Bernie Sanders endorsed Dr. Adam Hamawy for Congress in NJ’s 12th District

The man who patched up combat wounds in Iraq, pulled victims from the dust of the World Trade Center, and refused to leave a Gaza hospital under Israeli bombardment now wants to suture a political system he calls “a cesspool of corruption.”

And on Wednesday, he got the blessing of the left’s most enduring icon.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont and two-time presidential candidate, endorsed Dr. Adam Hamawy for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th District. The announcement injected immediate national energy into a Democratic primary race that Hamawy had already framed as a flat-out revolt against the status quo.

“Dr. Hamawy has saved lives with courage and honor — as a 9/11 first responder, a combat trauma surgeon in Iraq, a volunteer in hospitals under bombardment in Gaza, and in emergency rooms in New Jersey,” Sanders said in a statement. “Status quo politics is broken. We need bold leaders like him in Congress.”

Hamawy, 57, is a Princeton-based plastic and reconstructive surgeon who spent nearly two decades in the U.S. Army, including a tour in Iraq. He was honored last year as Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman’s guest at the State of the Union address after he led the evacuation of American citizens and legal residents from Gaza, refusing safe passage until all members of his medical team were guaranteed exit.

His campaign launch this year was not subtle.

“ICE is terrorizing communities and murdering American citizens in broad daylight,” Hamawy said in a statement accompanying Sanders’ endorsement. “Families are living in constant fear that they’ll be kidnapped or killed. Our government is sinking deeper into a cesspool of corruption, and trampling on our civil rights to silence us and bully us into submission.”

He has called for abolishing ICE, breaking up pharmacy benefit managers, canceling all $220 billion in U.S. medical debt, imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices, expanding the court, and impeaching former President Donald Trump and his cabinet.

“This is not about Republicans or Democrats,” Hamawy said. “Both parties have failed to address the problems facing our families — affordability, healthcare, education, and so much more.”

His district, which snakes from Princeton through New Brunswick and into parts of Middlesex, Somerset, and Union counties, is currently represented by Watson Coleman, a Democrat first elected in 2014. She has not yet announced whether she will seek reelection. Her office did not return a request for comment Wednesday.

Hamawy is running as an outsider despite deep establishment ties — a contradiction he leans into. He is a small-business owner, a humanitarian who has worked in more than a dozen war and disaster zones, and a father. But he is also a former military officer who voted for Republicans and Democrats in the past. He describes himself as furious at a system where “people are doing everything right and still falling behind.”

His platform reads like a catalog of progressive ambitions: Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, free public college and trade schools, a wealth tax, and the dismantling of the Electoral College. He refuses corporate PAC money.

But what sets him apart from other left-wing candidates is the resume. The 9/11 response. The combat surgery. The Gaza mission last year, when Israel seized the Rafah crossing and Hamawy stayed behind while others scrambled for evacuation. He has called that decision simple: He would not leave until his colleagues, including green-card holders, were safe.

“I’m running to fund healthcare, not bombs, to abolish ICE, and to unrig our economy,” Hamawy said.

Sanders, who is 83 and not seeking reelection in 2030, has become selective with endorsements since his presidential campaigns ended. He typically deploys his name and fundraising network only for candidates he views as carrying a particular brand of anti-corporate, working-class populism. Hamawy fits that mold.

But the question in New Jersey’s 12th is whether voters want a bomb-thrower or a workhorse. The district leans heavily Democratic, and the primary will likely decide the general election. Watson Coleman, if she runs, will bring seniority, relationships, and a reliably progressive voting record. Hamawy brings combat boots, a scalpel, and the words “abolish ICE.”

In a country where political language has grown so heated that even common ground feels like surrender, Hamawy’s pitch is simple and inflammatory by design: The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as intended. It just wasn’t built for you.

“I refuse to accept this as normal,” he said.

Whether New Jersey agrees may determine not just one House seat but whether Sanders’ brand of unsparing, anti-establishment progressivism still has a future beyond the man who built it.