Adam Hamawy’s run to replace retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman in New Jersey’s 12th District is being reshaped by a brutal Gaza experience and an escalating Republican effort to brand him an “actual terrorist.” Democrats in the race now weigh a candidate buo
When Adam Hamawy talks about why he’s running for Congress, he starts with medicine. Insurance fights. Rising costs. His years as a doctor who worked through the fallout of care he says too many people can’t afford.
Then the story pivots to war—and to the moment that, by his telling, pushed him into politics.
Hamawy is a former combat trauma surgeon in the Army National Guard. He also volunteered in war zones around the world. “I’ve seen where we’re spending our money,” he said in an interview. “We’re told that we can’t afford Medicare For All. But we always find money for bombs.”
But what turned him toward a direct political path came during Israel’s assault on Gaza. Hamawy served as a trauma doctor in Gaza when Israel’s seizure of a nearby border crossing trapped him and his colleagues inside their hospital for a week. When he returned home, he said he felt an obligation to speak out about what he called a genocide. He traveled to Washington. only to find. he said. that many members of Congress did not want to hear what he had to say.
“I’ve seen the horrors of war. When I went to Palestine, that was not a war,” Hamawy said. “You can only do so much as an advocate; you can make real change as a congressman.”
Now Hamawy is the frontrunner in the Democratic primary to replace Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), who announced her retirement last year. The 12th district is described as a solidly blue seat stretching from urban Trenton to wealthy areas surrounding Princeton University.
His ascent is closely tied to the pro-Palestine wing of the party. While pro-Palestine progressives have won other Democratic primaries this cycle. Hamawy’s potential victory is being treated as a landmark for a candidate whose Gaza stance is central to his campaign. “They’re finally being seen,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said when asked what a potential Hamawy victory would mean for the pro-Palestine movement. “They’re finally being heard after decades of being ignored.”.
Republicans, meanwhile, have tried to force a different conversation—one that turns on a sharp, personal accusation.
Pro-Israel organizations have launched attacks attempting to argue Hamawy has unacceptable ties to Muslim radicals. The effort includes a Wall Street Journal op-ed by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey that laid out Hamawy’s ties to the so-called “Blind Sheikh. ” who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison following an investigation of the 1995 World Trade Center bombing. The criticism also includes a Jewish Insider story from last week noting that Hamawy volunteered with a medical charity in the Balkans that was accused years later of being a front group for Al-Qaeda.
Hamawy has condemned the attacks as smears. He has disavowed the blind cleric’s views. And he has said the charity he worked for was widely praised in the years before its later exposure, including by President Bill Clinton’s administration.
“Attacks calling Muslims terrorists is not a new thing, and they’re just falling back to their old playbook,” Hamawy told HuffPost. “So I’m just going to continue talking about everything that I have done for this country in uniform and out of uniform.”
Some Republicans have gone further. Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) has labeled Hamawy an “actual terrorist.”
The Democratic primary contest is tightening around that clash of narratives about identity, advocacy, and ties—whether those ties can be painted as extremist connections or dismissed as association and political pressure.
Hamawy’s candidacy is not guaranteed to win the nomination. His stiffest challenger is widely described as Sue Altman, a former director of the New Jersey Working Families Party who narrowly lost a challenge to Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) last cycle.
Despite the attention from major pro-Israel groups. the campaign has also been shaped by what some Democrats see as a failure of establishment forces to consolidate behind a single alternative. The progressive group Justice Democrats endorsed Hamawy and has argued that even when groups tried to shape the race. they couldn’t lock in a preferred candidate.
“We know AIPAC. Crypto. and AI wanted to buy this seat and were interviewing candidates. but while they couldn’t choose which corporate shill to back. the left united behind a political outsider with a vision that spoke to the needs and priorities of Jersey voters. ” said Usamah Andrabi. the communications director for Justice Democrats.
Andrabi also pointed to how AIPAC’s intervention in an earlier New Jersey special election ended up backfiring. “AIPAC’s cycle so far in New Jersey is one of the best representations of how much they flounder and fail when faced with an electorate who simply knows who they are and therefore. knows better. ” he said.
Money has become part of the battle too, but the pro-Palestine movement’s role in building Hamawy’s momentum is being described as decisive.
Small donors from around the country—many of them Muslim—were key in giving him a fundraising lead early in the race. At the same time, American Priorities, a super PAC dedicated to countering AIPAC’s influence, has spent $2 million on ads boosting his candidacy.
That kind of outside support is landing on a résumé that already resonates with activists well beyond Gaza.
A major selling point for Hamawy is the broad appeal of his career. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) credits him with saving her life after her insurgents shot down her Blackhawk helicopter in Iraq. His supporters say that kind of history makes him a standout recruit for many movements.
“This is the resume of a candidate the DCCC would love to recruit,” said Amira Hassan, the political director of PAL PAC, another pro-Palestine group. “This is the perfect candidate.”
In this race. the stakes are clear in how quickly a candidate can go from trauma surgeon to political lightning rod. Hamawy’s path to Congress is built on a week trapped inside a hospital during Israel’s assault on Gaza—and on a claim that Washington would not listen. The backlash is now trying to drown that story in accusations of radical ties. including the “Blind Sheikh” dispute and the Balkans charity controversy.
For Democratic voters in New Jersey’s 12th district, the choice may end up being less about a single issue than about who gets to define what matters most: the war zone Hamawy says changed him, or the warning label Republicans and pro-Israel groups are pressing onto his candidacy.
Adam Hamawy Gaza Bonnie Watson Coleman New Jersey 12th district Democratic primary pro-Palestine pro-Israel attacks Tim Sheehy Michael Mukasey Blind Sheikh Al-Qaeda charity American Priorities super PAC Tammy Duckworth Ro Khanna Justice Democrats Sue Altman