Democrat Adam Hamawy, a former US Army surgeon who treated wounded patients in Gaza, won New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District in Tuesday’s midterms. The Associated Press projected his victory over Republican attorney Gregg Mele. Hamawy will succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman and become New Jersey’s first Muslim member of Congress.
Hamawy, a first-time candidate, says his experience in Gaza pushed him into public office. “Politics was never my plan,” he said in his January campaign launch video. He won a crowded Democratic primary in June with about 27% of the vote in a district where Democrats have a strong advantage.
From New Jersey to a Combat Hospital in Baghdad
Hamawy was seven months old when his family moved from Cairo to the United States. They settled in Jersey City before moving to Old Bridge, where he grew up. An Army ROTC scholarship helped pay for his education at Rutgers University. He studied medicine and later earned an MBA there.
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Hamawy spent eight years as a US Army surgeon, including nine months with the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. He operated on hundreds of soldiers and civilians during the Iraq War. Among his patients was now-Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, whose helicopter came under fire and went down in 2004. Duckworth credits Hamawy with helping save her life and endorsed his congressional campaign.
He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2011 and opened a plastic and reconstructive surgery practice in Princeton two years later. His medical volunteering began at Ground Zero after the Sept 11 attacks, when he treated victims and fellow first responders. Later missions took him to Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Jordan, Türkiye, Bosnia, Haiti and Colombia.
The Gaza Missions That Shaped His Campaign
In May 2024, Hamawy joined a 19-member medical team at the European Hospital near Khan Younis. The team spent about three weeks there and performed 120 surgeries, more than half on children. Hamawy and his colleagues became stranded after Israeli forces seized the Rafah crossing.
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After leaving Gaza, he met officials at the White House and on Capitol Hill to describe what he had seen. He returned in 2025 with the Palestinian American Medical Association, which worked in coordination with the World Health Organization.
Hamawy ran on universal healthcare, cancelling medical and student debt, ending US military aid to Israel and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Healthcare not bombs,” he wrote on X after winning the primary. The phrase brought together two priorities he carried into the general election: expanding access to healthcare at home and changing how Washington spends military aid abroad.
