When Donald Trump swept the Iowa Caucus with more than 50% of his party’s support, a former bricklayer from Belleville was watching his favored candidate’s success closely.
So closely, he was inspired to run for Congress without a day’s experience as an elected official at any level of government.
“It was something I considered [the previous year.] But then I decided to throw my hat in the ring during the Iowa Caucus,” said Joseph Belnome, a housing inspector for Belleville Township who is challenging Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D—NJ) in the Nov. 5 election.
While Belnome trounced two other political newcomers with over 85% of the vote in June’s primary, the general isn’t an easy race to win for any Republican, given the 11th Congressional District’s tract within Essex County ― a democratic stronghold which Sherrill leveraged to flip the seat in 2018. Once elected, she continued to court liberal enclaves like Montclair to swiftly rise as a major player among New Jersey Democrats.
Adding to Republicans’ trouble in left-leaning carveouts like Maplewood, Livingston and South Orange, the elephants in the room elected a candidate with quite the elephant in the room.
Belnome ― a vocal supporter of Donald Trump ― attended the Stop The Steal rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, then marched to the U.S. Capitol where throngs of rioters delayed Congress from certifying election results as they overwhelmed the complex in a violent siege.
Belnome denies raiding the Capitol’s interior and has not been charged in relation to the attack.
“I peacefully marched to the Capitol. I did not break anything. I did not have altercations with police. I did not go in the building,” he said in July during an interview with NorthJersey.com. He claims he left after finding himself alone and “just standing there.”
Feeling cold in the January air, he returned to his hotel unaware of the violence and destruction that occurred inside the legislative hub until he saw news reports on television, the Republican candidate claims.
Sherrill’s campaign fired back against her opponent’s account of the upheaval that enraptured the nation and personally besieged the congresswoman, who was forced to evacuate the joint session along with her colleagues.
“Joe Belnome is an election-denying insurrectionist no matter what revisionist history he tries to sell to voters,” said Sean Higgins, a spokesperson for Sherrill. “Photo evidence that shows Belnome beyond the police barricades proves as much.”
A rogue group of investigators calling itself the Sedition Hunters have logged multiple photographs of a person closely resembling Belnome climbing scaffolding outside the complex, parading within a mob as it pressed toward the building’s western entrance and overlooking the inaugural stage from a marble veranda.
“I can’t say for sure whether all the pictures there are of me or not,” Belnome said, noting he hasn’t “really studied” the Sedition Hunters website.
Whatever Belnome personally witnessed, violent struggles enabled his presence on federal property that had been protected by metal barricades and police cordons not long before he and others descended en masse on a government building closed to the public.
Belnome has said he “regrets what happened that day” and attributes the havoc to “a small group of agitators.” But rejects the label “insurrectionist,” noting prosecutors have yet to charge anyone who was at the Capitol under the Federal Insurrection Act. The most serious charges leveled against rioters include conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding. Hundreds more have been charged or convicted of trespassing on restricted grounds, according to multiple reports by USA Today.
The Colorado State Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in December that Trump was unfit for candidacy having incited an insurrection. Although the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision 5-4 based on its key legal standing ― the 14th Amendment ― the majority’s written opinion did not state the Colorado panel erred in defining the mob’s actions as an “insurrection.”
“Anybody who was part of that violent riot ― where more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured […] is completely unfit for public office in the United States of America,” Higgins stated via email, although the Justice Department’s official statement is that 140 is the number of officers who were “assaulted.”
Whatever voters may think of Belnome’s activities on Jan. 6 or his description of the events, one fact remains indisputable: He attended a rally-turned-violent uprising against the certification of a presidential election. Nor does he deny it.
In July, he claimed ballot boxes were “stuffed.” During an Oct. 9 candidate forum hosted by the Jewish Federation of MetroWest NJ, he alleged that “some precincts accepted ballots with no postmark date […] weeks after Election Day,” and that precincts in Pennsylvania and Georgia “mysteriously stopped counting on election night.”
Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt posted on X (then known as Twitter) at 3 a.m. on Nov. 4, 2020, assuring the public all remaining ballots were being tallied, which ― like many of Belnome’s claims ― had spread on social media as results fluctuated and pundits cried foul.
Several of Belnome’s “deep-seated concerns” have been repeatedly debunked and owed to a disparity in how each party voted that year. Republicans overwhelmingly cast their votes in-person on Election Day while mail-in ballots — utilized significantly more than in prior elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic — leaned democratic and took poll workers a protracted period to count.
Before Election Day, multiple news reports predicted a sudden swing from an apparent blow-out in Trump’s favor to anyone’s game for days on end based on the deluge of mail-in ballots. Nevertheless, Trump and his campaign sowed an aversion to mailed ballots in right-wing minds. Thus, fomenting both a partisan difference in how votes were cast and suspicion of its inevitable effect: a prudent act turned ouroboros.
Belnome claims he never suggested votes were “switched” and did not question Biden’s win outright. Rather, he has resigned to accept the official results: “We’re not going to change it. So, I’m not going to waste my time on it.”
When asked, the candidate was unambiguous that he would accept the official results of his race against Sherrill.
What remains ambiguous about Belnome is the information that forms his policy perspectives or where he found it. Throughout a 40-minute interview, his citations included “several social media posts,” “the news” and “my opinion.”
However, that’s not to say his reasonings were invariably false. Belnome’s rebuke of pro-Palestinian protestors burning American flags is supported by at least one widely reported incident outside Washington’s Union Station. And a rough estimate of U.S. wartime aid to Ukraine of $100 billion was more-or-less on the nose according to the Council on Foreign Affairs.
U.S. involvement in conflicts abroad is a central platform of his campaign. Particularly, his ardent opposition to funding Ukraine’s defense and support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and proxy-offensives throughout the region.
Here is what he and Sherrill have said of their stances on the Middle East and other issues:
Middle East
“I don’t want a cease fire. I want the total defeat and unconditional surrender of those who seek to destroy Israel and our western way of life,” Belnome said during the Jewish Federation’s candidate forum.
While he condemned “all forms of hate,” specifically citing Islamophobia, he referred to Gaza as a “failed” opportunity for Palestine to prove it could govern its own state.
For all Belnome’s criticisms of Sherrill’s position on the Middle East, the three-term congresswoman remained balanced in her tact for mending the historically complex dispute.
“The defense of Israel is sacrosanct,” Sherrill said during the same forum. Supporting Israel ― now more than ever due to the recent trade of fire with Iran ― aligns with U.S. domestic security, she said. At the same time, she expressed “deep concerns about the humanitarian issues in Gaza.”
Neither position is mutually exclusive for Sherrill: “I don’t think my statements have changed since the start of the [conflict.] We simply move onto other conversations.”
Queer rights
Less than a month before Belnome’s interview, an anonymous suspect issued fraudulent bomb threats to the Montclair Public Library and a nearby church — known for its acceptance of queer parishioners – successfully preventing a Drag Story Hour event.
Within preceding years, the Parents Rights movement, which seeks to ban queer-themed books from municipal and school-run libraries and institute policies that would require faculty to alert parents if their child identifies as transgender, gained traction throughout Morris County, where much of New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District lies.
“I condemn any political violence or threats,” Belnome said, referring to the incident in Montclair. However, he was just as fervent in his belief that gender is biologically static.
“There are only boys and girls. That’s it,” he said. “If a child wants to identify as another gender, the parents should know about it. To me, that is gender dysphoria, a classified mental condition that needs to be treated.”
Gender dysphoria is listed in the latest edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders.” However, the term was updated to remove the word “disorder” and its entry clarifies that “dysphoria” is caused by an inability to live as one’s “expressed gender” without impediment or discrimination.
“That is not parental rights,” Sherrill said of the movement to remove queer themes from K-12 education during a meeting with The Record’s editorial board. “That is [one side] wanting to impose their views on other parents.”
She agreed collections should be age-appropriate: “I’m not going to put [Tolstoy’s] ‘War and Peace’ in a kindergarten library,” but disagreed that students should be cloistered from topics that differ from their own experience.
“I think that’s what books are supposed to do, bring empathy for other views and thoughts,” she said. Limiting a child’s exposure to another person’s struggles “is not education,” according to Sherrill.
Renewable energy
A state-brokered deal to erect a windfarm off the coast of Atlantic City fell apart last year. The project was beleaguered by quarrels between Murphy’s administration and the developer. But partisan disagreements within the state legislature over its cost, efficacy and alleged dangers fueled its defeat.
“If we are going to meet our energy needs in the future, we need to explore all avenues that lead to increasing production and lowering costs and carbon emissions,” Sherrill stated.
She supports an “all of the above” approach to stem climate change that would leverage solar and wind power, combined with cleaner use of fossil fuels and nuclear power. Moreover, offshore wind farms would lower energy costs and provide jobs for residents, according to Sherrill.
“It’s fine to have some renewable forms of energy but never be reliant on that,” said Belnome, who prefers tapping domestic oil to reduce reliance on foreign sources. “The Democrats’ plan seems to be putting us fully on renewable energy and it’s just not feasible,” he alleged, in contrast to Sherrill’s statements.
Belnome repeated claims debunked by The Record that endangered species of birds would be killed, flying haplessly into the rotating blades of offshore wind farms. Asked where he sourced that information, he stated, “You could say that is my opinion and people could decide for themselves.”
Conversely, his concerns that mining essential metals used to manufacture electric vehicle batteries harms sea life has been shared by numerous environmental experts. However, the devastation depends on the method.
Collecting small rocklike buildups of metals that lie deep on the ocean’s floor has been a controversial issue due its mitigation of destructive terrestrial mining but simultaneous disturbance to one of the planet’s last remaining undisturbed habitats. BMW, Google and “Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, have called for a temporary ban” on the practice, Reuters reported last year.
Tax deductions
For all their partisan contrasts, both candidates expressed some overlap regarding one crucial issue for New Jersey voters: a $10,000 limit on the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal tax bills (known as a SALT cap) signed by former President Trump in 2017. The change caused stampedes of homeowners to overwhelm municipal offices in an attempt to prepay as much of their 2018 property taxes as they could afford before the law took effect.
Belnome has vowed a full repeal of the cap. Whereas Sherrill, who fought for an unqualified elimination of the limit only to have the effort defeated in the Senate, has since sought pragmatic solutions that raise the cap until a full repeal can be ironed out in both chambers.
She co-introduced the Tax Relief for Middle Class Families Act in the House, which was sponsored by Sen. George Helmy (D—NJ) in the upper chamber last month. If signed, the bill would raise the cap to $100,000.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Joseph Belnome, at Capitol on Jan. 6, faces Mikie Sherrill
