Nellie Pou, Trump-district congresswoman

When Democrats chose State Sen. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) as a last-minute replacement for the late Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) three months ago, they did so under the assumption that Pou, a longtime legislator not known for making waves, would be able to have a relatively peaceful tenure in Congress. The 9th congressional district seat that Pascrell left behind had a long track record of supporting Democrats, and Pou was expected to win the seat over Republican Billy Prempeh without much fuss.

That’s not how it ended up working out.

According to results that are set to be finalized today, Donald Trump carried the 9th district by 1.2 percentage points, 49.1% to 47.9% – a genuinely shocking result that represents a 20-point swing against Democrats compared to 2020, when Joe Biden won the Passaic and Bergen County-based district 59% to 40%. Fueled by massive gains among Hispanic voters, Trump won some towns, like Fairview, Kearny, and Passaic, that hadn’t gone red in decades.

Pou, meanwhile, won her first term over Prempeh by a 4.9-point margin, 50.8% to 45.9%. She did better than Kamala Harris across the district, especially in heavily-Hispanic towns – Pou is the first Latina congresswoman in New Jersey history – but the race was still far closer than anticipated. (Both the New Jersey Globe and the Cook Political Report had rated it as “Solid Democrat.”)

Pou now enters Washington as something neither she nor anyone else expected her to be: a swing-district congresswoman. And with that title comes a host of political challenges that Pou will now have to navigate as she settles into her seat and prepares for her first re-election campaign in 2026.

“If you had asked somebody five years ago if this was something they could see on the horizon, nobody would have said this,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. But looking at Democrats’ recent problems among Hispanic voters and in Passaic County, Rasmussen noted, “you can start to see how it happened – you can say, nobody did anything about these things, and so these problems just crashed on the Democrats.”

Pou’s path to Congress was unusual, to say the least.

Pascrell initially planned on running for re-election this year, and he won the Democratic primary easily against a Gaza-focused challenger. But in July, he was hospitalized with a fever, and he never got better; he died on August 21 at the age of 87.

The 14-term congressman’s death set off a frenzied process to succeed him, since Democrats only had eight days to pick a new 9th district nominee under the state election calendar. After an extremely truncated campaign, local leaders decided to support Pou, who functioned as a compromise between the Bergen and Passaic wings of the local Democratic Party and who, as a Hispanic woman, was seen as a good fit for the plurality-Hispanic district.

One consideration that was not a major factor in choosing Pou: campaigning ability. Pou is a plenty accomplished politician, but the 68-year-old state senator had represented the same safely Democratic seat in the state legislature for nearly three decades, and hadn’t had to seriously work to be re-elected in years. Democrats nominated her to replace Pascrell with the idea that the 9th district race would not be one that required much effort to win on their part or on hers.

They also saw little threat from Prempeh, who had been the Republican nominee for the same seat in 2022 and 2020. Prempeh was an avid campaigner and had held Pascrell to an 11-point win in 2022, but he also struggled to raise money (he only reported raising around $40,000 this cycle) and held very conservative views on many issues; both state and national Republicans ignored his campaign entirely, directing their efforts instead to help out 7th district Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield).

But as it turned out, Democrats and Republicans alike were entirely unprepared for the GOP wave in districts like the 9th. Trump did a full 10 percentage points better this year in New Jersey than he did in 2020, and many of his gains were concentrated among Hispanic and middle-class white voters – voters that make up most of the 9th district electorate.

Every single town in the 9th district swung towards Trump, and most did so by double digits. The city of Passaic voted for Trump by 6.5 points after voting for Biden by 26 points in 2020; Paterson went for Harris by 27 points, a dismal result compared to Biden’s 61-point win four years ago.

The district is also home to smaller but still important Palestinian and Orthodox Jewish communities, and Harris struggled there, too. She won Paterson’s 6th ward, the heart of the city’s Palestinian American community, just 51% to 41% – far down from prior results in the ward – and she lost Passaic’s 3rd ward, home to many Orthodox Jews, 65% to 33%.

Pou said that she didn’t have any definitive answers yet on what caused Trump’s surge in the 9th district and across New Jersey, but she admitted that it was clear her constituents are calling out for change.

“I think the voters will always want change, and we need to listen to that,” she told the New Jersey Globe. “The voters sent a message, and I’m listening to them loud and clear… I think the economy was one of the loudest messages, and I heard it. I heard it.”

Especially in the district’s Hispanic areas, voters were evidently listening to what Pou had to say. The congresswoman-elect did six points better than Harris districtwide and won eight towns that Harris lost, including Clifton and the city of Passaic, the second and third-largest communities in the district.

Some of that is likely attributable to Trump voters splitting their tickets for Pou, who has represented parts of the district since 1997 and who was aided by armies of local Democrats boosting her campaign in Passaic and Bergen Counties. Some of it also came from Trump voters simply declining to vote downballot; Pou received 7,000 fewer votes than Harris, but Prempeh received 23,000 fewer votes than Trump.

That bodes well for Pou in 2026, since she’s proven herself capable of ourtunning bad headwinds and since many of the lower-propensity voters who pulled the lever for Trump this year may not come out in a midterm environment. But simply by virtue of representing a Trump-won district, there will inevitably be a target on Pou’s back for as long as she remains in Congress.

“She’s going to have call time every day,” Rasmussen said. “She’s going to be dialing for dollars. She is going to be on Republicans’ target list. We know that the parties will start their targeting with, ‘Which districts did the president win where we have a Democratic member?’ She will not have a chance to breathe. She is in re-elect mode already.”

That will be a very new experience for Pou, who was able to win this race without much money or attention being paid to her campaign but who will not be afforded that same luxury in 2026. As anyone in Congress will attest, being a House member of any stripe is intense, but being a swing-district House member who has to scrap for re-election every two years is another beast entirely.

Pou will also have to figure out how to handle the conservative legislation that’s put in front of her in a Republican-controlled Congress and with Trump back in the White House. During his own 28-year tenure in Washington, Pascrell was a committed liberal and a strident Trump critic, frequently taking to social media to blast the former and soon-to-be president – but that may no longer be a tenable stance in a Trump-won district, and Pou will have to decide just how moderate her voting record should be.

Asked whether her own policy positions and attitude in Congress will be affected by Trump’s evident popularity among her constituents, Pou – an incoming member of both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the more moderate New Democrat Coalition – said she would approach things one issue at a time.

“I take every issue individually, and I think my record indicates that in terms of what I did in the Senate,” she said. “I will be paying very close attention to all of whatever I do. Clearly, we have a lot to learn and listen to what’s going to happen here.”

Republicans, too, have dilemmas of their own that they need to face as they begin working to flip the 9th district in 2026. Prempeh sounds like he plans on running again – and if he does, there may be no one who can stop him, given his close loss this year and his popularity among the conservative rank-and-file in Passaic and Bergen Counties.

“Over the past six years, we have created a movement, growing our base and building the only viable coalition that can bring conservative change to New Jersey’s 9th District,” Prempeh said in a statement posted four days after the election, when he had not yet conceded his loss. “Whether the final count delivers us a win this cycle or if we need to push forward to 2026, I am the only candidate who has proven capable of shifting this district in favor of conservative values [–] we’re not backing down.”

But Trump’s win in the 9th district means that other Republicans, perhaps including some local elected officials, will surely take a look at the race as well. And even if Prempeh is nominated once again, he’ll be in the spotlight in a way he’s never been before, which will put the pressure on him to raise more money and tamp down some of his right-wing rhetoric.

“I think the conversation has to begin with Prempeh,” Rasmussen said. “He’s earned that right. He’s toiled away here for more than just a single cycle. I don’t think he can be overlooked. And if he is open to what it’s going to take to be a targeted race, and what it’s going to take to raise money – if he can put himself in the mainstream, then the conversation has to begin with him.”

If this all seems premature, it is; Pou won’t even take office for another month. But that’s the life of a swing-district politician: there’s never truly a moment to rest, and every dollar you raise and every vote you take has to be done with your next campaign in mind.

Nellie Pou didn’t expect that to be her life, but it’s the life that 9th district voters have thrust her into.