Ever since President Donald Trump shockingly carried New Jersey’s Paterson-based 9th congressional district last fall, Republicans have been on the hunt for a candidate against Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) in 2026. Today, an intriguing new candidate emerged to take her on.
Rosemary “Rosie” Pino, who has served on the city council in Clifton – the district’s second-largest city – since 2019, announced this morning that she will run against Pou, who won a close race last year to succeed the late Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), in next year’s midterm elections.
“I never planned on running for Congress, but I’ve watched government grow more and more disconnected from the people it’s supposed to serve,” Pino said in a video announcing her candidacy. “I believe in this district. I believe in us. And I know that together, we can lead with courage, protect the American Dream, and deliver real results.”
Pino is the second Republican candidate to enter the race; already running is Air Force veteran Billy Prempeh, who was previously the GOP nominee for the seat in 2020, 2022, and 2024.
In her campaign announcement, Pino made it clear that despite the 9th district’s historically Democratic roots, she – like a slight majority of the district’s voters in last year’s presidential election – stands firmly with Trump’s agenda.
“I am running for Congress to work with President Trump to restore the American Dream by providing individuals new opportunities,” she said in a press release. “I will work to pass laws that lower the cost of living and unleash economic growth that benefits working-class New Jerseyans. I will fight to keep our borders secure and support law enforcement to ensure that we get dangerous criminals off our streets and keep our neighborhoods safe.”
The daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants, the 46-year-old Pino was born in the Bronx and raised in New Jersey, primarily by her single mother. Upon graduating from Rutgers with a degree in finance, she worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a bank examiner, and has taught English as a Second Language and continuing education classes for the last decade. Pino also said she is a cancer survivor and is raising a blended family of 11 children with her husband.
In 2013, Pino won a seat on the local board of education in Clifton, a large, diverse suburb of around 90,000 people near Paterson. Pino served two terms on the school board before running for the Clifton City Council in 2018, ultimately winning a seat against several incumbent councilmen. (Clifton local elections obey unusual rules: all candidates compete on one ballot for seven nonpartisan seats, with the top vote-getter typically becoming mayor. Pino came in sixth place out of 13 candidates in her first campaign, and in fifth place out of 17 in her second.)
After being re-elected to the council in 2022, Pino launched her first campaign for higher office in 2023, running for the Passaic County Clerk’s office; she lost to incumbent Danielle Ireland-Imhof by a 53%-46% margin.
As a Hispanic woman with electoral experience in a large, competitive town, Pino has a compelling profile for Republicans looking to flip the 9th district, which is plurality-Hispanic and has a large working-class population. The district was long solidly Democratic turf, but amid far-reaching GOP gains in New Jersey last year, it flipped into Trump’s column by a 49% to 48% margin.
That put Pou, a former state senator who was nominated to succeed Pascrell last summer in a hurried process, at the top of Republicans’ target lists for 2026. The congresswoman has spent the first six months of her congressional tenure coming under repeated attack by national Republicans over every vote she takes, and Democrats have also made it clear that protecting her will be a priority.
“In Washington, Nellie Pou has put partisan politics over working across the aisle to get things done,” Pino said today. “She refuses to work with President Trump, voted for the largest tax increase in American history, voted against border security, and has left our community without an effective voice in Congress.”
Whether Pino will be the GOP’s choice to take Pou on, though, is still up in the air. Prempeh is not beloved by every local party leader in the 9th district and has historically had enormous troubles with fundraising, but he also has a devoted following among conservatives, and he can make the argument that he came closer than any other Republican this century to flipping the seat. (He lost to Pou 51% to 46% last year, underperforming Trump by around 23,000 votes.)
And other candidates could still enter the race as well. The GOP has struggled with candidate recruitment in the 9th district for years, but Trump’s win in the district may make more Republicans interested in running, especially if Pino fails to consolidate money and party support early on.
Prempeh, for his part, has said in the past that he won’t be deterred by any other candidate, regardless of how much local or national support they get.
“D.C., they’ve been avoidant of me for quite some time,” Prempeh said in March. “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.”