NEWARK -- The prospect of Obamacare's repeal by the Republican-controlled Congress and the incoming Trump Administration drew hundreds of people to rallies across the state on Sunday, where union leaders and Democratic elected officials and some who hoped to be vowed to fight to preserve the law that has provided coverage to hundreds of thousands of people in New Jersey.

"Let me say, we are here to start the effort to save the Affordable Care Act, to save lives, to make sure we'll have health insurance," U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) told a packed ballroom at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, following a chant of "The people united will never be defeated!"



"This is fight four our lives, for the lives of our friends and neighbors," Menendez told the cheering crowded. "It is a fight for this nation. It is a fight that I sat on the Senate Health Committee and helped write and helped pass."

In Camden, where Debbie Klein was among about 30 people at a rally, Klein told an audience that she was honored to be there.

"If it weren't for the Affordable Care Act, I don't know if I would be," she said.

Klein, of Haddonfield, didn't work while she cared for her ailing mother, and said she wouldn't have been able to afford coverage if it wasn't for the Affordable Care Act. Her coverage allowed her to have five surgeries at the center last year that ultimately saved her, she said.

"I'm cured," she said.

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The Affordable Care Act has provided coverage to roughly 900,000 New Jersey residents: 250,000 who get coverage through the subsidized federal marketplace, and another 650,000 who became eligible for Medicaid when it was expanded under the act.

"We hear, 'Repeal, repeal, repeal,'" Congressman Donald Norcross, D-Camden, said Sunday. "But there's no plan for what they want to do moving forward."

In Newark, many in the crowd held up signs protesting the repeal initiative or promoting resources to fight it: "ACA has to stay"; "96,000 NJ children will lose coverage;" "We demand lower drug prices"; #FactsMatter.

Rep. Albio Sires (D-8th District), recalled voting to approve the Affordable Care Act in the House, and he warned that healthcare "was only the beginning" of a dismantling or reconfiguration of public programs and institutions by the GOP, including Social Security and the U.S. Supreme Court.



"Over 60,000 people in my district today have health care because of the vote we took," Sires said.



Others who spoke included Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-9th District), who told the crowd, "God bless you," for coming out, and Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-10th District), who recalled voting to approve the healthcare law, and how there would be a "black hole" in the wake of its repeal while awaiting passage and implementation of whatever it is a majority of Congress will agree on to replace it.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka gavce a fiery speech about standing with the majority of Americans who support universal health care, and the majority of voters in the Nov. election who cast their ballot for Hillary Clinton despite Trump's electoral collage win.



Baraka introduced the Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Phil Murpy, the wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive and ambassador to Germany, who quoted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday in warning against a possible erosion of civil rights under the Trump Administration.



"'If there is a threat to justice anywhere, there is a threat to justice everywhere,'" Murphy told the crowd. "We must go forward together and not let up, not relent, and resist until we succeed."

Laurie Beacham of Livingston and Ellen Schwartz of Montclair, law school classmates who are both 53, moms and volunteers for BlueWaveNJ community organization, were among attendees who were not up on the podium. They said the turnout and the passion they saw at the rally would inspire them to continue fighting for progressive causes under a Trump regime.

"I think really one of the silver linings of this whole debacle will be that people start waking up," Beacham said.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.