Today, June 2, is primary election day in New Jersey as 52 seek nods for Congress

Tuesday, June 2, is primary election day in New Jersey, and for those who have had their fill of the same old, the ballot offers a few points of interest. Four Republicans are vying for the long-shot right to unseat Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, while a much larger and more telling drama is unfolding down the ballot.

Some 38 Democrats and 14 Republicans are competing for nods to fill 12 House seats from the Garden State, and in a few pockets of the state, a genuine political contest is underway.

In the 7th Congressional District, businessman Brian Varela, the son of Colombian immigrants, is positioning himself as the race’s most progressive candidate. He is running on a pledge to “dismantle Trump’s ICE, stop for-profit detention centers, [and] end forever wars”.

He has not been shy about who he is running against, saying, “They are working, paying taxes, raising kids, and contributing to our communities. They do not deserve to live in fear of being snatched up on the way to work”.

Varela’s rise has been backed by key endorsements from progressive groups and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who has praised him for building a “wide-tent coalition”.

Farther south, in the 2nd District, Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock made an entry into the Democratic primary to challenge Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew. Mullock, a two-term mayor who has avoided raising taxes while overseeing ambitious local projects, is positioning himself as a bipartisan problem-solver.

“They see the leadership that’s coming from the mayor’s office in Cape May, and they see all of the good things that we’ve done,” said Mullock. “They see the bipartisanship, and they know that that’s exactly what we need in our country right now”. His campaign has the early backing of state Sen. Jim Beach, a top lieutenant to powerful South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross.

The most crowded and contentious race may be in the 12th District, where 12 Democrats are vying to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman.

The frontrunner, according to internal polls and prediction markets, is Adam Hamawy, a physician and U.S. Army veteran best known for helping to save Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s life in 2004.

Hamawy, who has been endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Tammy Duckworth, and a super PAC that has spent $2 million, is running on the most progressive platform in the district.

While some of his opponents have gone as far as to unfairly characterize Hamawy as a terrorist connected to Al-Qaeda, the humanitarian and surgeon was a lieutenant colonel in the US Army credited with saving Duckworth’s life after her helicopter was shot down in Iraq.

The most offensive Islamophobic attacks against Hamawy have come from two AIPAC-backed contenders, East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen and former Republican Sue Altman, who was an unsuccessful Democratic nominee in the 7th District in 2024.

One recent poll showed him with 19 percent of the vote, compared to 12 percent for his nearest rival.

In the 8th District, a primary challenge has been launched against two-term incumbent Rep. Rob Menendez, whose father is a disgraced former US Senator confined in federal prison serving an 11–year sentence for bribery and acting as a foreign agent.

His opponent, former Jersey City Board of Education president Mussab Ali, has raised over $183,000 since entering the race and is campaigning as an alternative to corporate-driven politics.

Ali is running on a platform that includes supporting Medicare for All, abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and banning military aid to Israel.

“New Jerseyans are tired of the same old corporate-driven politics that voters have become all too familiar with,” Ali said in a statement. Menendez has brushed off the challenge, calling Ali a “perennial candidate”.

And in the 6th District, progressive activist John Hsu is once again challenging Rep. Frank Pallone, a 73-year-old incumbent who has served in Congress since 1987.

Hsu, a former Bernie Sanders delegate, is running on a message of supporting Palestine, fighting for Medicare for All, and expanding affordability by taking on private equity and big monopolies. Last time he ran, he garnered only 16% of the vote, but he is hoping this year’s more robust campaign will give him a better chance.

It is worth noting that two of the leading Democrats in the 7th and 12th district races, Rebecca Bennett and Sue Altman, did not always find themselves on the left side of the political divide.

Bennett, a former Navy pilot and apparent frontrunner in the 7th, spent her early years as a registered Republican. Her campaign says she grew up in a conservative Texas family and remained apolitical until Donald Trump’s rise in 2016, at which point she switched her registration to Democratic.

Altman grew up in a Republican family and was herself once a registered Republican before becoming a Democrat. “I’ve worked as an organizer, I’ve worked as someone who’s pushed the Democratic Party,” Altman said when announcing her campaign. “This is a fairly safe-blue seat, which means the person who represents this district needs to be someone who’s going to be willing to lead and push when needed.” This political journey may be less of a surprise in a state where registered Republicans still outnumber Democrats in several key districts, including the 7th, which voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.

On a related note, Rebecca Bennett’s campaign has been aided by donations from employees of Palantir, a technology company with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, her husband, Alex Hydrean, is employed in the Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Energy.

The GOP connections have become a point of attack for her primary opponents, who accuse her of benefiting from the very system she claims to oppose. One ad from rival Tina Shah says Bennett, “doesn’t want you to know the truth” about her past.”

In a year when the national political landscape is fractured, these local contests may offer the clearest picture yet of where the state’s voters stand.