The Democratic primary is usually a cakewalk for Rep. Bill Pascrell, who has been in Congress for more than 25 years.
But this year, he faces a rare competitive race in his Passaic County district — with a challenger seizing on Pascrell’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, and without the help of a New Jersey ballot system that gives establishment candidates a huge advantage.
New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District includes Paterson, home to a large community of immigrants from across the Middle East and the largest Palestinian population per capita of any city in the country. Pascrell is facing a primary challenge from Mohamed Khairullah, the mayor of neighboring Prospect Park, whose family emigrated from Syria in 1980.
“I want to be fair to everybody but I am not going to abandon a lifelong ally of the United States — Israel,” Pascrell said. He said he supports Israel’s right to defend itself after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and that he doesn’t believe it’s U.S. government's role to tell Israel what to do.
But he added that this shouldn’t affect the support he's long received from his hometown. “And I'm not going to abandon, whether they like it or not, the Muslim folks who I grew up with, who I played ball with," Pascrell said. "I lived in their neighborhood in South Paterson.”
Pascrell, 87, has served in Congress since 1997. He began his career in politics as mayor of Paterson and a member of the New Jersey General Assembly. The last time he faced a tough primary fight was in 2012, after redistricting merged his district with that of another Democratic incumbent, Steve Rothman.
Back then, the candidates' relationships with Jews and Palestinians was also a key issue. Dina Sayedahmed, media director at the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Pascrell enjoyed widespread support from Palestinian residents. Several synagogues urged their members to vote for Rothman, who is Jewish and was generally seen as more staunchly pro-Israel, according to Ballotpedia.
“Obviously, it is a major blunder for a congressman who has the largest Palestinian community in the United States not to stand with them while their families are being killed,” Khairullah said. “So, obviously, that will be a big factor in getting us the Arab and Muslim votes.”
Khairullah is calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and objects to Pascrell’s vote for the Israel aid package passed by Congress in April. The Prospect Park mayor received national attention last year when he was invited to the White House for an Eid celebration and the Secret Service would not let him inside because his name was on a terrorist watch list.
Since Oct. 7 and Israel’s continuing war in Gaza, activism in Pascrell’s district has only grown. “People have been going around, talking about the vote, talking about how important it is to register to vote, why people need to be at the polls in June and to be educated as they approach the polls,” Sayedahmed said. “So this is something very different from what we've seen in the past.”
Pascrell said his position on the conflict has not changed, and that he has felt stung by Khairullah’s candidacy. “I was fine until October the 7th with Mayor Khairullah,” he said, pointing to the incident at the White House as evidence of their relationship. “Who the heck is the first person he called? Me.”
Even with strong support from Arabs and Muslims, Khairullah likely would not have been able to mount as strong a challenge to Pascrell without a federal court ruling in March that barred Democratic primary ballots from using New Jersey’s century-old ballot system called “the county line.”
The system groups candidates running on tickets into single lines or columns, meaning that the many candidates endorsed by county political organizations appear together with ticket-leaders like President Joe Biden. Candidates running alone or on smaller slates usually appear further off to the right or down the ballot, outside of the large groupings that signal to voters that they’re the legitimate party candidates. Research by Rutgers University professor Julia Sass Rubin shows the preferential ballot placement gives candidates an advantage that is difficult to beat.
Democratic County Committees in Hudson, Passaic and Bergen counties all endorsed Pascrell, which would have granted him the county line placement. Now, he and Khairullah will appear together in one area of the ballot just for congressional candidates, instead of in slates with runningmates.
Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics and director of the Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll, said the absence of a county line will help Khairullah. But he said he doesn't think it will be enough to beat the ever-popular Pascrell, who won 10 of 12 elections with more than 61% of the vote.
“He's well-liked in the district,” Cassino said, adding that Pascrell has raised a lot of money and continues to have support from the Democratic Party establishment. “You're still going to have endorsements, and the endorsements matter on the ballot almost as much as the line did.”
There has been no polling on the primary race so far. The winner will face off against Republican Hector Castillo or Billy Prempeh, who are competing in the GOP primary. The primary election is on June 4.
Pascrell is facing an unknown that could spell trouble for him: Pro-Palestinian activists around the country are organizing a protest vote against Biden by choosing “uncommitted” delegates to the Democratic National Convention. In Michigan, which is home to a large Arabic community, 13% of Democratic voters chose “uncommitted,” MLive.com reported. In Minnesota, 19% of voters did so.
That will be an option for New Jersey voters in the June primary. Even though the presidential primary is not competitive and is unlikely to draw high turnout, the protest vote against the president could boost turnout in the Ninth Congressional district, CAIR-NJ's Sayedahmed said. Her organization, a nonprofit that cannot work on partisan campaigns, has formed a political action wing.
“It just goes to show the extent to which the Muslim community and the Palestinian community is just very distressed by the Biden administration's lack of support for Muslims and Palestinians here in the U.S.,” she said.
The New Jersey chapter has launched a “vote for justice” campaign to register new voters and boost voter turnout.
