Following a contentious two-day hearing, Sue Altman appears to have survived challenges to her eligibility to be on the ballot in the Democratic primary for New Jersey’s 12th congressional district, which includes Princeton. Three challenges, including two brought by the campaigns of candidates Sam Wang and Adrian Mapp, questioned the validity of significant portions of the collected signatures in the Altman campaign’s nominating petitions.
Of Altman’s initial 1,022 signatures previously approved by the state Division of Elections, New Jersey administrative law Judge Michael Stanzione ruled that 664 remained valid, above the 500 threshold needed for ballot qualification. Stanzione will issue an advisory opinion on Wednesday, with a final determination to be made by the Secretary of State, Dale Caldwell ’82.
Two signatures collected by the Altman campaign are attributed to “Jesus Christ” and “Louie Lunchmeat.” Both of these names, along with hundreds of the over 500 contested signatures, were disqualified by Stanzione during a hearing that lasted over 12 hours on Monday and continued on Tuesday.
Following the hearing, Rob West, Altman’s campaign manager, claimed the challengers were seeking to “disenfranchise” voters in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. When asked about the comment, Randy Jones, a senior advisor on Sam Wang’s campaign, responded by calling Altman’s petitioning issues “embarrassing and deeply troubling.” Additionally, Paul Blodgett, the chair of the Montgomery Democratic Organization, called on Altman to drop out of the race.
“Any leader of a campaign that falsifies signatures should step aside in the interest of preserving our democratic systems that are actively under attack. For these reasons, I believe Sue Altman should suspend her campaign to serve as the Representative of 12th district of New Jersey in our Congress,” Blodgett wrote in a statement to the ‘Prince.’
West declined to comment on Blodgett’s statement.
The challengers alleged that over half of Altman’s signatures had issues, including that some were signed by people who were not registered to vote or were not registered in the right congressional district. The challengers also raised concerns regarding several circulators for the Altman campaign who were involved in collecting signatures, including four Princeton students, as some circulators were not registered in New Jersey or were affiliated with a different political party.
In addition to Sam Wang and Mapp, Eric Salcedo, representing a group called the Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Against Carpetbagging, also filed a challenge.
Sam Wang is a professor of neuroscience at Princeton. Mapp is the City of Plainfield’s mayor. Salcedo is also the Engagement Director for Wang’s campaign.
West told the ‘Prince’ that the Altman campaign had “contracted a portion of our signatures out to a paid field firm” and that the contracted firm “subcontracted to a few circulators.”
“We expected them to be at a certain integrity, and obviously they weren’t,” West said. “That is disappointing, but nonetheless, we had 664 ballot signatures.”
At the beginning of Tuesday’s hearing, Robert Renaud, the lawyer representing Jansel Fuentes-Jimenez, the Mapp campaign’s chief of staff, voluntarily dismissed the campaign’s challenge. “Based on the rulings that you’ve made thus far, we’ve made an assessment and have decided to voluntarily dismiss that challenge,” Renaud told Stanzione.
Altman was the Democratic nominee for New Jersey’s 7th congressional district in 2024, where she lost to Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.). She announced her campaign in the 12th district in February and received the endorsement of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization later that month.
Some of the most contentious disputes came over the eligibility of several of Altman’s circulators. Four Princeton students — Aidan Davis ’26, Paul Wang ’27, Jayden Moore ’29, and Michelle Miao ’26 — served as circulators but are not registered to vote in New Jersey. Stanzione disqualified the signatures collected by the four students on the basis of a state statute which reads, “the person who circulates the petition shall be a registered voter in this State whose party affiliation is of the same political party named in the petition.”
Moore wrote to The Daily Princetonian that he canvassed for Altman door-to-door and only collected “about a measly 3 signatures.”
Moore acknowledged he is not registered to vote in New Jersey and remains registered in his home state of North Carolina. He said that the campaign had told him his voter registration “may pose a conflict,” but that “they did still have me sign off because they believed it was not in any violation.”
Brett Pugach, the Altman campaign’s legal representation, said that the campaign had verified the out-of-state circulators with New Jersey’s Department of Elections and that court precedent indicated the signatures should be permitted, but Stanzione rejected that argument and said he had to decide based on his reading of the statute.
“We were advised by [Dawn Schilling, of the Department of Elections], that they could be circulators as long as we provided ID, and we followed suit in all those processes,” West said of the out-of-state students in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
“If you’re not registered in N.J., I guess it wouldn’t make too much sense to be trying to influence elections here,” Moore added about Stanzione’s decision.
Miao and Paul Wang declined to comment, and Davis did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Over a dozen Princeton students have volunteered for Altman’s campaign.
“I think it is very interesting that a professor at Princeton, Sam Wang, was leading the charge on disenfranchising his own students,” West said. “He was directly involved in disenfranchising students from being a part of the democratic process, and I think students should know that, but they should also hold him accountable because I think he has betrayed their trust.”
Randy Jones, a senior advisor on Wang’s campaign, blasted West’s comments in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
“That’s one hell of a way to defend an embarrassing and deeply troubling effort from a supposed veteran campaign, and instead of lashing out at a nationally respected democracy reformer, I suggest Mr. West get his house in order, because currently it’s an unimpressive ill-fit effort for the moment facing our country,” Jones said.
In a statement to the ‘Prince,’ Sam Wang characterized West’s comments as “deeply offensive and knowingly ridiculous.”
“Their campaign turned in hundreds of fake signatures, and they’re sloppily using petition gatherers from outside the district, including a registered Republican. They are in no position to criticize and should be concerned for the legitimacy of their effort,” Sam Wang told the ‘Prince’ via a spokesperson.
Another circulator for Altman’s campaign was a registered member of the Green Party while collecting signatures. The challengers sought to disqualify the signatures she collected, but Stanzione ruled that because the circulator switched voter registrations to Democrat within three days of being notified of the issue, the collected signatures could stand. Another circulator is a registered Republican, and the judge disqualified the 26 signatures the circulator collected.
Candidates had to submit signatures to appear on the primary ballot by Monday, March 23, and challenges were accepted until Friday. Thirteen candidates submitted signatures for the Democratic primary, four fewer than the 17 who were initially running. In recent days, Mike Anderson, Raymond Heck, and Iziah Thompson have announced they are dropping out. Rick Morales also did not file signatures before the deadline.
The hearing began on Monday with Robert Renaud, representing Mapp’s campaign, raising objections to all of the signatures in the first four packets of signatures, totalling over 150 names. The vast majority of those signatures were disqualified by Stanzione because the written name, signature, and address could not be matched with a registered voter in the district.
Stanzione said the signatures were “construed liberally to not block people’s access to voting,” and that he would allow some of Altman’s disputed signatures to remain valid if their listed addresses or names were similar enough to an identified voter.
Some of the names were difficult to decipher, though Stanzione worked with expert witnesses Jillian Barby, from the state Division of Elections, and Caitlyn Heuman, from the Atlantic Government Superintendent of Elections, to review each name that was individually objected to.
“I’m at a loss,” Barby said of one hard-to-read written name, roughly seven hours into the hearing on Monday. “Numbers are jumbling in my head,” Stanzione said a while later.
The Mapp and Wang campaigns announced the challenges in a press release on Monday morning.
“Of the nearly 200 signatures listing Plainfield addresses, only a small number could be readily matched to registered voters in Plainfield,” the release said.
Sam Wang said in an interview with the ‘Prince’ on Monday that he had “developed a method” to randomly sample his signees to verify the accuracy of the signatures. He said that he confirmed the validity of “well over” 90 percent of the sample. He then applied the same process to check all of the other candidates’ signatures.
“When we checked the Altman petitions, our random sampling revealed candidates like ‘Jesus Christ,’” Sam Wang said. “We found about 30 in a row people who we could not find in the voter file. At that point, we became very concerned, and so then we started checking every signature.”
Sam Wang said he then “got in touch” with Mapp’s campaign, which checked the Plainfield signatures. Of the first roughly 165 Plainfield signatures, Mapp’s campaign “found that virtually none of them were real people in Plainfield,” according to Sam Wang.
West claimed that the three challengers “got together and were part of the typical Democratic machine politics in Jersey in trying to disenfranchise not only students, but voters.”
“I think that these tactics are very Trumpy, that they’re very Republican-coded to disenfranchise and to litigate these sorts of things,” West said. “It’s very telling of how machine politics in Jersey operate, and this is exactly the fight that Sue Altman has been having for the past 10 years.”
“What is actually ‘Trumpy’ is being less than competent and lashing out at others to cover for your actions,” Jones told the ‘Prince’ in response to West’s comments.
Salcedo wrote that “defending democracy sometimes entails challenging questionable signature gathering tactics no matter who is the perpetrator,” in a comment to the ‘Prince.’
Mapp also criticized West’s characterization of disenfranchisement.
“Instead of honestly reckoning with the sheer volume of invalidated signatures and the carelessness exposed in court, they have chosen to attack the challenge itself and mischaracterize a lawful review process as disenfranchisement,” Mapp wrote in a statement to the ‘Prince.’ “That does not reflect respect for voters. It reflects a campaign attitude that seems unwilling to be burdened by facts or truth when they become inconvenient.”
“Even though Ms. Altman survived this challenge, the record established in court raises legitimate questions about the integrity, diligence, and judgment of her campaign,” Mapp wrote in the statement.
Oliver Wu is the assistant News editor for the ‘Prince’ leading town coverage, focused on the Municipality of Princeton and beyond. He is from Stony Brook, N.Y. and can be reached at oliver.wu[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Luke Grippo contributed reporting.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
A correction was made on March 31, 2026: A previous version of the illustration credit on the graphic accompanying this article misstated the name of the illustrator. It is Juan Fajardo, not Farjardo. The ‘Prince’ regrets this error.
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