The Princeton Community Democratic Organization, a key Central Jersey grassroots progressive group, held a forum with all 17 of the Democratic candidates running for the 12th congressional district last night, and Sue Altman emerged with the group’s endorsement.
Altman, a former leader of the state Working Families Party and the 2024 Democratic nominee for the neighboring 7th district, got 65% of the vote in the second round of ranked-choice balloting, while Adam Hamawy, a former Army combat surgeon, got 29%. (Six percent of ballots did not rank either Altman or Hamawy.)
In the first round of voting, Altman got 55 votes (36%) and Hamawy got 29 (19%). They were followed by Princeton professor Sam Wang (18 votes, 12%), Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson (17 votes, 11%), and former Energy Department official Jay Vaingankar (13 votes, 8%), all of whom live in Mercer County. The other 12 candidates in attendance received six or fewer votes each; four of them got no votes at all.
The endorsement gives Altman important grassroots momentum in a town that’s home to a large number of Democratic primary voters – and, perhaps more importantly, plenty of potential campaign volunteers, many of whom canvassed for Altman during her unsuccessful campaign to flip the 7th district from blue to red in 2024. (The fact that Hamawy, who is on his first run for elected office, finished in a strong second place is a good sign for him as well.)
It’s also a show of strength for Altman ahead of the February 26 Mercer County Democratic convention, when rank-and-file Mercer Democrats from across the 12th district will vote to endorse a successor to retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing).
The PCDO overwhelmingly endorsed Dan Benson in his bid for county executive in 2023, and did the same for Andy Kim in his campaign for U.S. Senate in 2024; both went on to easily win the Mercer convention a short while later. In 2025, the PCDO hosted a forum for gubernatorial candidates, but did not ultimately make an endorsement.
Reynolds-Jackson, though, can almost certainly count on stronger support at the full convention than among PCDO members – in part because of the seven Mercer County towns in the 12th district, Princeton is the only one she doesn’t already represent in the legislature. Earlier this month, the Trenton assemblywoman released a lengthy list of local Mercer endorsements that includes three fellow state legislators and most local elected officials in Trenton, Ewing, and Hopewell Township.
