New Jersey election 2026: Cory Booker faces 3 challengers in U.S. Senate race. Here’s what to know

U.S. senators are elected to six-year terms in the upper chamber of the legislative branch, where they make and pass federal laws. Each state is represented by two U.S. senators.

The Senate also confirms presidential nominations for cabinet positions, federal judges and U.S. Supreme Court justices

In the Senate, Booker sponsored the First Step Act, legislation that is now law and designed to reform the criminal justice system by addressing sentencing disparities, improving the treatment of juveniles and promoting rehabilitation.

Booker sponsored the Fair Chance Act, which prohibits federal agencies and federal contractors from asking about a job applicant’s criminal history before making a conditional offer, with exceptions. He sponsored the 9/11 Memorial Act, which authorized the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City to become part of the National Park System.

He has served on the Judiciary Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee and the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee. Booker also helped to secure $6.8 billion in federal funding for the Hudson Tunnel Project.

Booker said in an email that he is continually working on providing relief to New Jerseyans who are struggling to make ends meet. “I’m the only senator who lives in a neighborhood which sits at the poverty line, and for working people like my neighbors, the American dream is feeling out of reach because they can’t afford to get by, let alone get ahead,” he said. He is working on legislation, dubbed the Keep Your Pay Act, that would make the first $75,000 of household income tax free for most filers and expand the child tax credit.

Booker stressed that he continues to oppose tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. “I will continue to use every tool and power available to me in the Senate to stand up to this administration, and put a check on their agenda of chaos, corruption and cruelty,” he said.

Booker said he prioritizes securing financial resources for New Jersey that create new jobs and help to power the regional economy, including the Gateway and Delaware River Bridge replacement projects. He said creating community-based outpatient health clinics for military families is also a top priority.

Booker said residents across the Garden State are struggling to make ends meet and that many feel the American dream is out of reach. “Our economy is rigged for the wealthiest and the most powerful,” he said. “The policies of the Trump administration have made everything worse—raising prices and costing us jobs. I believe we need to be creative and bold in order to create an economy where New Jerseyans can redeem the American Dream again.”

He said his “Keep Your Pay Act” is a practical way to help lower-income residents keep their heads above water. “We have to take on the big corporations who are consolidating power so they can drive up prices,” he said. “We have to end the corruption in every branch of our government that is allowing corporations to buy special treatment.”

Booker said the Middle East is a region with deep, grievous injustices and untold suffering. “America’s policy should be focused on ensuring just and lasting peace for all people in that region,” he said. “Which is why I have long called for a two-state solution with a permanent home for the Palestinian people.” He said he supports efforts to stop violence and increase humanitarian aid in the region. “ I called out the Netanyahu government — which I believe worse than Trump’s — and I hope his government is thrown out of power in the upcoming Israeli elections,” Booker said.

Booker is opposed to the war in Iran. He said, “The Iran War will go down in history as one of the most consequentially stupid decisions an American president has ever made.” He said this conflict has destabilized the U.S. economy and forced prices to rise.

Booker said he supports efforts to stop the war. “I will not vote for a single dollar to continue this conflict, and I believe the Senate must start doing its job and assert our constitutional responsibility over matters of war and peace, check this out of control president, and stop carrying on with business as usual until this war is ended,” he said.

Booker’s endorsements include the following:

• AFL-CIO New Jersey
• New Jersey State Building and Construction Trades Council
• American Federation of Teachers New Jersey
• Bergen County Democrats
• Black Economic Alliance PAC
• Burlington County Democratic Committee
• Camden County Democratic Committee
• Cape May County Democratic Organization
• Collective PAC
• End Citizens United
• Essex County Democratic Committee
• Feminist Majority PAC
• Giffords PAC
• Gloucester County Democratic Committee
• Gun Sense Voter
• Humane World Action Fund
• Hunterdon County Democratic Committee
• Jewish Democratic Council of America
• Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs
• Justice Opportunity Liberty Politico
• League of Conservation Voters, the LGBTQ PAC, LiUNA
• Mercer County Democratic Committee
• Middlesex County Democratic Organization
• Monmouth County Democrats
• Morris County Democratic Committee
• New Jersey Citizen Action
• New Jersey Education Association
• Newtown Action Alliance
• Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund
• Nurses for America
• Passaic County Democrats
• Piscataway Democratic Organization
• Planned Parenthood Action Fund
• Population Connection Action Fund
• Service Employees International Union
• New Jersey State Council
• Sierra Club
• Sierra Club New Jersey
• Sussex County Democratic Committee
• Union County Democratic Committee
• Woolwich Township Democrats

Fernandez said in an email improving the health care system is a front-burner issue. “I was a licensed property casualty underwriter and what I can tell you is insurance will never work for healthcare,” she said. “Because insurance, by definition and design, is meant to cover loss, not maintenance.” She described health insurance companies as “entirely unnecessary middlemen.” She supports Medicare for all.

Fernandez also believes campaign finance reform is essential, and she supports efforts to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In that decision, the court ruled in favor of allowing corporations, unions and other organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political communications, as long as it is separate from candidates’ campaigns.

“It’s tied to money,” she said. “Like they say, money is the root of all evil. We need fundamental structural change in this country.”

Fernandez said steps must be taken to make life more affordable for average New Jerseyans. “I fill up my car for $65, then in the supermarket, the specials for meat are $18.99 a pound,” she said. “The economy is not working, and in order to fix that we need a working-class Congress.”

On the Middle East, Fernandez called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a war criminal” and described Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. “It’s horrific what’s going on with the Palestinians,” she said. “I would vote to not send money to Israel.”

She said she is strongly opposed to the war in Iran. “It was completely unnecessary, we don’t have the money for it,” she said. “Donald Trump has bankrupted casinos, he’s bankrupting our country, adding to the deficit while enriching himself. No, I don’t support the war in Iran.”

Fernandez has no endorsements to note at this time.

Murphy says on his website that lowering taxes is a top priority. He said he is in favor of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and instituting a flat tax. “I believe America needs a system of taxation that provides economic security for our middle-class, economic mobility for our working-poor, and reward for business and job creation,” he says on his site. “As citizens, our relationship with the federal government is defined by our system of taxation. When government takes excessive amounts of what we create, produce and earn, that relationship is strained.”

Murphy said families in New Jersey and across the nation need to own their homes. “If they do not, Americans are nothing more than serfs that pay rent to a landlord,” he said. “Our constitutional republic will falter if only a few entities own the homes Americans live in. We are not free unless we are economically free. The best homeownership policy is a gainfully employed middle-class, and low interest rates,” he said.

He said parental rights are the civil rights issues of our time. “Given the attempt by the left to sexualize children through public school curriculum, the Republican Party has an extraordinary opportunity to establish itself as the ‘Party of Parents,’” Murphy said. “I believe in school choice for parents and competition between all schools as a way to strengthen our education system. I advocate the complete abolition of the federal Department of Education.”

To strengthen the economy, Murphy favors what he described as energy independence. “Our priority should be development of the almost limitless sources of energy known to be located here in America,” he said. “America has in shale oil three times the amount of proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. Trillions of dollars of assets could be added to our economy. Tens of thousands of union blue-collar jobs can be created if America increases domestic energy production,” he said.

Murphy recently expressed support for Israel. He has not indicated whether he supports the conduct of Israel in Gaza, or U.S. military aid to Israel. He supports military operations in Iran. During an interview, he said he supports continued pressure on Tehran and that “the Iranian regime needs to be long gone.”

Murphy said he is committed to ensuring that the U.S. military remains second to none. “America faces an array of hostile foreign threats,” he said. “China, Iran, and North Korea. Civilization as we know it is being threatened by terrorists and communist dictators that share the objective of knocking off America as the world’s super-power. America’s military should have the capacity to fight and win two wars simultaneously.”

Murphy did not respond to a request for a WHYY News interview.

Murphy’s endorsements include the following:

• Camden County Republican Party
• Gloucester County Republican Party
• Mercer County Republican Party
• Middlesex County Republican Organization
• National Right to Life
• New Jersey Right to Life PAC

Kuniansky said in an email that she stands with workers who resist “the bosses’ attacks on their jobs, wages and working conditions.” She said that means building unions and “opposing the U.S. rulers’ blockade and threats against Cuba, and their wars in the Middle East; defending Jews from growing attacks; and calling for an amnesty for workers in the U.S. without papers.”

Kuniansky said spreading conflicts between the U.S. and foreign countries “is marching humanity toward another world war. The road to prevent that is for the working class to replace capitalist rule with a government of our own and to run society for human need, not the bosses’ profits.”

Kuniansky said the economy must be improved. “The Socialist Workers Party calls on workers to build solidarity with unions fighting attacks on our wages and conditions, a course that strengthens confidence in our own worth and ability to fight,” she said.

Kuniansky supports a plan to create a public works program to provide jobs at union-scale wages to build hospitals, child care centers and other infrastructure. She also supports enacting a shorter work week with no pay cuts.

She said prices for food, gas and rent continue to shoot higher, and “we demand automatic cost-of-living increases in union contracts, pensions, and social security.”

She said advances for the working class don’t come from begging for reforms, but rather “through struggles by working people and our unions — organizing independently of the bosses and their twin parties, the Democrats and Republicans.”

Kuniansky does not support the Iran war, calling it “an imperialist war by the U.S. rulers to plunder oil, gas and labor of the region to deal blows to their “competitors.” At the same time, she called it “a defensive war by Israel to prevent the Jew-hating regime in Tehran from developing nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch them to extend its regional power and to be able to destroy Israel, carrying out another Holocaust. Defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews!”

Kuniansky has no endorsements to note at this time.