N.J. Republicans may leave House seat uncontested for first time since 2008

For nearly two decades, neither major party has left a U.S. House or Senate seat in New Jersey uncontested, an impressive streak that’s given voters the chance to vote for their preferred party even in unwinnable races. That streak may break this year.

The filing deadline came and went yesterday with no Republicans submitting petitions in the 8th district, the majority-Hispanic North Jersey district held by Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City). Local Republicans did have a candidate in the race – Jashan Lucas, a social worker from Elizabeth – but thanks to what Hudson GOP Chair Jose Arango deemed a “blunder,” Lucas didn’t collect the requisite 500 signatures to make the ballot.

Republicans do still have another option to make the general election ballot: convincing at least 500 GOP voters to write in Lucas or another candidate in the June primary. That’s how Republicans prevented Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) from winning uncontested in 2020 after a filing snafu; GOP candidate Christian Onuoha won 508 write-in votes, well over the 200 he needed at the time (and just barely over the 500 threshold now required under new ballot access laws).

Arango indicated that’s an option he and his fellow 8th district chairs are considering: “I would love to do that,” he said. “I believe it’s something that can be done.”

If a write-in effort isn’t successful, however, it would be the first time since 2008 that a major party didn’t contest a New Jersey congressional seat. That year, Rep. Donald Payne Sr. (D-Newark) faced only a Socialist Workers Party candidate in his bid for re-election; Payne and Rep. Rob Andrews (D-Haddon Heights) had won with no opponents at all two years earlier.

Even if Republicans had successfully gotten a candidate on the ballot, it would not have changed the final outcome in the solidly Democratic 8th district, which has historically voted for Democrats in landslides.

But it’s a symbolic blow for Republicans who had hoped to build on President Donald Trump’s enormous gains in heavily Hispanic areas like Hudson County. The 8th district shifted 21 points towards Republicans between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, one of the largest swings anywhere in the country; just two years later, they may not have a candidate for the district at all.

Menendez doesn’t have a free pass to re-election, though, since former Jersey City school board president Mussab Ali is challenging him in the Democratic primary. One independent candidate, Richard Barilla, has also filed to run.