Joseph Belnome, a former union bricklayer and now the Belleville building inspector, will run for Congress in New Jersey’s 11th district, becoming the first Republican candidate to say they will take on three-term Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair).
Belnome, who calls himself “Jersey Joe,” made his first bid for public office last year as the GOP nominee for State Senate in the 34th district, an unwinnable race for Republicans. Democrat Britnee Timberlake defeated him by 12,802 votes, 76%-24%.
“I’m going to throw my name in the race,” Belnome said. “If NJ GOP is going to run somebody, that’s fine. I’ll primary that person, let the best man win, and let’s see if I have some momentum from this state Senate campaign that I did.”
In the municipalities that overlap NJ-11, Belnome won 46% in Belleville, 24% in Bloomfield, 28% in Glen Ridge, and 46% in Nutley against Timberlake. He raised $11,297, including a $5,300 personal loan to his campaign. Belnome had run as a write-in candidate in the 2023 GOP primary and won with 110 votes.
Raised in Newark as the son of Italian immigrants, Belnome was a journeyman in the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Union of New Jersey Local 4 and is a Republican county committeeman in Belleville.
Belnome is a supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, calling on other candidates to “drop out of the race and stop wasting everybody’s time.”
A former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, Sherrill flipped the 11th district congressional seat in 2018 after being held for 34 years by two Republicans.
Redistricting in 2022 exchanged heavily Democratic towns in Sussex and Passaic counties for Democratic strongholds in Essex, including Maplewood, Millburn, and South Orange. Joe Biden would have carried the new lines by 17 points. In 2022, Gov. Phil Murphy, who struggled in the well-off suburbs where Biden did best, won the 11th district by four points.
Sherrill defeated Republican Paul DeGroot, a former Assistant Passaic County Prosecutor, by 51,484 votes, a 19-point victory.