NJ Will Send First Muslim Congressman To Washington From NJ-12

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, NJ — New Jersey will send its first Muslim American member of Congress to Washington in January, and he’s from South Brunswick.

Democrat Dr. Adam Hamawy won the open 12th District seat on Tuesday. The Associated Press called the race at 8:26 p.m., less than half an hour after polls closed.

With approximately 93 percent of votes counted early Wednesday, Hamawy had received 160,586 votes, or 70.2 percent, compared with 64,797 votes, or 28.3 percent, for Republican Gregg Mele. Independent Winston Jordan had 1,774 votes and Green Party candidate Andres Jinete had 1,655, according to the AP.

Hamawy, a South Brunswick resident who grew up in the district, will succeed Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, who is retiring. Unofficial results show the district swung sharply toward Democrats compared with 2024.

State Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-16th District) congratulated Hamawy in a statement Wednesday.

“As the first Muslim elected to Congress from New Jersey, he will bring a lifetime of service and compassion to Washington and inspire countless young people to see a place for themselves in public service,” Zwicker said.

Hamawy spoke about that milestone at his election night party in Plainsboro.

“So let me say this to anyone who still believes that Muslims are strangers here,” he said. “Muslims were here. We are here, and we will be here.”

Hamawy, a combat surgeon, built his victory speech around three campaign promises: “health care, not bombs,” abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and making the economy work for working people.

“These are not three slogans; they are one moral demand that this government finally see the people that it was built to serve,” he said.

He said his medical practice shapes how he sees the issues.

“I’m a doctor, and every day I see patients who can’t afford to pay for their rent and also pay for their medical bills,” Hamawy said. “And everyday working families are doing everything right. They’re working 40 hours, 60 hours, 70 hours, and sometimes more, and they’re paying their taxes, and they still can’t make the ends meet.”

He called the system “rigged.”

“The same system that tells my patients that there’s no money for their medicine, then it finds billions for bombs and another war,” he said. “The same system that tells working people to work harder while it hands another tax cut to the billionaires.”

Hamawy said federal money spent on war should be spent at home instead.

“Those billions of dollars that we are sending away, we can bring home to New Jersey to help people get the medicine and the treatment that they need,” he said.

He listed what that money could pay for: a world-class education in every public school “no matter what your zip code,” tuition-free public colleges and universities, repairs to roads and bridges, and a modern high-speed rail system.

“We could do all these things. We just have to make the right choices,” he said.

Hamawy also pledged to back organized labor. “Every worker deserves a union, and that’s a vision that I will fight for every single day,” he said.

On immigration, he described families afraid “to go to work, to go to school, or to buy food.” He said, “When I say abolish ICE, I’m talking about those children.”

He also spoke about his medical work in war zones. He was at ground zero after 9/11, in Baghdad as an Army surgeon, and in Gaza as a volunteer surgeon, where he said he treated children “targeted with our bullets and our bombs.”

“Not anymore,” he said. “I will go to Washington to fight to end the killing.”

Hamawy predicted Democrats would control Congress in January.

“I’m a surgeon, and I could tell you that we are going to stop the bleed,” he said. “We are going to fight for every American that’s been left behind by the establishment that has been ruling Washington for so long.”

He expects pushback on his agenda.

“Some will call this radical. I call it American,” he said. “We are not asking America to become something new. We are asking America to finally become what it promised to be.”

Where Support Shifted

Hamawy’s margin was much wider than the one Watson Coleman won by two years ago. In 2024, she won the district with 61.1 percent of the vote to Republican Darius Mayfield’s 36.4 percent. That was a margin of about 25 points. This year it’s nearly 42 points.

Support for the Democrat rose in every county in the district, according to NBC News results:

• Middlesex County: 62.4 percent for Hamawy, up from 52.5 percent for Watson Coleman in 2024

• Somerset County: 72 percent, up from 60.9 percent

• Mercer County: 79.9 percent, up from 75.4 percent

• Union County: 90.7 percent

The biggest swing came in the district’s Middlesex County portion. Republican support there fell from 44.6 percent in 2024 to 36.4 percent this year. Mercer, which includes Princeton and Trenton, again gave Hamawy his biggest vote total. His margin of 32,783 votes in Mercer County represented a nearly 62-percentage-point advantage over Mele.

Fewer people voted than in 2024, which was a presidential election year. About 228,800 votes had been counted as of Wednesday morning, compared with 322,079 in the 2024 race. Mail-in and provisional ballots are still being counted.

Groups that backed his campaign weighed in. Shaughnessy Naughton, president of the science advocacy group 314 Action, said in a statement that Hamawy “has spent his life running toward the fire.”

Hamawy is a plastic surgeon and former Army combat surgeon. He is credited with saving the life of now-Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) after her helicopter was shot down in Iraq in 2004.

He was a first-time candidate. He won the June Democratic primary with about 28% of the vote in a 12-candidate field. His campaign drew criticism over his statements on the war in Gaza and his past associations from the 1990s, which his campaign called bad-faith attacks.

Part Of Statewide Shift

Democrats won 11 of New Jersey’s 12 seats in the U.S. House on Tuesday, taking two seats from Republicans and leaving U.S. Rep. Chris Smith as the state’s only Republican in Congress. In the 7th District, Democrat Rebecca Bennett defeated Republican incumbent Tom Kean Jr. In the 2nd District, Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew conceded to Democrat Zack Mullock, the mayor of Cape May.

Hamawy will be sworn in when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2027. He will serve a two-year term.

During the campaign, he said he supports Medicare for All, expanded Social Security, restoring the expanded child tax credit, and more federal spending on health care, housing and education.

All results remain unofficial until county clerks certify them later this month.

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