Andrew Yang, the self-described disruptor whose 2020 presidential run turned wonkery into a phenomenon, waded into the fierce Democratic primary in New Jersey’s Seventh District on Thursday, endorsing Brian Varela as the kind of “builder” who might actually mean it when he says he wants to burn the city limits down and rebuild the zoning code.
Yang, who rose from obscurity to outlast half the Democratic establishment on a diet of universal basic income and dad jokes, said Varela is cut from similar cloth.
“Brian brings people together around problem-solving, democratic reform, and a politics that puts people over party,” Yang said in a statement. “He’s a builder with the courage to challenge the status quo.”
It is the sort of language Yang has wielded since leaving the Democratic Party in 2021 to form the Forward Party, a third-way vehicle he pilots with former Republican Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.
And it arrives in a district where the status quo is embodied by Rep. Tom Kean Jr., the Republican incumbent who has already banked nearly $2 million and just steered $6.3 million in federal cash back home for police stations, senior centers, and a rehabilitated landfill.
Varela, a 37-year-old son of Colombian immigrants who built a business Inc. magazine noticed, now finds himself at the crowded center of a primary that is shaping up to be the most expensive House fight in New Jersey history.
One of six Democrats seeking to unseat Rep. Tom Kean Jr., Varela has already self-funded heavily and trails rivals in traditional donor cash, but his coalition is quietly assembling a different kind of ledger.
The Yang endorsement locks in a national avatar of anti-polarization politics.
It follows the backing of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a progressive who praised Varela’s willingness to “stand up against the terror of Trump’s ICE agents” — rhetoric that sits uneasily alongside Yang’s libertarian-leaning data sets but reflects the ideological straddle Varela is attempting. The Latino Victory Fund is also on board.
Varela, for his part, talks like a man who has read the Yang playbook. He promises to ban congressional stock trading, overturn Citizens United, and expand voting rights. He says he wants to deliver “real economic opportunity for working families who feel left behind by both parties.”
It is a line that could have been lifted from the 2020 Yang Gang hymnal.
But the Seventh District is not a podcast studio. Kean has held the seat since 2022 and has the institutional muscle of a political dynasty.
The Democratic field includes Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy pilot backed by VoteVets who has raised $1.4 million, and Tina Shah, a physician who pulled in $413,000 last quarter alone and carries the scent of the Obama-Biden laboratory.
Varela leads the field in cash on hand, his campaign says, but the money came with an asterisk: more than half of his early haul was his own.
Still, recent polling commissioned by the National Republican Congressional Committee shows Varela with surprising traction.
Among Democrats who were read candidate biographies, his support jumped to 13 percent, leading the field. In a head-to-head with Bennett, he led 42–25. The GOP called him a “far-left radical” and warned that he is the pick of the activist base.
Yang, who once campaigned on making the government “run like software,” is now attempting to build something stickier. He has been in touch with Elon Musk about the billionaire’s fledgling America Party, offering to recruit candidates who want to challenge the two-party system. In New Mexico this week, the Forward Party submitted signatures to qualify as a minor party, endorsing a Democrat for governor and a former prosecutor for the state House.
It is a slow, grinding approach. But Yang has always banked on the long game.
Varela now carries more than 50 endorsements from local mayors, council members, and county chairs scattered across Hunterdon, Morris, and Warren counties. It is the kind of granular politicking that wins convention votes. Whether it wins a primary in a district that narrowly went for Trump in 2024 is the question.
“Andrew inspired millions of Americans to believe that our politics can be about solutions instead of division,” Varela said Thursday.
The primary is June 2. The general election will feature Kean, who has proven difficult to dislodge. Yang is betting Varela is the one to do it.
The arithmetic is uncertain. But the theory of the case is clear: the candidate who looks least like the machinery might be the one to break it.