Democrats in Paterson and Clifton are vigorously filling vacant county committee seats in what may be a signal that they are preparing for the possibility that 87-year-old Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-Paterson), who has been hospitalized for most of the past month, doesn’t seek re-election this year.
While Pascrell’s office has not yet commented on the fourteen-term congressman’s medical situation, his age and recent health issues have led to increased speculation that he might change his mind and not run for another term.
Pascrell’s 9th congressional district is roughly split between Passaic and Bergen Counties (with a small part of Hudson County included as well), but Passaic Democrats have a large number of vacant seats in their county party organization. Within the 9th district, Passaic has a total of 366 possible seats and Bergen has 360 possible seats, but as of a few weeks ago, Passaic had just 261 seats filled to Bergen’s 328.
That’s a discrepancy that has come under renewed scrutiny thanks to Pascrell’s medical issues, apparently prompting Passaic Democrats to begin quietly rebuilding their ranks. Democratic municipal committees in Paterson and Clifton have scheduled meetings for August 19 to fill their vacancies, the New Jersey Globe has confirmed.
If Pascrell were to exit the race, Democrats would have an extraordinarily expedited timeline to choose a replacement. The deadline to drop out is August 27, and Democrats would have until August 29 to pick a replacement candidate to face Republican Billy Prempeh, who previously lost to Pascrell in 2020 and 2022 in the Democratic-leaning 9th district.
(Those deadlines aren’t necessarily rock-solid, since New Jersey judges frequently view state election laws as fungible and Democrats could potentially buy some extra time to replace Pascrell on the ballot. The September 21 deadline to mail military and overseas vote-by-mail ballots, however, is immovable.)
The choice of a new nominee would fall to Democratic county committee members in the Passaic, Bergen, and Hudson County portions of the district; there would be no opportunity for voters themselves to weigh in. That means that the few hundred county committee members who show up to a convention in the middle of August, when many of them will likely be on vacation, could effectively decide who the 9th district’s next member of Congress will be, depending on the results of the November general election.
Pascrell faced a challenge from one Democrat, Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah, in the June primary earlier this summer; Khairullah ran in part on empowering “the next generation of leaders,” but Pascrell beat him 76%-24%. Two other Democrats, Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh and Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter (D-North Haledon), mulled campaigns but decided not to run.
The congressman’s health issues began on July 14, when he checked himself into St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Paterson with a fever. After 24 days in the hospital, he was discharged last week and sent to a rehabilitation facility in Essex County, but his condition worsened over the weekend and he is now hospitalized once more at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston.
Some Democrats are concerned that if Pascrell does remain in the race, he might not be able to campaign actively – and that he wouldn’t be ready to return to Washington when the House reorganizes on January 3, 2025, which could matter a huge amount if Congress is once again as closely divided between Democrats and Republicans as it is now.
Should Pascrell win re-election, he would become the oldest House member in the country, and his fifteenth term would end just a few weeks shy of his 90th birthday.