Saikat Chakrabarti. Photo: Campaign video.
Justice Democrats is endorsing two new candidates on Monday, throwing its weight behind Saikat Chakrabarty in San Francisco and Adam Hamawy in New Jersey. Both candidates, for their own reasons, threaten to have outsized importance if they make it to Congress, and both are running in open seats vacating by a retiring Democrat.
Chakrabarti was himself a co-founder of Justice Democrats and went on to be the first chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Chakrabarti was driven out of Washington by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who objected to his hard-charging approach, which had included helping to organize an occupation of Pelosi’s office during freshman orientation. Chakrabarti initially filed to challenge Pelosi directly, but Pelosi has since announced her retirement. Ocasio-Cortez has not yet endorsed Chakrabarti; winning the backing of Justice Democrats could be a step in that direction. Chakrabarti faces state legislator Scott Wiener.
Chakrabarti being thrown out of Washington by Pelosi for being too aggressive as a chief of staff and returning as a member of Congress replacing Pelosi would rattle the lower chamber in a major way. Chakrabarti is also unusual among Democrats in presenting a full-spectrum populist economic agenda that goes far beyond checking the boxes of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
Dr. Adam Hamawy. Photo: Campaign.
In New Jersey, Dr. Adam Hamawy is running in an open seat to replace retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman. Hamawy, a renowned surgeon, served as an Army doctor in Iraq, where he treated countless wounded veterans. By happenstance, one of them was Tammy Duckworth, who is now a senator from Illinois. Duckworth lost both legs when her helicopter crashed. As a senator, she worked to come to Hamawy’s rescue when he and a delegation of American and British doctors were trapped by Israel in European Hospital in Khan Younis in May 2024. As supplies of food and water ran low, Duckworth joined global calls for Israel to allow the medical workers to leave.
Hamawy was among three of the 20 doctors who refused to evacuate until Israel agreed to allow a new rotation to replace them. Leaving without being replaced would leave the hospital short on staff, but importantly, Hamawy understood that Israel would be less likely to attack the hospital with Western doctors inside it. “A decision for some of us to stay was consistent with our American values,” Hamawy said at the time. “We came in as a team and we do not leave anyone behind. If all and only the Americans left at once, what would that say about us as a nation?”
Hamawy was invited to be Watson Coleman’s guest at the State of the Union, and spoke with members of Congress about what he saw in Gaza. Now a candidate for Congress, he represents a particularly powerful threat to Israeli propaganda narratives, as he can speak from direct experience and, by virtue of his status as a celebrated Army veteran, can’t easily have his patriotism questioned.
Hamawy is facing Sue Altman, who previously ran in a nearby district and benefited from significant AIPAC support. She has now distanced herself from the pro-Israel organization, and her time as head of the New Jersey Working Families Party gives her some progressive credibility in the district. Whether that reputation can survive growing awareness of her previous alliance with AIPAC will likely determine the outcome of the race, as the district is heavily Democratic. Justice Democrats and the WFP often work in coalition to support the same candidates; JD’s decision to endorse against a top WFP official will put WFP’s independent expenditure arm in a tricky situation, leaving them either to abandon their longtime ally or spend money against another ally—potentially landing them on the same side of the race as AIPAC.
Justice Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Rojas, a co-founder of the group, and a key figure in the election of Ocasio-Cortez, announced this week she would transition out of her role as ED to become chair of the board at the end of this cycle.
Chakrabarti, meanwhile, has the personal capacity to mostly self-fund his campaign. As I covered in my book We’ve Got People, Chakrabarti was the second engineer at Stripe, and his stock options made him and extremely rich young man. Repulsed by the wealth inequality he saw around him, he quit Stripe before he was fully vested—an extraordinarily rare move—and volunteered for the first Bernie Sanders campaign, becoming a key player in the organization’s distributed volunteer operation. After the campaign, he co-founded Brand New Congress, an effort to oust every member of Congress, which then birthed Justice Democrats.
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