A combat surgeon who saved Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) when a grenade took down her helicopter in Iraq is the latest progressive candidate drawing hefty support from the new super PAC American Priorities.

The multimillion-dollar pro-Palestine PAC, which organizers registered earlier this year to counter the Israel lobby’s exaggerated influence over U.S. elections, is planning to spend $2 million on Democrat Dr. Adam Hamawy’s campaign to represent New Jersey’s 12th District. The group is starting with a $600,000 ad buy that launched last Friday and will run for about two and a half weeks on cable, smart TVs, YouTube, and in targeted digital ads. The advertisement, “Heart,” highlights Hamawy’s long career saving lives in New Jersey and in combat zones around the world, a nod to his “healthcare-not-bombs” platform. American Priorities said funding for Hamawy would more than triple by primary day on June 2.

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“The campaign’s new ad introduces Dr. Adam Hamawy—a physician, decorated veteran, and political outsider who has dedicated his life to fighting for those most in need—to likely Democratic primary voters across NJ-12,” the super PAC said. “American Priorities views Dr. Hamawy as the strongest possible champion for NJ-12 families in Congress.”

HAMAWY IS PULLING AHEAD in a crowded race to replace Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman after she announced she would retire at the end of this year. Coleman, 81, has represented NJ-12 for more than a decade and said she will not endorse any of the contenders. Several others have endorsed Hamawy, however, including Sen. Duckworth, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Justice Democrats, Common Defense, and Elijah Dixon, a democratic socialist from Trenton who was also running for NJ-12 and dropped out in mid-April. Dixon told the New Jersey Globe that he’d done so to consolidate leftists’ chances of winning against candidates backed by lobbyists for artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, or Israel.

Twelve candidates remain, though voters will see 13 on the ballot because it’s too late to remove Dixon’s name. Hamawy has drawn the most in campaign contributions, with receipts totaling nearly $547,000. Behind him are ob/gyn and East Brunswick mayor Brad Cohen, with slightly more than $424,000. Watson Coleman made a rare statement about the race in February when she called Cohen “a hardline supporter of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.” Susan Altman, former state director of the Working Families Party and former state director for Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ), has raised $406,000. Altman failed to defeat Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) in a different district two years ago.

Hamawy operating on a patient
Hamawy speaks about the American health care system from the perspective of his 25 years as a surgeon. Credit: Hamawy for New Jersey

Other top contenders include the longtime mayor of Plainfield, Adrian Mapp; New Jersey Assemblymember Verlina Reynolds-Jackson; Somerset County Commissioner Director Shanel Robinson; and former Biden administration White House and Energy Department official Jay Vaingankar.

HAMAWY’S PITCH IS SIMILAR to those of progressive candidates across the country who are offering voters a vision of the future in which the government allocates taxpayer dollars to life-sustaining programs instead of to empire-building and enriching the ultra-wealthy. Others with a similar message have resonated strongly with voters, including Rep. Analilia Mejia, who won a tight race next door to Hamawy in NJ-11 by talking to voters about the “need to claw back the $75 billion that was stolen from the American people” and given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to terrorize immigrants.

Like Mejia and other progressives, Hamawy connects the dots between foreign and domestic policies, making plain the connection between the GOP’s racist war profiteering and the diminished quality of life in America. As one of several medical professionals running as Democrats this year, Hamawy’s top priority is health care, a major issue for midterm voters after the passage of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill last year. That spending package slashed funding for Medicare and Medicaid, kicking millions of people off their insurance and shuttering hospitals across the country. Health care is now the chief economic anxiety for U.S. residents across party lines according to KFF. Sixty-six percent of U.S. residents told KFF that they’re worried about affording health care; 67 percent said Congress did the “wrong thing” by failing to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits.

When he speaks about American health care, Hamawy does so not only from the perspective of his 25 years as a surgeon, but specifically as a combat surgeon, an experience that is rare for doctors and politicians alike. Hamawy has spent his career racing to save lives as others were taking them; he has seen the daily pile of body bags outside the hospitals he’s worked in, the effects of U.S. policy deadly clear. His most widely known medical intervention was in 2004, when he saved Duckworth’s life after her Black Hawk helicopter went down in Iraq. She lost both her legs; Hamawy saved her from losing one of her arms as well.

Hamawy standing with two children in Gaza ruins.
Hamawy has volunteered in Gaza twice in the past two years, as well as in the West Bank. Credit: Hamawy for New Jersey

But that is only one instance where Hamawy’s work has saved lives and repaired broken bodies. He volunteers in disaster and war zones annually, including throughout Central America, in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, and most recently, Lebanon. In the last two years, he’s volunteered in Gaza twice, as well as in the West Bank. What he saw in Gaza “was not like anything I’d experienced in the past,” he told the Prospect. He saw Israeli soldiers deliberately kill civilians every single day.

“This was definitely not a war,” he said. “It is a genocide.”

At one point in 2024, Hamawy’s team had traveled from Egypt to Gaza while the Rafah crossing was open. But once there, Israeli soldiers told them they couldn’t leave Gaza the same way, nor could they leave the hospital grounds. With the help of Duckworth and other connections, Hamawy arranged for safe passage—but only for the U.S. citizens. Hamawy’s team was multinational, including members from Australia, Ireland, and Jordan, and he refused to leave them behind. Instead, he took days to coordinate with the U.N., the World Health Organization, and U.S. agencies while bombs fell around the hospital in intensified strikes. “I counted one time, we had 17 bombs land within an hour,” he said, “almost like a punishment for not leaving.”

Hamawy finally left the genocide when the rest of his team could, too. He told the Prospect he came to terms with the fact that he might die well before he undertook the mission, adding that fear is a poor reason for inaction.

“I feel we all have time that’s allotted to us,” he said. “If I let fear keep me from doing what I had to do, then nothing ever gets done in the world.”

That is the spirit he said he wants to see in American halls of power, the spirit that will win the U.S. back from bigotry, profit-seeking, and kingdom-building. He’s sick of seeing money go to war profiteers for violence abroad instead of for social services at home. And he’s sick of establishment Democrats’ inaction.

“What we lack is not money, it’s guts in Congress,” he said. “This is where I’m different. I don’t talk about things, I go and take action.”

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Whitney Curry Wimbish is a staff writer at The American Prospect. She previously worked in the Financial Times newsletters division, The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh, and the Herald News in New Jersey. Her work has been published in multiple outlets, including The New York Times, The Baffler, Los Angeles Review of Books, Music & Literature, North American Review, Sentient, Semafor, and elsewhere. She is a coauthor of The Majority Report’s daily newsletter and publishes short fiction in a range of literary magazines. She can be reached on Signal at wwimbish.07.