Adam Hamawy is set to become the next congressman from New Jersey’s 12th congressional district, the New Jersey Globe projects, after winning a 12-candidate Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing).
Hamawy, a plastic surgeon and U.S. Army veteran, began the year as a political unknown in the 12th district, a diverse and deep-blue seat that stretches from Trenton to Plainfield. But with the support of well-known progressives like Bernie Sanders and heavy spending from an allied super PAC, Hamawy beat back a number of foes with much longer political histories in Central Jersey.
As of 12:05 a.m. and with the vast majority of ballots counted, Hamawy has 28% of the vote while his closest competitor, East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen, has 14%. Trailing further behind are Princeton professor Sam Wang, Somerset County Commissioner Shanel Robinson (D-Franklin), Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson (D-Trenton), and former Working Families Party state director Sue Altman, and, all of whom got between 8% and 10%.
Also in the race were attorney Squire Servance (6%), Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp (5%), technology consultant Sujit Singh (4%), former Energy Department official Jay Vaingankar (3%), former Middlesex Councilman Matt Adams (2%), and fitness studio owner Kyle Little (1% – behind Elijah Dixon, who dropped out of the race in April but still got nearly 2% of the vote).
From the moment that Watson Coleman, an 81-year-old progressive icon in state politics who was the first woman of color to represent New Jersey in Congress, announced her retirement, it was clear that the campaign for the 12th district would be one of the busiest and most interesting in the state.
For the district’s four county parties, the focus was immediately on a quartet of candidates with deep party roots: Reynolds-Jackson in Mercer, Cohen in Middlesex, Robinson in Somerset, and Mapp in Union. (Another Middlesex Democrat with strong ties in Somerset, State Sen. Andrew Zwicker, could have shaken things up, but he chose not to run.)
In a past cycle, once the four parties made their endorsements, that might have been the end of it, and the rest of the race would have been a competition to see which county could turn out the most votes. That’s essentially what happened in 2014, when Watson Coleman won a heavily regionalized primary brawl against two fellow state legislators from other counties.
With the county line gone and state politics in a new era, though, there was an opening for an outsider to shake things up – and that’s exactly what Hamawy did.
Prior to this year, Hamawy’s two claims to fame were helping save Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth’s life as an Army combat surgeon in 2004 and volunteering to provide medical aid in Gaza in 2024. With that remarkable biography at his back, Hamawy quickly became the best-funded Democrat in the field.
He also caught the attention of the national progressive movement, which steadily coalesced behind his campaign in the weeks leading up to the primary. Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lent Hamawy their support, as did a super PAC called American Priorities, which spent close to $1.6 million airing ads introducing Hamawy to voters before any of his foes could get their own campaigns off the ground.
Some more controversial parts of his life story also began surfacing, including Hamawy’s testimony at the 1995 trial of Omar Abdel Rahman, better known as the Blind Sheikh, whom Hamawy had assisted several years earlier. Hamawy said the stories were a desperate effort to smear him, but they were passed around widely in the district.
None of Hamawy’s opponents, though, ever spent any money to drive down Hamawy’s favorables, and most of them declined to even criticize him directly. Neither did the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which decided to steer clear of New Jersey this spring after its heavy spending in a February special primary backfired spectacularly.
The one other candidate who would have liked to claim the same progressive outsider lane was Altman, a longtime rabblerouser in state politics who was the Democratic nominee for the neighboring 7th district two years ago.
Altman, though, wasn’t as left-wing as Hamawy and couldn’t get the same buy-in from national donors and elected officials; she also had to deal with a shadowy group called the Florence Avenue Initiative spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to ding her for still-unknown reasons. A late investment from a national super PAC was, ultimately, too little too late.
Wang, too, evidently proved to have a real base in the district – a district he himself helped draw as an advisor to the 2021 redistricting commission – but it didn’t extend far outside the Princeton area.
Hamawy is essentially guaranteed to win in November against Republican Gregg Mele in a district that leans overwhelmingly towards Democrats. His victory tonight, then, essentially makes him the 12th district’s next congressman, and the first Muslim congressman in New Jersey history – a big victory for the left, and another sign of the New Jersey establishment’s waning influence.
Watson Coleman, who remained officially neutral throughout the primary, congratulated Hamawy – the congresswoman’s guest at President Donald Trump’s 2025 joint address to Congress– on his victory and said he “can count on me” in the months to come.
“President Trump and his MAGA Republican friends do not care about societal norms, they do not care about political niceties and, oftentimes, they do not even care about the law,” Watson Coleman said. “With the primary campaign over, voters have chosen Dr. Hamawy to be that candidate to lead the fight on those frontlines as our Congressman next January.”
