Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman has served as the U.S. Representative for New Jersey’s 12th congressional district since 2015. She is the first African American woman to represent New Jersey in Congress. In 2018 she was elected to her third term in the U.S. House of Representatives. She previously served in the New Jersey General Assembly from 1998 to 2015 for the 15th Legislative District.
Watson Coleman’s belief in equality is one of the main reasons she first decided to run for Congress and extends to all the matters that shape working families’ lives, including the notion that neither income, social status, occupation nor lack thereof should determine someone’s access to high-quality, affordable healthcare.
Bonnie is passionate about the issues affecting working families of all backgrounds, including criminal justice reform, building an economy that works for all families rather than a wealthy few, and rebuilding infrastructure to improve this country and support job creation. She focuses on these priorities and other critical issues as a member of the House Committees on Appropriations and Homeland Security.
Since coming to Congress, Watson Coleman has championed protections for vulnerable Americans including authoring the Healthy MOM Act, which would allow women to enroll in, or change their health coverage if they become pregnant; the End For-Profit Prisons Act, which would prohibit the federal government from contracting with for-profit prison corporations; the SAFER Pipelines Act that would reform the gas pipeline approval process overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; and the Customer Non-Discrimination Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in “public accommodations,” such as schools, recreational facilities and retail stores.