NJ-9 independent tossed from ballot

Perennial candidate Diomedes Minaya has been disqualified from the ballot in New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District after failing to submit enough valid signatures.

Minaya filed 350 signatures, but Administrative Law Judge Andrew Baron found 104 of them invalid because the signers were not registered voters or did not sign with their full names. As a result, Minaya missed the 250-signature threshold required to qualify for the ballot by four signatures.

A resident of Passaic, Minaya has run for local office 12 times. This year, running as an independent under the slogan “God First,” he mounted his first campaign for federal office.

At the start of a six-hour hearing that began at 10 AM, Minaya told those present, “Whatever the decision is, God bless all of you.”

After Baron ruled against him, Minaya remained gracious.

“I also want to thank Mr. Kenny,” he said, referring to Republican operative Kennith Gonzalez, the campaign manager for Clifton Councilwoman Rosie Pino’s congressional campaign and the challenger to Minaya’s petition.

The 9th District, drawn at the beginning of the decade as a safely Democratic seat, unexpectedly voted for President Donald Trump by one percentage point in 2024 after backing President Joe Biden by 20 points in 2020.

That shift has given Republicans hope of flipping the district. The challenge to Minaya’s petition was likely aimed at ensuring a head-to-head contest between freshman Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) and Pino, who won last week’s Republican primary.

Gonzalez is back in court tomorrow morning to challenge the nominating petition of Terrisa Bukovinac, an anti-abortion activist who filed as an independent in NJ-9 with a “Save Our Babies” slogan despite her Ellendale, Tennessee, residency. That’s legal, as long as she establishes residency in New Jersey by Election Day.

Bukovinac filed with 459 signatures.

In 2024, Bukovinac, a self-described “progressive pro-life atheist,” ran in the New Jersey Democratic presidential primary against Joe Biden; she finished third with 2.7%, behind “Uncommitted” with 9%.

Her husband, Randall Terry, a prominent anti-abortion activist and former presidential candidate, filed to run for Congress in New Jersey’s 7th district.  He withdrew today.