The emerging progressive coalition in Hudson County that won two Assembly races this year and that’s favored to soon secure the Jersey City mayor’s office may have an even bigger target in next year’s Democratic primaries: Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City).
Menendez, a two-term congressman, already survived a serious primary challenge last year against Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, leveraging his support from the 8th congressional district’s large Hispanic population and from the Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO) to keep his seat. It was the first major political test of Menendez’s career, and he won handily.
But the Hudson County progressive bloc that strongly supported Bhalla has since been emboldened by its wins this year and by the death of the county line, the ballot design system that once propped up incumbents and other party-backed candidates. In light of those wins, Menendez may end up facing a contested primary once again.
One potential challenger is Mussab Ali, a former Jersey City board of education president who came in fourth place in this month’s Jersey City mayoral race. Ali, a 28-year-old cancer survivor who would be New Jersey’s first Muslim member of Congress, is considering a campaign for the district, the New Jersey Globe has learned.
If Ali or another prominent local politician were to challenge Menendez, it could spin out into another highly competitive primary in a state that’s already looking at a busy 2026 primary schedule. The 2024 race between Menendez and Bhalla became a nationally watched affair amid the corruption trial of Menendez’s father, now-former Senator Bob Menendez, with millions of dollars pouring into both campaigns.
Asked about the prospect of another primary race, Menendez said he’s prepared to run on his record and earn the support of 8th district voters once again.
“When you look at the work that we’re doing, I’m really proud of the record that we’re going to run for re-election on, and I’m proud of the support that I’ll have in that effort,” Menendez said.
In late 2021, when Rep. Albio Sires (D-West New York) announced his retirement from the deep-blue, majority-Hispanic 8th district, Democrats quickly coalesced behind Menendez to succeed him. Menendez had never held elected office at the time – his lone public role was as a Port Authority commissioner – but his father was the most powerful man in Hudson County politics, and Menendez overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary against only nominal opposition.
When the elder Menendez was indicted in 2023, however, things quickly went south for the first-term congressman, and Bhalla stepped in to run against him. For a time, it looked like the Menendez name might doom him, but he ran an aggressive campaign that was able to keep most local party leaders and mayors on his side, and he ended up winning 52%-38% after a brutal race.
Many of the same issues that plagued Menendez during that campaign are still potential liabilities. The Menendez name could remain an albatross (the elder Menendez was convicted last summer and began his jail term earlier this year); the county line, which was temporarily suspended during last year’s Democratic primaries, is now thoroughly dead; and local progressives continue to take issue with some of Menendez’s policy positions, especially on Israel.
The progressive bloc in Hudson County politics is also heading into 2026 with more power than they’ve ever had. Bhalla and his running mate, Katie Brennan, were elected to the State Assembly this year from a Jersey City and Hoboken district after defeating two different slates of candidates affiliated with local power brokers. Anti-machine Councilman James Solomon appears likely to win next month’s mayoral runoff in Jersey City and bring a large number of his council running mates with him, while another progressive ally, Emily Jabbour, is locked in a competitive runoff for mayor of Hoboken.
In a congressional district that’s sharply divided between diverse, gentrified areas of Jersey City and Hoboken and poorer, more Latino areas in Newark, Elizabeth, and northern Hudson County, the anti-HCDO bloc can additionally point to some voter turnout trends in their favor. In the 2023 state Democratic primary, the 33rd legislative district in northern Hudson County cast more than twice as many votes as the 32nd district in Hoboken and Jersey City; in this year’s primary, the gap shrank to around three-to-two; and in this year’s general election, the two districts cast nearly the same number of votes.
But Menendez, too, has grown stronger in many ways since his last primary. He won a competitive internal fight earlier this year to join the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which put him at the center of the Democratic fight against Medicaid cuts, and is a lower-ranking member of both House Democratic leadership and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. (The CHC’s political arm spent heavily to re-elect Menendez in 2024.)
Menendez also pointed to his vocal opposition to the Trump administration’s deportation policies, which has increased his stature substantially. The congressman has been making oversight visits to immigrant detention facilities for years, but his visit to the Delaney Hall facility in May, which resulted in the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and assault charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), broke into national news.
And, of course, the anti-HCDO forces now murmuring about defeating Menendez already tried to do so once, and failed. Menendez’s win in 2024 can be attributed to a lot of factors: the congressman’s own sharp and well-funded campaign, his status as the only Hispanic candidate in a largely Hispanic district, and his strong support from local bosses, chief among them Union City Mayor/State Sen. Brian Stack.
A critical moment in the 2024 campaign came when Stack and other HCDO leaders, who had been waffling about whether to stay with Menendez after his father’s indictment, decided that they would in fact support Menendez’s re-election campaign, a move that was partially motivated by their desire to defeat Bhalla. Menendez will once again need to make sure that he keeps those same party leaders on his side if a competitive primary develops next year.
The anti-Menendez forces, meanwhile, will have to keep themselves united if they want a chance of winning. This month has provided a good test run of that unity: after Solomon advanced to the Jersey City mayoral runoff with former Gov. Jim McGreevey, he got two of his former rivals – Ali and Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea – to support him, and Brennan and Bhalla have endorsed him as well.
Ali, for his part, was first elected to the Jersey City school board in 2017 when he was a 20-year-old student at Rutgers, making him one of the youngest elected officials in the state. He became the board’s president in 2021, but decided not to run for re-election that year while undergoing treatment for Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He later went on to get a law degree from Harvard.
A Pakistani immigrant who came to Jersey City at the age of 3, Ali’s run for mayor drew some comparisons to Zohran Mamdani, a fellow left-wing Muslim Democrat from across the Hudson River. But running against several well-connected and better-funded candidates, Ali ended up coming in fourth place, getting 18% of the vote to Solomon’s 29%, McGreevey’s 25%, and O’Dea’s 21%.