Billy Prempeh will challenge Nellie Pou once again in Trump-won 9th district

Fourth time’s the charm?

Billy Prempeh, a U.S. Air Force veteran and unapologetic conservative who has come successively closer to winning a seat in Congress the last three election cycles, will take on Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) once again next year.

His entrance gives Republicans their first – but potentially not their last – candidate for the Paterson-based 9th congressional district, which was shockingly carried by President Donald Trump in last year’s election. And it sets up a potentially bruising battle against Pou, a first-term congresswoman and former state legislator who was chosen last summer to replace the late Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson).

“Some people say I’m a little too MAGA, a little too Trump,” Prempeh told the New Jersey Globe. “But the truth is, that same mentality and that same position is the reason why our district got redder. Being moderate and appealing to the left and appealing to the BLMs and all this other nonsense is not going to help us win this race. I’m unapologetically America First, and people love this message.”

Prempeh, who struggled to raise money and attention for his first three campaigns, may end up having to get through a Republican primary against a more establishment-oriented challenger. But he’s fostered a robust base of supporters in Bergen and Passaic Counties, and he said it would be a drastic mistake for state or national Republicans to try to put forward an alternate candidate.

“The last thing that Republicans in CD-9 want to see is some random lukewarm establishment guy with $7 million popping up out of nowhere, trying to take me out in a primary,” Prempeh said. “I can say with certainty, if they do that, they’re going to lose District 9, and Nellie Pou will be the next congresswoman again.”

The 35-year-old Prempeh, raised in Paterson as the son of Ghanaian immigrants, first ran for political office in 2020, when he took on Pascrell and lost in a 66% to 32% landslide. Undaunted, Prempeh returned to run again in 2022, this time in a district that had been redrawn to be quite a bit more Republican – and he came far closer than expected, only losing to Pascrell 55% to 44%.

Prempeh’s attempt at a third bout against Pascrell in 2024 was upended when, just a few days before the deadline to remove his name from the ballot, Pascrell died at the age of 87. 9th district Democrats hastily chose Pou, a member of the State Senate representing Paterson, as Pascrell’s replacement on the general election ballot, kicking off a two-month sprint of a general election campaign.

Having raised only around $50,000 for his campaign, and running in a seat that Joe Biden had carried 59% to 40% in 2020, Prempeh was given little chance of winning by most observers, and both parties ignored the race. But as Trump surged in Hispanic areas around the country, the 9th district – which is plurality Hispanic – lurched far to the right, and Pou only beat Prempeh 51% to 46% as Trump was narrowly carrying her seat.

It’s a loss that Prempeh still has not conceded, claiming “inconsistencies” in the race, though he said he has no intention of challenging the results. (Prempeh similarly was among the Republicans who did not acknowledge Biden’s 2020 victory, and he was present at the January 6, 2021 protest in Washington, though he says he never entered the Capitol or behaved violently.) And he’s spent much of the time since November 2024 still behaving like a candidate on social media, though he said he only committed to running in recent weeks. 

Building on his close 2024 loss – and convincing Republican higher-ups to at last invest in the district – is Prempeh’s goal for 2026.

“We’re going to continue to do what we were doing already: continue to knock doors, continue to speak with people, and continue to build name recognition,” Prempeh said. “We’ve also been trying to make alliances in Washington D.C. to help us get over the edge… Our goal in 2025 is to raise [over $100,000] and continue to build from that into 2026.”

Indeed, both parties have already taken much more interest this year than they have in any general election in the district since 1996, when Pascrell unseated Rep. Bill Martini (R-Clifton) to win his first term in Congress. The National Republican Campaign Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund have both ratcheted up attacks on Pou, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added Pou to their frontline members list yesterday, an admission that her first re-election campaign could be competitive.

And Prempeh claimed that Pou, who has amassed a largely liberal voting record in the House during her first two months in office, has only made things worse for herself.

“I think she’s conducted herself like a disaster,” Prempeh said of Pou. “I knew that once she got into Washington, D.C., she was going to jump with the Progressive Caucus and she was going to try to find a life raft as quickly as possible with those allies.”

Prempeh specifically took issue with Pou’s opposition to GOP bills on illegal immigration and transgender girls in sports; he said that her votes against the Laken Riley Act and the Agent Raul Gonzalez Officer Safety Act, two bills targeting undocumented immigrants accused of crimes or fleeing Border Patrol, made him say, “You know what, I’ve got to go in and defeat this woman.”

As for his own policies, Prempeh is staking out the same stridently conservative lane that he’s been running in for the last five years: pro-Trump, anti-illegal immigration, anti-“woke,” and anti-foreign aid. It’s a message that he says is resonating in the 9th district, where Democrats have been steadily losing ground for years.

“I want to see more money going to the American people, and not going overseas,” Prempeh said. “There are people that I’ve met – several Democrats, in fact – who have switched to independent, because a lot of them had no idea that our government was spending this much money and getting involved in these foreign entanglements that nobody asked for.”

Despite those longer-term trends, though, Prempeh probably starts off his campaign as the underdog against Pou. Midterm elections usually go poorly for the party in power, and Trump remains a divisive figure in New Jersey and elsewhere; as detailed by Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an average of only three House members from the opposition party have lost re-election each midterm cycle during the last 50 years, and many of those lost due to outside factors like redistricting or scandal.

And to reach a general election against Pou at all, Prempeh will need to head off any potential Republican challengers who believe they’d stand a better chance of flipping the district red. Prempeh faces a critical task of convincing Republican donors and party leaders, both in New Jersey and in Washington, that he’s up to the task, no other recruits necessary.

“D.C., they’ve been avoidant of me for quite some time,” Prempeh said. “But a lot of my supporters, and people who just found out about me in 2024 – they’re on my side. They don’t want another candidate.”

Prempeh’s message to those donors and leaders in the coming months? “Get on board.”