Analilia Mejia appeared to cement victory in the Democratic primary to replace New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill in Congress after her top opponent conceded Tuesday morning.
It’s a massive upset win for the progressive movement.
Mejia led the race with a razor-thin margin when former U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, the closest contender, conceded. The Associated Press has still not called the race five days after the election as the race remains tight, but Malinowski’s concession will enable Mejia to focus on campaigning for her April 16 contest against Republican Joe Hathaway.
The progressive, an Afro-Latina, shared a gif of Bad Bunny overwhelmed with emotion as he stood last week to receive the coveted album of the year Grammy for Debí Tirar Más Fotos — the first Spanish album to get the honor.
She delivered a victory speech a couple of hours later on a livestream that kicked off with about two dozen supporters from unions and progressive groups chanting “abolish ICE,” “tax the rich,” and “Mejia for Congress.”
Mejia said she wants to represent “every voice” in the district and said the victory was not hers alone.
“This isn’t a race in which one individual won,” she said. “This is a race in which the community stepped up and said, ‘In this moment, what we want are real representatives who will listen to the people, who will ask questions about what is keeping you up at night, who will prioritize your interest over special interests.’”
There were 13 candidates in the special primary for the open North Jersey seat, but as the results poured in Thursday it became a race between Mejia, a progressive endorsed by the Working Families Party, and Malinowski, a moderate who represented a neighboring district before losing his reelection bid in 2022.
“Analilia deserves unequivocal praise and credit for running a positive campaign and for inspiring so many voters on Election Day,” Malinowski said in a statement Tuesday.
Malinowski initially appeared to be in the lead Thursday night, which led multiple outlets and the Democratic National Committee to prematurely declare the race in his favor. Mejia picked up steam and moved ahead of him as the night went on, and publications issued retractions.
In response, Mejia shared on social media the famous 1948 photo of President Harry Truman holding up the Chicago Tribune’s erroneous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline.
Mejia, the daughter of Colombian and Dominican immigrants, has repeatedly said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot be reformed and should therefore be abolished as President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics become increasingly scrutinized across the country.
She said at a news conference Friday that her position resonated with voters, and that the agency “must be replaced by something that isn’t violent, that isn’t shooting Americans in the streets, that is respecting our Constitution.”
She made the case during her campaign that “any old blue just won’t do” and that she is “unbought and unbossed.”
Malinowski raised nearly three times as much as Mejia through Jan. 16, according to Federal Election Commission data.
Her victory is a major breakthrough for New Jersey’s progressive movement in what has become a fairly reliably blue district that includes parts of Essex, Morris, and Passaic Counties. It comes on the heels of a progressive victory in the crowded Jersey City mayoral race.
(function () {window.addEventListener(‘message’, function (e) { var message = e.data; var els = document.querySelectorAll(‘iframe[src*=”‘ + message.id + ‘”]’); els.forEach(function(el) { el.style.height = message.height + ‘px’; }); }, false); })();
It also adds another feather to the cap of the national progressive movement after the victory of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was supported by some of the same high-profile progressives as Mejia, including U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders (Ind., Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.).
Sherrill, who remained neutral in the primary, said in a statement Tuesday that she endorses Mejia’s campaign to replace her seat in Congress.
“I’ve known Analilia for years — I’ve seen her dedication to expanding opportunity and fighting for working people. I know she will be a great partner in Congress whether it is fighting for the Gateway Tunnel or to protect our Constitutional rights,” Sherrill said, referencing a major infrastructure project Trump halted.
Mejia will enter the April special election as a heavy favorite against Hathaway, the former Randolph mayor who ran unopposed in the Republican primary. A regular primary will take place less than two months later, on June 2, for the midterm elections in November. That means the winner’s term will last only through this year.
The progressive, who grew up in Elizabeth, lives with her husband and two kids in Glen Ridge in Essex County, where she says she has resided for 13 years.
She said Friday that garnering name recognition was an “uphill battle” since she was one of the last candidates to join the crowded race. Even though mail ballots went out before many voters had the chance to get to know her, her team made it up “by being on the ground and having the most extensive field operation possible,” she added.
Mejia has most recently worked as the co-executive director of Popular Democracy, a network of organizations across the country that call for “transformational change for Black, brown and low-income communities,” according to its website.
She has a long resumé in activism, politics, and government, including working as the national political director for Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, the deputy director for the U.S. Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau under former President Joe Biden, the executive director of the New Jersey Working Families Party, and a union organizer before launching her bid for the seat.
She said she also campaigned for Sherrill’s gubernatorial bid last year, whose organizers prioritized reaching Spanish-speaking voters. Mejia spoke in both English and Spanish in her victory speech.
Her victory is the latest example of how the Democratic establishment in New Jersey is losing its grasp on primaries in the state.
That is largely because New Jersey redesigned its primary ballot system last year to get rid of its county line ballot. The long-held system was advantageous to candidates supported by their local party apparatus, and progressive activists like Mejia worked for years to dismantle it to give other candidates a shot.
Malinowski had the endorsement of the Morris County Democratic Committee, and the other local committees supported candidates who fell behind the two front-runners.
AIPAC’s attacks on Malinowski
A thorn in Malinowski’s side was a series of attacks funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel national lobbying group, on issues unrelated to Israel. The method may have backfired, since Mejia has been more critical of Israel than the former House member.
United Democracy Project, a super PAC funded by AIPAC, attacked Malinowski in ads for voting “with Trump” by supporting bipartisan legislation that included funding for federal immigration enforcement. It also went after him for undisclosed stock trading while in Congress, for which he had received previous scrutiny.
Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for the super PAC, told the New York Times that Malinowski is not sufficiently supportive of Israel because he has talked about putting conditions on aid for the country.
The group spent nearly $2 million on the race, according to Adimpact, which tracks TV and other spending by campaigns.
Malinowski, who generally supports Israel, said in his concession statement that the results of the race “cannot be understood” without looking at the “dishonest ads” funded by the group.
“I wish I could say today that this effort, which was meant to intimidate Democrats across the country, failed in NJ-11,” he said. “But it did not. I met several voters in the final days of the campaign who had seen the ads and asked me, sincerely: ‘Are you MAGA? Are you for ICE?’”
He said he will oppose any candidates AIPAC backs in the June primary when the seat is again on the line.
Mejia said AIPAC’s attacks demonstrate the influence money has over American politics, but she rejected the notion AIPAC played a decisive role in the race.
“What they didn’t do is win this for us,” she said. “How we won it was people power. How we won it was talking to folks. How we won it was knocking at doors. How we won it was being ready at every moment.”
