Knocking on strangers’ doors on a warm May afternoon in Trenton, New Jersey, Adam Hamawy did not seem fazed when more than a few went unanswered. It’s his first time running for office, but this is an area where he has experience. After returning from a medical mission in Gaza in 2024, Hamawy went to Washington to describe the crisis – which he viewed as a US-funded genocide – to lawmakers, only to encounter “too many doors that were closed, that didn’t even want to listen”. “I could only define it as a genocide, because I saw the bodies of the people that came in,” the veteran army trauma surgeon and political newcomer reflected, while walking between houses.
“And it wasn’t an accident. You can’t have an accident, every single day for three years.” “When the hospital shakes and I see the bodies come in, I’m paying for it with my tax dollars,” he said. “I don’t want my tax dollars doing that.” One of the few representatives on Capitol Hill who met with him was his own: Bonnie Watson Coleman, who has served New Jersey’s 12th congressional district for more than a decade. When she announced her retirement in November 2025, after six terms, Hamawy decided it was no longer enough to seek the attention of those elected to serve in Washington – and launched his campaign to join them.
In six months, Hamawy has gone from a political nobody to, deemed progressive and Democratic figures including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Tammy Duckworth. His work history has driven him to call for Medicare for All, advocating for sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel, and the abolition of ICE – and to say openly he cannot support Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. Watson Coleman, the first Black woman to represent New Jersey in Congress, has been a progressive champion on criminal justice reform, health equity and economic opportunity. She was comfortably re-elected in 2024, and whoever wins Tuesday’s Democratic primary in this safely Democratic district will almost certainly succeed her.
Hamawy would break a new ceiling for New Jersey politics in becoming the state’s first Muslim lawmaker to represent the state nationally. One of the few still-practicing trauma plastic surgeons in the area, he has spent months campaigning across the 12th district, which stretches from Princeton’s leafy boroughs to working-class neighborhoods in Trenton and Plainfield. He knocked on doors in Trenton earlier this month in a suit jacket with Luffy’s Jolly Roger pin on the lapel – a reference to the anime One Piece that has become a shorthand in support of oppressed people in antiwar left spaces, and an easily identifiable emblem for a candidate running as an outsider to the political establishment. The 12-way race, transformed ’s once-powerful county-line ballot system, which previously allowed party leaders to heavily influence primaries, includes an assembly member, multiple mayors, a former White House aide and several local officials.
Its fractured nature means the threshold for victory may be relatively low. Yet Hamawy has raised more than $1m – more than anyone else in the field – fueled significantly Palestinian Super Pac, has pledged another $2m in TV advertising on his behalf. Hamawy covered medical missions during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, and was deployed to Iraq as an army combat surgeon a decade later, as part of the team who saved Duckworth’s life after her Black Hawk helicopter was struck 2024, he spent nearly three weeks trapped there after Israeli forces closed the Rafah border crossing, operating at the European hospital in Khan Younis while the city was bombed around him. Duckworth ultimately helped secure his evacuation after delivering a letter of his to the White House.