All three county Republican chairmen in the 9th congressional district will support attorney Tiffany Burress, a day-one show of force that puts Burress in a strong position to win the district’s Republican primary.
Passaic GOP Chair Peter Murphy, Bergen GOP Chair Jack DeLorenzo, and Hudson GOP Chair Jose Arango, all of whom spent most of 2025 scrupulously avoiding weighing in on the murky race to take on Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), said just hours after Burress’s campaign launch that they believe she’s the right candidate for the seat.
“NJ-09 is in play for Republicans, and Tiffany Burress is the candidate who can win this district,” the three chairmen said in a joint statement. “With her experience, leadership, and connections in our shared communities, Tiffany has what it takes to bring fresh, accountable representation to North Jersey.”
The National Republican Campaign Committee, too, is signaling that it likes Burress. Although the House Republican campaign arm isn’t making an endorsement in the race, it’s singling out Burress by name, which it never did for the other Republicans running in the 9th district.
“While out of touch Democrat Nellie Pou has dedicated her taxpayer-funded career to hiking taxes and costs on New Jerseyans, Tiffany Burress has spent hers fighting for workers and their families,” NRCC spokesperson Maureen O’Toole said. “Nellie Pou has failed to deliver for New Jersey, and voters are fed up. This November, they’ll vote her out.”
Getting official party support in all three of the 9th district’s counties – which today’s county chair announcement likely guarantees, though Burress will still have to win a convention in Bergen County – puts Burress at an advantage against her one declared opponent, Clifton Councilwoman Rosie Pino. (The death of the county line, though, makes that party support less of an end-all-be-all than it once was.)
Pino has been actively running since July, but was unable to use that head start to build up a huge advantage in fundraising or party support. Still, Pino has been starting to gather some local support across the district, recently unveiling endorsements from seven former GOP nominees for the state legislature in Bergen and Passaic Counties; while none of them came especially close to winning, they collectively appeared on a majority of voters’ ballots in the 9th district.
Pino’s campaign said today that Pino remains the “only proven winner in this race” – she has won several nonpartisan elections for council and school board in Clifton, while Burress is a political newcomer – and accused Burress of only switching her registration from unaffiliated to Republican in the lead-up to her campaign.
“Supporting an unknown, untested, out-of-touch candidate who does not reside in the district and changed her party affiliation a few weeks ago just to run for office would be the political equivalent of shooting ourselves in the leg – dividing the Republican Party and forfeiting the opportunity to hold the critical House majority,” Pino spokesperson Kenny Gonzalez said. (Burress lives in Totowa, which is a few miles outside the 9th district.)
Billy Prempeh, the unsuccessful Republican nominee for the seat in 2020, 2022, and 2024, had also planned on challenging Pou once again this year, but dropped out of the race in December while alleging that local party leaders were scheming against him.
Republicans have been interested in targeting Pou since the 2024 election, when Donald Trump unexpectedly carried the district and Pou was held to a five-point win against Prempeh. Pou, though, used the off-year to build up a substantial campaign warchest, and Mikie Sherrill’s gubernatorial victory showed some signs that the 9th district has shifted back towards Democrats since Trump’s win.
