Gregg Mele, a Republican who has popped up as a candidate for one office or another in most New Jersey election cycles since 2018, is back, this time running in the solid-blue 12th congressional district.
Mele said in a Facebook post that after prior 12th district GOP nominee Darius Mayfield moved to Virginia and began running for office there, he decided to step up in Mayfield’s place and work to flip Central Jersey red. He’s been “quietly building up my team and infrastructure” for several months, he said, and is now ready to take his campaign public.
“Those of us who have already been out there should be rewarded, because we are the only ones with a chance to flip seats and make sure that the great improvements in federal policies can be sustained long enough to make it obvious to all what is the better way to run the government well into the future,” Mele wrote. “Let’s do this!”
No other Republicans have announced campaigns for the 12th district, perhaps for good reason: the majority-minority seat covers some of the most Democratic areas of the state, and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) defeated Mayfield 61%-36% in 2024. Watson Coleman is retiring this year, but there’s little reason to believe that any of the bevy of Democrats running to succeed her would put the district at risk of flipping.
Mele first emerged as an independent candidate for Congress in the 7th congressional district in 2018, receiving 2,296 votes – 164,689 votes behind the race’s winner, Democrat Tom Malinowski. The next year, he was a Libertarian candidate for mayor of Bridgewater, again receiving a negligible share of the vote.
In 2021, Mele appeared on every New Jersey voter’s ballot as the Libertarian nominee for governor, ultimately coming in fourth place with 0.3% of the vote.
Since then, Mele has switched over to running as a Republican, though not with much more success. He failed to make the GOP primary ballot for the 6th congressional district in 2022; two years later, he initially ran for U.S. Senate before dropping back down to the 6th district race, losing the Republican primary 82%-18% as an off-the-line candidate.
Mele’s runs for office have generally been undertaken with little regard for geography; he previously resided in Clark, which is in neither the 6th nor the 12th districts, though his new campaign filing includes an address in Plainfield, which is in the 12th district.
