Tina Shah
Tina Shah (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent New Jersey's 7th Congressional District. She lost in the Democratic primary on June 2, 2026.
Elections
2026
See also: New Jersey's 7th Congressional District election, 2026
New Jersey's 7th Congressional District election, 2026 (June 2 Democratic primary)
New Jersey's 7th Congressional District election, 2026 (June 2 Republican primary)
General election
The candidate list in this election may not be complete.
General election for U.S. House New Jersey District 7
Incumbent Thomas Kean Jr., Rebecca Bennett, and Seamus O'Toole are running in the general election for U.S. House New Jersey District 7 on November 3, 2026.
Candidate | ||
 | Thomas Kean Jr. (R)  | |
 | Rebecca Bennett (D) | |
| Seamus O'Toole (Stop Israel's Genocide Party) | ||
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Lana Leguia (L)
- Randall Terry (Life Truth Justice Party)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House New Jersey District 7
Rebecca Bennett defeated Tina Shah, Brian Varela, and Michael Roth in the Democratic primary for U.S. House New Jersey District 7 on June 2, 2026.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Rebecca Bennett | 45.3 | 27,525 |
 | Tina Shah | 20.0 | 12,146 | |
 | Brian Varela | 19.1 | 11,614 | |
 | Michael Roth | 15.6 | 9,452 | |
| Total votes: 60,737 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Michael Garth (D)
- Felipe Santos (D)
- Gregory Vartan (D)
- Megan O'Rourke (D)
- Beth Ellen Adubato (D)
- Sara Sooy (D)
- Valentina Mendoza (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House New Jersey District 7
Incumbent Thomas Kean Jr. advanced from the Republican primary for U.S. House New Jersey District 7 on June 2, 2026.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Thomas Kean Jr. | 100.0 | 35,080 |
| Total votes: 35,080 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
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Campaign themes
2026
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Tina Shah did not complete Ballotpedia's 2026 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign website
Shah's campaign website stated the following:
Lower Costs
Tina’s plan to make life more affordable includes:
- Repealing Trump’s tariffs, which increase costs and chaos while causing job cuts, drowning small businesses, and tanking our economy.
- Ending the SALT deduction cap.
- Working to lower utility costs in partnership with New Jersey state officials.
- Expanding the Child Tax Credit and childcare options like universal Pre-K.
- Lowering housing costs by making it harder for large corporations to buy up properties and increase rents, and working to decrease construction costs to promote new projects.
- Preventing medical debt from bankrupting people with bans on reporting medical debt to credit bureaus and using property liens or seizures to pay medical debt.
Making student loan repayment, restructuring, and forgiveness easier, restoring Graduate PLUS loans to allow students to borrow up to the full cost of their education, and ending private lenders’ ability to charge high interest rates and bankrupt young adults.
Fix Healthcare, Save Lives
In Congress, Tina will fight for:
- Restoring the Affordable Care Act premium tax credits to lower health insurance premium costs.
- Reversing Trump’s Medicaid cuts to restore access to healthcare for those who need it most, including mothers, children, and seniors.
- Protecting us from insurance companies who focus on profits over people: passing prior authorization reform to end the ability of insurance companies to deny or delay tests and treatment and stopping insurers from using AI tools to find new ways to deny medical care.
- Holding RFK Jr. accountable for his deadly and unscientific policies, particularly on vaccines, which put our children at risk and will ultimately cost lives.
- Capping out-of-pocket costs on drugs, office visits, ER visits, and non-elective surgeries.
- Lowering prescription drug costs and expanding Medicare prescription drug negotiations for everyone.
- Implementing strategies to keep doctors and nurses in the workforce and grow the pool of qualified healthcare professionals, so that we have people to care for us when we need them most.
- Restoring funding to the CDC and NIH to keep us safer from disease, improve public health, and continue groundbreaking medical research.
Ensure Dignity for Our Seniors
Tina will protect our seniors by:
- Ensuring Medicare remains fully funded, and simplifying the process for seniors so they don’t have to manage their care across multiple programs and coverage providers.
- Stopping insurance companies from using misleading advertising and offering Medicare Advantage plans that restrict access to care and cost seniors more money
- Reversing Trump’s cuts to Medicaid that reduced retroactive coverage and made it harder to afford nursing home care for seniors and their families.
- Protecting Social Security from cuts and privatization, and ensuring payments keep up with the cost of living and inflation so that seniors can maintain a quality standard of living throughout their golden years.
Protect Reproductive Freedom
In Congress, Tina will fight for women’s health and reproductive rights by:
- Protecting abortion rights in New Jersey and across the country by supporting a federal abortion protection bill that codifies Roe v. Wade, like the Women’s Health Protection Act.
- Ensuring that the FDA makes decisions based on science, not political whims, and that all women have access to FDA-approved medications for abortion and reproductive care, including mifepristone, so that no state can stop women from getting the care they need.
- Making reproductive health affordable by expanding insurance coverage for egg freezing, IVF, and other family-building options
- Expanding support for women’s health beyond reproductive care, including access to affordable menopause care and fully covered breast cancer screening
- Increasing program funding to reduce maternal mortality rates, particularly among women of color.
Clean Energy, Lower Bills
Tina will fight for green policy that grows our economy, brings good paying jobs, and saves you money, including:
- Working to secure funding for New Jersey to modernize our aging electrical grid and lower costs by raising the supply, which is also threatened by Trump’s cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act.
- Making data centers that are popping up all over New Jersey pay for the electricity they use to keep from driving up costs for residents.
- Restoring investments from the Inflation Reduction Act that Trump canceled that would begin new renewable energy projects, creating jobs across the state.
- Reversing Trump’s cuts to federal funding for climate resilient infrastructure to guard against flooding and rising sea levels along our coasts.
- Fighting to protect the decades-old environmental policies that safeguard our clean air, water, and land — protections that reduce asthma, heart disease, cancer, and other serious health risks — and that Trump and his EPA are systematically dismantling.
Keep New Jersey Communities Safe
Tina will work to reduce crime, prevent gun violence, and protect our community by:
- Banning assault weapons – weapons of war – from civilian use. We need common sense reform, not “thoughts and prayers.”
- Restoring funding that Trump’s Department of Justice cut from community policing, training, victims’ services, and violence intervention programs.
- Investing in mental health services so that individuals in crisis can get the care they need.
- Mandating that ICE and other law enforcement officials show their identity unmasked and provide their name and badge.
- Promoting programs for parole officers to mentor nonviolent youth offenders; these programs have saved our children, saved taxpayer dollars, and reduced crime across America.
End Government Corruption
Tina will demand accountability and transparency from our government. Her plans include:
- Fighting back against Trump’s repeated violations of the U.S. Constitution – and using the House’s oversight powers to investigate the full range of Trump and his family’s efforts to enrich themselves using the office of the presidency, including crypto schemes and international business deals.
- Reforming campaign finance and overturning Citizens United; everyday New Jerseyans deserve to have their voices heard rather than drowned out by billionaire special interests.
- Banning stock trading by members of Congress and executive branch officials.
- Providing oversight to the Department of Justice and enforcing anti-corruption laws to properly investigate any improper action by the Trump Administration.
- Strengthening the offices designed to protect against corruption in the executive branch, including the Office of Government Ethics.
Defend Freedom & Equal Rights
Tina will stand up to anyone who attacks our freedoms by:
- Reversing Trump’s dismantling of federal employee union protections, supporting unions and OSHA requirements across the country to keep our workers safe, demanding that he make the NLRB functional by appointing enough members.
- Protecting voting rights for all Americans by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and opposing efforts to make it more difficult to vote.
- Defending the rights of the LBGTQ+ people to live their lives openly, safely, and free from discrimination.
- Stopping the mass firings of hardworking, dedicated government employees by upholding civil service protections.
Invest in Education
Tina will advocate for our kids by:
- Investing in our public schools and educators so every kid can receive a high-quality education that prepares them for the real world.
- Making sure our kids can learn without the threat of gun violence at school.
- Restoring funding and oversight authority to the Department of Education to protect all students, particularly students with disabilities.
- Reversing Trump’s Department of Education decision to stop counting critical, skilled professions like nursing, social work, and education as professional degrees, so that these students can receive loans up to the full cost of their education.
- Working to lower the costs of higher education so that you don’t have to go broke, deal with predatory lenders, or dip into retirement savings to afford it.
- Ensuring there’s a student loan forgiveness plan for our public school teachers so more young people can enter the profession.
— Tina Shah's campaign website (March 6, 2026)
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2026 Elections
External links
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Candidate U.S. House New Jersey District 7 |
Personal |
Footnotes
