Twelve new Democrats will join the New Jersey General Assembly at noon today. After ousting five incumbent Republicans in the November general election, Democrats today expand their majority to 57-23, their largest caucus since the 1973 Watergate landslide.
Craig Coughlin of Middlesex County will begin his fifth term as Assembly Speaker and is the longest-serving speaker in New Jersey history. Coughlin was elected after the 2017 election, ousting incumbent Vincent Prieto, and has been re-elected every two years without opposition. Coughlin became speaker one week before Phil Murphy was elected governor.
Louis Greenwald of Camden County will begin his eighth term as Majority Leader; he’s held that post since 2012.
The Class of 2025 includes three women (all first-time elected officials), three Black men, two Hispanic men, one South Asian man, a former federal prosecutor, a Sheriff’s Department officer, a union leader, a county commissioner, and a former mayor. Two of the newcomers had previously lost Assembly races. In total, the next Assembly will have two fewer Black women and two fewer Latinas — and five fewer Republicans.
Incoming members of the Assembly take the oath of office in district order; if there are two new legislators from the same district, they are sworn in in alphabetical order. Coughlin will swear in all lawmakers of their party. Since all twelve freshmen are Democrats, Minority Leader John DiMaio will not administer the oath to any new members today.
Meet the Class of 2025:
Maureen Rowan
(D-Atlantic City)
2nd District
A retired attorney who moved from Philadelphia to Atlantic County about seven years ago gave the state one of the biggest electoral surprises of the year last fall. Assemblywoman-elect Maureen Rowan, a Democrat, defeated Assemblywoman Claire Swift (R-Margate) in the 2nd legislative district last November. Assemblyman Don Guardian (R-Atlantic City), the former mayor of Atlantic City, secured re-election, splitting the 2nd district’s Assembly delegation between Democrats and Republicans.
Rowan becomes the first Democrat to represent the 2nd district since 2022. With Guardian, a former Atlantic City mayor, finishing first, Rowan edged out her own running mate, Pleasantville Councilwoman Joanne Famularo, by 193 votes for the second seat. Swift finished fourth, 874 votes behind Rowan.
This was Rowan’s first bid for public office. She is among a group of Democratic freshmen who have few ties to party leaders.
Swift departs after four years in office; she and Guardian flipped two Democratic seats in 2021.
Anthony Angelozzi
(D-Hammonton)
8th District
After nearly winning a seat in 2023, Assemblyman-elect Anthony Angelozzi, a public school teacher and president of the Hammonton Education Association, will join Democratic Assemblywoman Andrea Katz (D-Chesterfield) from South Jersey’s 8th legislative district.
Angelozzi unseated Assemblyman Michael Torrissi (R-Hammonton) in a narrow four-way rematch of the 2023 race. In 2023, Katz unseated former GOP Assemblyman Brandon Umba, but Angelozzi’s third-place finish meant only Katz would get a ticket to Trenton.
Angelozzi led the pack in the 2025 rematch with 50,168 votes. Katz followed with 50,036, while Torrissi and Umba trailed with 46,262 and 44,300, respectively. The race in the 8th was considered the state’s most competitive and was among the state’s most expensive Assembly races last year.
Torrissi first won election to the Assembly in 2021.
Ed Rodriguez
(D-Elizabeth)
20th District
Assemblyman-elect Ed Rodriguez faced no serious challenge in the general election in the heavily Democratic 20th legislative district; his real challenge came in June’s primary.
Rodriguez, a former Elizabeth planning director, ran with Roselle community activist Walter Wimbush to challenge party-backed leaders in the line-free Democratic primary. The party-backed incumbent, Assemblywoman Annette Quijano (D-Elizabeth), would win renomination with a decent margin, but newcomer Sergio Granados, a Union County commissioner, couldn’t say the same.
Granados replaced Assemblyman Reginald Atkins (D-Roselle), who party leaders worried could face difficulties in the primary election. But Rodriguez defeated Granados anyway by 98 votes; Rodriguez’s $270,000 loan to his own campaign and the quiet support of State Sen. Joe Cryan (D-Union Township) was just enough to get him past the pole. Rodriguez entered the Assembly a wild card.
Atkins, a two-term assemblyman, led primary voting in Roselle, where he was once interim mayor.
Rodriguez begins his tenure as a legislator as the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the City of Elizabeth.
He is the first Hispanic man to represent Elizabeth in the legislature.
Andrew Macurdy
(D-Summit)
21st District
The 21st legislative district elected two Democrats into GOP-held seats in November. The first, Assemblyman-elect Andrew Macurdy, launched himself into the race following President Donald Trump’s 2024 victory, and he didn’t wait for party support to reach top gear.
Macurdy, a former prosecutor, raised $94,000 in less than two months as a candidate and held ties with antiestablishment U.S. Senator Andy Kim. Quickly ginning up support and money in the district, the Democratic county parties eventually offered him their support. An early backer of Kim in 2023, Macurdy may be Kim’s closest ally in the New Jersey Legislature.
Macurdy and his running mate, Vincent Kearney (see below), unseated a pair of GOP incumbents: Assemblywomen Nancy Muñoz (R-Summit) and Michele Matsikoudis (R-New Providence). The incumbents spent north of $940,000 on their re-election bids but fell short by about 8,000 votes.
Macurdy ran a separate campaign from Kearney, the more party-friendly of the two, but he hasn’t wholly shunned the county parties.
Muñoz joined the legislature in 2009 after the death of her husband, Assemblyman Eric Muñoz (R-Summit), and held a visible role as the Assembly GOP’s budget officer. Matsikoudis, a former member of the New Providence Borough Council, took state Sen. Jon Bramnick’s (R-Westfield) Assembly seat in 2021 after defeating several opponents at a Union GOP convention.
Vincent Kearney
(D-Garwood)
21st District
Assemblyman-elect Vincent Kearney, a Garwood councilman, secured the 21st legislative district’s other Assembly seat for Democrats.
Kearney, a Union County Sheriff’s officer, first won his council seat in 2020 by defeating a Republican mired in a scandal over racist Facebook posts.
In 2025, the vast majority of Kearney’s campaign funds came from a leadership PAC aligned operated by a fellow Union County resident: Senate President Nick Scutari. Kearney ran about 1,000 votes behind Macurdy, but still easily cleared his Republican opponents.
Democrats had tried for years to flip the 21st, but the moderate Matsikoudis and Muñoz survived until 2025.
The last assemblyman from Garwood was John McCarthy, a Democrat who was serving as mayor when he got swept into office as part of the 1973 Watergate Democratic tidal wave. McCarthy served one term and did not seek re-election.
Marisa Sweeney
(D-Morristown)
25th District
Legislators occasionally seem to come from nowhere, and such is the case for the 25th legislative district’s Assemblywoman-elect Marisa Sweeney.
A Morristown Planning Board member, nutritionist, and vegan activist, Sweeney unseated Assemblyman Christian Barranco (R-Jefferson), a two-term legislator and former Pompton Lakes councilman.
Sweeney ran on Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop’s slate of antiestablishment Assembly candidates, and she is the sole such candidate to make it to Trenton. Sweeney’s running mate, fellow Democrat for Change Steve Pylypchuk, finished fourth, while GOP Assemblywoman Aura Dunn (R-Mendam) finished second, thus splitting the Assembly delegation.
She led with 49,918 votes. Dunn secured the second seat with 49,088, while Barranco and Pylypchuk finished with 48,125 and 47,723, respectively. Sweeney was aided by Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill’s strong performance in Morris County, which helped her to a five-point win in the district.
Sweeney is the first Democrat to represent this district in the Assembly since Rosemarie Totaro won in 1977.
Chigozie Onyema
(D-Newark)
28th District
Assemblyman-elect Chigozie Onyema, a young attorney and the Newark West Ward Democratic municipal co-chairman, quickly proved himself to be a force.
Onyena defeated incumbent Assemblywoman Garnet Hall (D-Maplewood), who joined Fulop’s ticket after losing party support, in the June primary. Onyema will take office alongside Assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker (D-Newark), the 82-year-old widow of former Assemblyman Donald Kofi Tucker.
Tucker was safe due to her connections with Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was then running a formidable gubernatorial campaign, but the freshman Hall was left as the odd legislator out after Onyema won the endorsement of Essex County Democrats. She lacked the money and allies to win a competitive primary, and she ended up being one of three incumbents to lose a primary bid.
Three Republicans filed to run in the 28th, but they each successfully challenged each other’s petition challenges, and none reached the ballot.
Onyema has shown to have clout: In the waning weeks of the gubernatorial election, he organized a roundtable that included Sherrill, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and Baraka — and he has yet to officially join the Assembly.
Jerry Walker
(D-Jersey City)
31st District
Last year, the 31st district’s incumbents — Assemblyman William Sampson (D-Bayonne) and Assemblywoman Barbara McCann Stamato (D-Jersey City) — found themselves on opposing factions in the primary, making it likely that only one would survive. That ended up being Sampson, whose Hudson County Democratic Organization-backed side would win.
Joining Sampson will be Assemblyman-elect Jerry Walker, a Hudson County Commissioner, community activist and basketball legend who enjoyed the backing of the Hudson Democratic leadership.
McCann Stamato and Bayonne Councilwoman Jacqueline Weimmer ran with Fulop, but their ticket was outmatched in the 31st.
Walker, in fact, led the primary race with 9,067 votes. Sampson’s 7,708 edged out McCann Stamato’s 7,480, while Weimmer trailed just behind with 7,274. Walker’s base in Jersey City’s Wards A and F helped deliver him the win.
He is already eyeing the 31st district State Senate seat now held by Angela McKnight (D-Jersey City).
Ravi Bhalla
(D-Hoboken)
32nd District
Back before the abolition of the county line, the mayors of the 32nd district — which encompasses Hoboken and parts of Jersey City — essentially each held a pick for who would represent the district. In 2023, Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla picked John Allen, his previous chief of staff.
Last year, however, Bhalla decided he wanted to go for the seat, and Allen announced he would not seek re-election. It wouldn’t be easy; Bhalla was one of six candidates to run for the pair of Assembly seats. The other incumbent, Assemblywoman Jessica Ramirez (D-Jersey City), had the backing of Fulop, as Jersey City Councilman Yousef Saleh. The HCDO, meanwhile, tapped Jennie Pu, the director of the Hoboken Public Library and a PTA president and community activist in Jersey City, and Crystal Fonseca, a manager at the Jersey City Department of Public Safety and a former Newark school board member. Bhalla would later join sides with housing policy expert Katie Brennan, making it a three-slate battle in the 32nd.
Progressivism was a given in the 32nd, but Bhalla and Brennan touted their outsider bona fides. They also possessed a hefty amount of cash: they would spend about half-a-million on their collective candidacies. (It was an expensive race; the HCDO would spend more than a million on Pu and Fonseca.)
Brennan and Bhalla would win the nominations with 7,545 and 7,241 votes, respectively. Ramirez (7,008) finished just behind Bhalla, while Pu (5,652), Saleh (5,608), and Fonseca (5,406) rounded out the pack.
Bhalla and Brennan also received an endorsement from Councilman James Solomon, who would go on to handily win the Jersey City mayoral race.
Katie Brennan
(D-Jersey City)
32nd District
The lead vote-getter in the June primary election, Assemblywoman-elect Katie Brennan has proven herself a talented politician.
She’d garnered a strong reputation in Hudson County as a housing policy expert, pushing to build affordable housing in the region for years.
Before 2025, Brennan was known in political circles after she accused Al Alvarez, a staffer on Gov. Phil Murphy’s first gubernatorial campaign, of raping her in 2017, when she was a campaign volunteer. Alvarez later resigned from his state government job, and she settled a lawsuit against the state in 2020; she donated her share to a charity benefiting sexual assault survivors. Her sharp ads focused on housing affordability and her advocacy for victims of sexual assault.
The Brennan/Bhalla victory — one achieved by outsiders without key institutional support or a fundraising advantage — is perhaps the pinnacle result of post-county-line New Jersey. All eyes will be on them as they seek to find their place in a statehouse filled with allies of the machines they fought and defeated.
Larry Wainstein
(D-North Bergen)
33rd District
Assemblyman-elect Larry Wainstein, an Argentinian American businessman, won an Assembly seat in large part due to his prior electoral losses.
Wainstein has challenged North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco’s mayoralty three times, and though he’s fallen short each time, his attempts put him in good standing with Sacco’s now-rival, Union City Mayor and State Sen. Brian Stack. After years of a truce, a feud broke out between Stack and Sacco, two Hudson County bosses. After a prior agreement allowed Sacco to install ally Julio Marenco in the Assembly, Stack decided he wanted one of his own guys in the seat and picked Wainstein. The battle for the 33rd, just one front in the Hudson County war last summer, was on.
Marenco opted not to run for re-election, and Sacco tapped Tony Hector, a landlord and former school board member from North Bergen, and Frank Alonso, a former Republican municipal chairman in Union City and a Trump supporter. But Stack’s Union City operation easily outpaced Sacco and North Bergen, more than doubling their totals in the primary.
Wainstein will take office alongside Assemblyman Gabriel Rodriguez (D-West New York), who will begin his second term.
Kenyatta Stewart
(D-Paterson)
35th District
The death of Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) in 2024 set into motion a series of events that would eventually lead to Newark Corporation Counsel Kenyatta Stewart nabbing an open seat in New Jersey’s 35th legislative district.
Upon Pascrell’s death, then-state Sen. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) was selected to replace him on the ballot, and she later won the congressional race, opening up her coveted state Senate seat. Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter (D-North Haledon) and then-Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly (D-Paterson) sought the seat in a dramatic January special convention, where they tied on the first ballot before Wimberly prevailed by one vote on the second ballot to move to the upper chamber. Local Democrats then picked Paterson City Councilman Al Abdelaziz to succeed Wimberly in the Assembly, and Sumter subsequently decided not to run for re-election.
Stewart, an ally of Baraka, signed up to run, as did former Garfield Councilman Romi Herrera, who ran on Fulop’s ticket. Abdelaziz, meanwhile, sought re-election on party lines alongside Passaic County Commissioner Orlando Cruz.
Baraka’s gubernatorial campaign ultimately dominated in the district in the primary, giving Stewart an opportunity that he took advantage of. Stewart led voting with 7,679, and Abdelaziz nabbed the second nomination with 6,391 votes. Cruz followed just behind with 6,128, while Herrera finished with 3,042.
Stewart and Abdelaziz, the first Palestinian American to serve in the legislature, cruised to re-election in the heavily Democratic district.