As 12th district race enters final days, can anyone stop Adam Hamawy?

When a new super PAC called American Priorities announced that it would spend $2 million supporting a first-time candidate named Adam Hamawy in New Jersey’s 12th congressional district, it was seen as the opening salvo in what promised to be a brutal, bloody super PAC war. Would the American Israel Public Affairs Committee come in to sink the fiercely pro-Palestine Hamawy? Would cryptocurrency or AI groups see an opportunity in the district?

Instead, with just a few days left to go until the Democratic primary, Hamawy has remained essentially untouched, and there’s an increasing consensus that he’s the most likely person to be the district’s next congressman.

Of course, that’s an oversimplification of what has been and remains a complex, multifaceted race to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing). Eleven other Democrats are running for the diverse, deep-blue seat, many of whom have lots of campaign cash to spend or pre-existing political bases to build on; Hamawy also has vulnerabilities, thanks to his left-wing politics and his past associations, that could be exploited.

But if not Hamawy, then who?

“The rest of the field is so divided that even if there were a viable Stop Hamawy movement, there’s no coalescing behind one candidate,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “A divided field against a unified frontrunner is always what you want.”

Hamawy, a plastic surgeon and U.S. Army veteran best known prior to this year for helping to save now-Senator Tammy Duckworth’s life back in 2004, said that while American Priorities’ spending – and his own fundraising, the strongest in the field – has been important to his rise, he’s also tried to make his campaign better than any other at reaching voters directly.

“From day one, we’ve been reaching out to organizations, communities, going to events, knocking on doors,” Hamawy said. “You can’t have a one-legged campaign.”

In the news, some less-than-ideal stories have trickled out over the last month: the conservative Washington Free Beacon has reported on Hamawy’s past ties to the so-called “Blind Sheikh,” who was later prosecuted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Jewish Insider added that Hamawy had volunteered for a medical aid organization in Bosnia that was later discovered to be an Al-Qaeda front. Even if they haven’t made as much of an impact in the local media, the stories have been making the rounds in the district.

But Hamawy said that outside the “right-wing media,” he hasn’t heard anything from voters in the district related to the Blind Sheikh or anything of that sort. “I think this is a frantic attempt in the last days to discredit all the work that I’ve done, and it’s garbage,” he said.

There hasn’t been any negative paid media against Hamawy sent by his opponents or by super PACs, and when speaking with the New Jersey Globe, several other 12th district Democrats declined to criticize him with any level of specificity. The one exception has been Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp, who called Hamawy a “radical extremist” – but Mapp is not seen as one of Hamawy’s top competitors for the nomination.

“I definitely sense that his opponents are feeling a real risk of backlash,” Rasmussen said. “All the candidates are hoping somebody else will do it. They’re hoping somebody else in the field will take the swipe. They’re hoping somebody will start spending some money to drive the message against Hamawy, to raise concerns. But they don’t view it as their job themselves.”

Hamawy has also gotten a boost in recent weeks from national left-wing luminaries like Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who waded into New Jersey politics (for the second time this year) to endorse his campaign. Earlier this week, Hamawy got the backing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, a more mainstream progressive endorsement that signals support in D.C. that goes surprisingly deep for a first-time candidate.

That endorsement likely wouldn’t have happened without the tacit approval of Watson Coleman, a CPC member. Watson Coleman, who has remained (mostly) neutral in the race to succeed her, said she had “several conversations” with CPC PAC and ultimately told them they should endorse how they saw fit.

And while Hamawy’s rise could have been blunted by spending from AIPAC – which undoubtedly objects to his anti-Israel stances – or another outside group, such an effort never materialized.

That’s perhaps because the rest of the field was too splintered to provide a clear alternative, and perhaps because AIPAC got spooked after its spending backfired so conspicuously in the 11th district earlier this year. The group considered supporting Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson or East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen against Hamawy, but decided against it; AIPAC and its affiliated super PAC, the United Democracy Project, did not respond to a request for comment on the race.

If Hamawy doesn’t prevail on Tuesday, the candidate best-positioned to win instead may be Sue Altman, a progressive activist who ran two years ago for the neighboring 7th district. Altman’s 2024 campaign in a swing seat probably made her the best-known candidate in the race at the start of the campaign, and she’s since gotten a late boost from a Democratic super PAC called Project 218. (She’s also campaigned in recent weeks with an unusual collection of former statewide officeholders: ex-Gov. Jon Corzine, ex-Senator Bob Torricelli, and ex-Senator Bill Bradley.)

Altman acknowledged that Hamawy has built up some advantages – Hamawy’s campaign released an internal poll earlier this month showing him at 19% and all of his foes at 12% or less – but said that he will ultimately hit a ceiling of support, whereas her base is far broader.

“Probably two-thirds of ballots are still out there, and are still voters we can get,” Altman said. “You’re looking at what I think will be a perfect storm for late decisions made by voters. And I feel like we are in a very good position to capitalize on that.”

Altman’s lane was undoubtedly made more complicated by Hamawy’s arrival; she’s a progressive outsider who spent years fighting against the New Jersey machine, but Hamawy has run clearly to her left, swiping away a lot of the grassroots support she might have otherwise counted on. The CPC PAC endorsement was a particularly stark example of that: the caucus supported her during her 7th district campaign two years ago, but offered a more left-wing alternative this year, they left her behind.

She’s also the only candidate to have taken any substantial incoming fire, courtesy of a heavily shrouded group called the Florence Avenue Initiative. The group, which has not reported any donors or made its motives in the race clear, has spent more than $260,000 on mailers and ads claiming Altman is a carpetbagger and a disloyal Democrat.

Still, Altman said she’s positioned to do well all across the district where others cannot: “I’m confident in my record. I think people want a fighter against Trump, and they also want somebody with experience in the work – and that’s what I offer.”

Neither Hamawy or Altman pursued the typical strategy of success in New Jersey politics, which is to build up a regional political base and get support from county organizations. Instead, the 12th district’s four county parties have split their support among four hometown contenders: Reynolds-Jackson, Cohen, Mapp, and Somerset County Commissioner Shanel Robinson.

Mapp’s base in the city of Plainfield is likely too small for him to make a dent in the field, but the others all have serious political operations behind them. Even if they don’t have as much money – and Cohen has, in fact, raised lots of money – they argue that voters already know them and trust in their experience to get the job done.

“What they’re promising to do in Congress, I have successfully done,” Robinson said. “I’m not just talking about what I’m going to do. I have a proven track record.”

Robinson has been more willing than some of her foes to take shots at Hamawy, saying that his campaign has relied on “soundbites” rather than on real solutions.

“He’s a fellow veteran, and I appreciate his service to this country,” Robinson said. “But service to your country does not necessarily equate to being a leader or an authority to represent the people of District 12 in Congress.”

There’s also an added demographic dynamic to the race: the 12th district has large white, Black, Latino, Asian, Jewish, and Muslim populations, and with the exception of Latinos, all of those groups are also represented in the Democratic field. Could candidates like Reynolds-Jackson, Robinson, or Squire Servance overperform among Black voters interested in preserving the district’s Black representation? What about Cohen among Jewish voters, or Jay Vaingankar or Sam Wang among Asian American voters?

Reynolds-Jackson, who represents the Assembly district that Watson Coleman once held, insisted that voters will ultimately look past things like D.C. endorsements and super PAC spending.

“We’ve seen elections that have all of those endorsements, and the people came out and they chose another candidate,” Reynolds-Jackson said. “I don’t really believe in those endorsements. I don’t believe in the PACs. I believe in the voters who are going to come out and vote for me.”

“I am a grassroots person,” she added. “I’ve been in the community. I don’t have to build my accomplishments off of someone else’s back.”

If all of the dynamics of the race – a progressive outsider (or two), a splintered party machine, and a super PAC spending spree – sound familiar, they have hearty echoes in the 11th district, which held a special Democratic primary earlier this year. That race was won by now-Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-Glen Ridge), who leveraged a progressive platform, a formidable get-out-the-vote operation, and a feuding set of opponents to win in an upset.

Hamawy’s coalition is looking strikingly similar to Mejia’s, and he’s got more money behind him than she ever did. But other 12th district Democrats can point to the advantages they have that Mejia’s opponents did not, and there’s no guarantee the Mejia strategy will be cleanly replicable.

The biggest lesson from both races, though, is that New Jersey elections are now wide open in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. No longer will backroom deals or long-standing alliances alone be enough to elect a member of Congress; from now on, when there’s an open House seat, prepare for bedlam.

“The 12th is an illustration of what happens when people decide they’re going to run, and then they make their case directly to the people,” Watson Coleman said. “I think it’s a healthy thing.”