Sue Altman was thrown out of a hearing as a critic of George Norcross. Six years later, she’s running for Congress
“I think what the electorate is hungry for and what the party needs are people who are going to challenge power,” Altman said.
Sue Altman showed up to a state Senate hearing in 2019 to confront George Norcross and was dragged out by state troopers. Six years later, she’s using that incident as an example of why New Jersey voters should send her to Congress.
“If anything can prepare you for a dogfight that Washington politics is, it’s Jersey politics,” said Altman, one of more than 15 Democrats vying to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman in a reliably blue Central Jersey seat.
Altman, 43, recently resigned after serving for the last year as state director for Sen. Andy Kim, a South Jersey Democrat who has also challenged the state’s machine politics. Before that role, she unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2024 in a swing district, which borders Coleman’s district.
She made a name for herself as a progressive activist in Camden, where she fought former Republican Gov. Chris Christie as the state began its takeover of the city’s public schools, vocally criticized powerbrokers like Norcross, and led a legal effort to abolish the county line from New Jersey ballots before Kim took it to the finish line in 2024.
“My time in Camden was extremely important, and in many ways shapes the work that I did in the state from that point forward,” she said.
While Altman built her progressive credentials in Camden, she has most recently lived in Lambertville and will be moving northeast to Bridgewater to move in with her long-term boyfriend, who lives just outside the district’s boundaries.
“I think what the electorate is hungry for and what the party needs are people who are going to challenge power,” she said. “I’ve done that my whole career.”
Altman, who grew up in Central Jersey, played professional basketball in Ireland and Germany after graduating from Columbia University. She earned two master’s degrees from Oxford University before landing in Camden in 2014.
She garnered attention in the city for going back and forth with Christie for roughly six minutes at a public meeting in which they tossed a microphone in the air to each other.
After Donald Trump’s first election as president in 2016, Altman helped organize South Jersey Women for Progressive Change, a group that campaigned for Kim’s 2018 election to the U.S. House and spoke out against machine politics. She said she continued that work as she took the reins as executive director of the state’s Working Families Party in 2019 from Analilia Mejia — the progressive who won the Democratic primary to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill.
Altman drew national attention that year after she was dragged out of the hearing in Trenton on a corporate tax incentive program Norcross defended, drawing a message of support from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Ma.). Activists used images of the incident to bolster their argument that unelected power brokers like Norcross hold outsize influence in New Jersey, though Norcross later said he didn’t believe she should have been thrown out.
Camden Mayor Vic Carstarphen, a Democrat, criticized Altman for what he called her “singular focus” on “trying to tear down” Norcross during her time in Camden for her own “self promotion.”
“She created a lot of chaos in the city, and ran amok throughout the city,” Carstarphen said Tuesday.
In 2021, Altman led the legal strategy in the first major lawsuit against the county line, the old ballot which was advantageous to party-endorsed candidates. The fall of the line has led to more competitive primaries, including her own.
She went on to unsuccessfully challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr., losing by more than 5 points in 2024.
Altman said dealing with immigration cases while working in Kim’s office partially inspired her to run again. She said Democrats should replace ICE with “full comprehensive immigration reform” while also securing the border.
Neither Kim nor the Working Families Party have weighed in on the race.
Altman warns that the country is at “one of the most vulnerable points” in its history with Trump in office for a second time.
“We have a very short window of time to prove to the rest of the country that Democrats in power can deliver for people and hold Trump accountable, but not get overwrought with the politics of it,” she said.