CD-12 Democratic Candidates Face NAACP Forum in Somerset

Dozens of Democratic primary candidates hoping to flip the CD-12 seat scrambled to prove their progressive credentials Saturday morning at First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, answering pointed questions from the New Brunswick Area Branch of the NAACP on housing, the wealth gap, AI displacement, and immigration enforcement.

The Rev. Pastor Dante Quick set the tone before a single candidate spoke.

“ICE is a modern-day Klan institution,” Quick told the crowd. He wanted answers on AI displacement and its effect on Black and brown communities, on a tax structure he said punishes the poor, and on an economy that’s squeezing families out of their homes. “The middle class does not exist,” Quick said bluntly.

Hard to argue with that from a church pew in Central Jersey.

After the Rev. Pastor Charles Boyer introduced debate moderator the Reverend Dr. Bernadette Glover, thirteen candidates took their seats in alphabetical order: Matt Adams, Sue Altman, Brad Cohen, Elijah Dixon, Adam Hamawy, Andres Jimenez of the Green Party, Kyle Little, Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp, Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Shanel Robinson, Squire Servance, Jay Vaingankar, and Samuel Wang. All of them are competing to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, who has represented New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District since 2015 and announced she would not seek re-election.

When Boyer invoked Watson Coleman’s name, the crowd rose. Every candidate also pledged to reject corporate campaign money.

Reynolds-Jackson, a veteran Assemblywoman, leaned on her background in social services. “My career as a social worker, I started in housing, making sure people in vulnerable situations had a place to go,” she said. She committed to supporting housing trust programs and funding community churches, and called for a living wage over a minimum wage. Not the same thing, she made clear.

Mapp kept it short. “I would change the tax code so corporations would pay more,” the Plainfield mayor said.

Servance, a business owner, repeated himself for emphasis. “Democracy is not for sale, let me say it again. Democracy is not for sale.”

Cohen, mayor of East Brunswick, went straight at the wealth gap question. “It exists. We know that in this room,” he said. “The first thing is to recognize that incredible wealth gap. Billionaires have done incredibly well, and that hurts people in communities of color.” Cohen expressed support for baby bonds championed by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker.

The forum, sponsored by the New Brunswick Area branch of the NAACP, drew a packed congregation and reflected the sharp urgency that’s defined early campaigning in this race. CD-12 covers parts of Mercer, Middlesex, and Somerset counties, a district that includes Trenton, Princeton, New Brunswick, and a stretch of communities where income inequality is anything but abstract. Quick’s opening remarks made sure no candidate forgot that.

Still, thirteen candidates means thirteen pitches for roughly the same progressive voter. The primary is shaping up as a genuine test of which candidate can move from rhetoric to something that feels real to the people in those pews.

Additional reporting on the forum was first published by InsiderNJ.

The winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored in November. Watson Coleman, one of the more consistent progressive voices in the state’s congressional delegation, leaves a seat that hasn’t been seriously threatened by Republicans since it was drawn in its current form. But progressive doesn’t mean unified. The crowded field guarantees a fractured vote, and with no runoff in New Jersey primaries, a plurality win is entirely possible with vote shares in the teens.

Quick’s framing cut through the candidate noise. AI, housing, ICE, taxes. Those four things aren’t abstract policy debates for the congregants at Lincoln Gardens. They’re rent, jobs, family, and fear. Whoever gets out of this primary will need to show they heard it.