Analilia Mejia, Rob Menendez, Frank Pallone, and LaMonica McIver – faced any primary challengers on Tuesday, and all won by solid margins.

Pallone’s race, though, should be seen as a bit of a cautionary tale. The congressman got 66% of the vote against two opponents, one of whom he defeated 84%-16% just two years ago – maybe because some voters don’t think he’s progressive enough, maybe because they think 74 is too old for a member of Congress to be re-elected, maybe because they just want to see change, any change. Simply being an effective and powerful legislator, as Pallone is, might not be enough to earn voters’ undying loyalty.

Two years after the line’s demise, party endorsements do still matter. Rebecca Bennett invested a huge amount of time and energy in February and March to winning county conventions, succeeding in four out of the 7th district’s six. Given how resounding her victory on Tuesday was – she carried all six counties in the district, including the two where she lost the party endorsement – one could argue that she needn’t have bothered.

But that ignores how important those endorsements were as early validators of Bennett’s campaign: she was a total unknown at this time last year, but winning endorsement after endorsement showed that she was someone to take seriously. And while the county committeemembers who vote at conventions aren’t always representative of the wider electorate, the fact that Bennett was able to convince a bunch of low-level party faithful to vote for her at conventions was a good sign for her ability to do so in a real primary.

In more obscure contests with lower voter awareness, of course, the importance of the party slogan is more obvious. Justin Murphy got 74% of the vote in Gloucester County, where he has no deep political connections, providing him with two-thirds of his 10,000-vote statewide margin – it’s hard to imagine that happening if he didn’t get the local GOP’s endorsement!

Money may matter more, though. Adam Hamawy showed up at 12th district conventions, but unlike Bennett, he made no real effort to win any of them. And he didn’t need to: he simply used his campaign money and allied super PAC to reach voters directly, bypassing the typical from-the-ground-up New Jersey political process.

Party endorsements used to dictate where the political money in New Jersey flowed, essentially making the two halves of the campaign one and the same. That link is now broken, and voters have proven a lot more likely to vote for the candidates who have spent money to reach them than the ones who got endorsements from party bosses they’ve never heard of.

And party organizations need to adjust to that reality. Had the four county parties in the 12th district united behind one candidate, it’s possible that individual could have taken advantage of Hamawy’s vulnerabilities and forced him into a real race.

Instead, they split off and supported their own favorite sons and daughters, candidates who could win their hometowns but had no sway anywhere else, allowing Hamawy to run away with the race essentially uncontested. They were hoping for a rerun of the 2014 campaign, when Watson Coleman beat out two fellow state legislators in a contest fought almost entirely on regional lines, but that’s not how New Jersey primaries work anymore.

The 12th district race is an echo of what happened in the 11th district earlier this year, when each of the district’s three county parties endorsed a different candidate, only for all of them to lose to Mejia. The more the party establishment focuses on its own myopic internecine battles, the more it’ll keep getting swept away by candidates who know how to work outside the system.

What the establishment really needs to stay competitive is a strong party system and strong candidates who are able to capitalize on the benefits they’re given and have a game plan for a districtwide campaign. That happened this year in the 7th district; not so much in the 12th.

Super PACs are a part of life now. It once would have been major news for a super PAC to spend even a few hundred thousand dollars in a New Jersey primary. This year they spent more than $12 million, and everyone just accepted it as part of the new world order.

That spending was critical for Hamawy and helpful for Bennett, but the district that really indicated how normalized it’s become was the 8th. Rob Menendez was going to defeat Mussab Ali regardless – “I don’t need any of the outside groups to beat Mussab,” he said early on in the campaign – but a pair of AI and cryptocurrency industry PACs still spent close to $1 million supporting him, just because they could.

All of this has big implications for 2027. It’s a cliché in New Jersey politics that most party leaders care far more about their local Assembly seat than a race for the U.S. Senate. Well, the former wasn’t on the ballot this year – but it will be next year, and there’s already starting to be a bit of a freak-out about what that will entail.

The fact that party endorsements really only mean anything when backed up with strong candidates and lots of money is foreboding news for party organizations who have long trusted that they can nominate whichever machine cogs they’d like without a fuss. And the looming possibility of super PAC involvement – if any wealthy donor or industry group sees an advantage to becoming a player in New Jersey state politics – could further reshape the legislative campaign cycle.

Insurgent progressives already won a handful of Assembly seats in 2025, and they’re gunning for more in 2027, when both the Assembly and Senate will be up for election; Republicans, too, can trust that some of their incumbents will face more conservative challengers. Whether or not legislators are prepared for that reality is entirely up to them.

But first, buckle up for November. Democrats got the matchup they wanted in Bennett versus Kean, whose extended absence from Washington and the campaign trail has added a whole extra layer to what would have already been a closely watched race. The 2nd and 9th districts are further from the heart of the playing field, but Pou vs. Pino and Van Drew vs. Mullock both promise to be interesting matchups regardless.

New Jersey primary voters have already essentially elected one new representative – Hamawy is near-guaranteed to win his deep-blue district and become the East Coast’s first-ever Muslim congressman – and have set the stage for plenty more fascinating races. The story of the 2026 election is still only halfway done.