CD-12 Candidates Face Black Community Forum in Somerset

Candidates for New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District crammed into the pews of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset last Sunday, and the pastor didn’t wait for the forum to begin before drawing blood.

“ICE is a modern-day Klan institution,” said Pastor Dante Quick, who runs the church and wasn’t about to let anyone in the room forget what’s at stake for Black and brown families right now. Quick laid out his demands plainly: answers on AI wiping out jobs, a tax code that hammers working people, and a housing market that’s squeezing families dry. “The middle class does not exist,” he said. Between tuition bills and gas prices, he told the crowd, a single lost paycheck separates most people from losing their homes. It wasn’t a soft opener. Nobody in that room wanted one.

The forum was put together by SandSJ, the NJ Institute for Social Justice, and the New Brunswick Area Branch of the NAACP. Thirteen candidates showed up to chase the open seat left by retiring U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman. When SandSJ founder Pastor Charles Boyer mentioned Watson Coleman’s name, the congregation stood up without being asked. That’s the kind of loyalty she built over her years in Congress, and whoever comes out of this Democratic primary is going to have to earn it the hard way.

The candidates sat up front in alphabetical order: Matt Adams, Sue Altman, Brad Cohen, Elijah Dixon, Adam Hamawy, Andres Jimenez of the Green Party, Kyle Little, Adrian Mapp, Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Shanel Robinson, Squire Servance, Jay Vaingankar, and Sam Wang. Every one of them pledged to reject corporate campaign money. That’s easy to say in a church in 2026. Keeping that pledge once the real money starts moving is a different conversation entirely.

Assemblywoman Reynolds-Jackson talked housing from experience. “My career as a social worker, I started in housing, making sure people in vulnerable situations had a place to go,” she said. She backed housing trust programs and direct funding for churches doing community outreach. “We have to make sure we have a living wage, not just a minimum wage,” she said. She’s got a name and a legislative record in this race. Most of her opponents don’t have either.

Business owner Squire Servance kept it tight. “Democracy is not for sale,” he said. Then he said it again. Sometimes that’s enough.

Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp went after the tax structure without dressing it up. He said he’d rewrite the tax code so corporations pay more. That’s the kind of line that lands in a church or a union hall, and Mapp’s been making it work in Plainfield for years.

East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen pointed to baby bonds as a real tool for closing the racial wealth gap. “Billionaires have done incredibly well, and that hurts people in communities of color,” Cohen said. “The first thing is to recognize that incredible wealth gap.” His case for baby bonds, long associated with U.S. Senator Cory Booker, gave him a policy anchor in a field where plenty of candidates were still searching for one.

The full candidate breakdown and additional coverage from Sunday’s event was also reported by InsiderNJ.

Twelve congressional candidates in 2026 means a crowded primary, and that church in Somerset held all the contradictions at once — candidates pledging grassroots purity while running district-wide campaigns, promising Watson Coleman’s voters that they can fill a seat she spent years making her own. Quick wasn’t buying easy answers. He wanted commitments, and the crowd behind him wasn’t going anywhere until they heard some.