Brennan, Bhalla head to Assembly with LD32 victory
Housing policy expert Katie Brennan and Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla easily won election to the Assembly, the New Jersey Globe projects, sending two progressives unaligned with the Hudson County Democratic Organization to Trenton.
The pair defeated Republicans Stephen Bishop and Kaushal Patel in the 32nd, which includes Hoboken and parts of Jersey City. As of 11:49 p.m. and with nearly all votes counted, Bhalla and Brennan had 76% of the vote to Bishop’s and Patel’s 24%.
Brennan and Bhalla will succeed Assemblyman John Allen (D-Hoboken) and Assemblywoman Jessica Ramirez (D-Jersey City). Before the abolition of the county line, mayors in the 32nd essentially picked who they wanted in the Assembly. Bhalla had sent Allen, his former chief of staff, while Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop had sent Ramirez.
“We heard loud and clear that people want representatives who are really going to fight for them — not more of the same machine politics that created the problems we’re trying to fix,” Brennan said in a victory statement. “This is our chance to shake things up and deliver real change, and I’m ready to be an independent voice in the Legislature to make that happen. This is the start of a new era in Trenton.”
After the county line’s abolition, however, all bets were off, and a crowded, six-person primary arose in the 32nd. Allen opted not to seek re-election; instead, Bhalla announced his campaign for Assembly. Fulop tapped Ramirez and Jersey City Councilman Yousef Saleh.
The HCDO, which was at war with Fulop, backed their own slate of Jennie Pu, the director of the Hoboken Public Library and a PTA president and community activist in Jersey City, and Crystal Fonseca, a manager at the Jersey City Department of Public Safety and a former Newark school board member.
Last was Brennan, a longtime housing advocate in Hudson County. Before 2025, Brennan was known in political circles after she accused Al Alvarez, a staffer on Gov. Phil Murphy’s first gubernatorial campaign, of raping her in 2017, when she was a campaign volunteer. Alvarez later resigned from his state government job, and she settled a lawsuit against the state in 2020; she donated her share to a charity benefiting sexual assault survivors.
Brennan and Bhalla had planned on running separately, but after a new election law allowed bracketing, they combined as running mates (though they ran separate ads).
All six candidates ran as progressives in the 32nd, a must for the district. Brennan and Bhalla received key endorsements, however, and fundraised well.
Brennan finished first with a little more than 7,500 votes. The race for second, too close to call on election night, ended with Bhalla edging out Ramirez for the second nomination by a little more than 200 votes, 7,243 to 7,010. Pu, Saleh, and Fonseca rounded out the pack, each of them in the mid-5,000s.
Brennan and Bhalla will now join a new, small group of legislators who won election to Trenton without the support of a county party.