New Jersey’s gubernatorial election will dominate the coming months, Save Jerseyans, but the 2026 Midterm shuffle is already beginning in battleground and reach districts across the country including right here at home in the Garden State.
According to a senior Republican source, a recruitment push is underway to draft Marlboro Board of Education member Danielle Bellomo to run for Congress next year in the 3rd Congressional District.
Those same sources report that Bellomo has not yet made a decision, but her boosters believe that a strong parental rights message could potentially help the GOP gain traction in a once competitive district that devolved into a reliably blue seat post-redistricting.
Bellomo is a stay-at-home mother of three and a graduate of the University of Delaware. Marlboro is one of three district which the Murphy Administration sued in 2023 for bucking its transgender guidance.
“Maintaining local control over decisions for our school district and minimizing state involvement is essential to shaping Marlboro students into strong, independent thinkers and future leaders,” Bellomo explained in a 2024 BOE race interview. “It is our duty to uphold the standard of education our community expects.”
The South-Central Jersey district encompassing Burlington County and parts of Mercer and Monmouth is presently represented by physician and ex-legislator Herb Conway who won a full term in 2024 by a little under 10 points, succeeding Andy Kim who took over Bob Menendez’s U.S. Senate seat. Republicans haven’t held NJ-03, a former stronghold, since Kim unseated Tom MacArthur in 2018. The district then moved considerably leftward in 2020 when the new congressional map stripped away NJ-03’s Ocean County towns and moved the line northward.
New Jersey’s delegation is presently comprised of three Republicans and nine Democrats including Conway.
