Democrats have another progressive voice in Congress with win in New Jersey

TRENTON, N.J. — Democrats snagged another seat in the House of Representatives, as progressive Analilia Mejia quickly won her special election on Thursday.

The Associated Press called the race mere minutes after polls closed at 8 p.m., with Mejia well ahead of Republican competitor Joe Hathaway at just 25% of the in-person votes counted.

Hathaway started the day behind due to early and mail-in voting breaking more Democratic. Nearly 9% of the district’s electorate had voted early, according to state estimates earlier in the week, with 62% of advance votes being cast by Democrats compared with only 25% from Republicans and about 14% from unaffiliated voters.

“This victory belongs to all of us!” Mejia said in a statement Friday morning. ““We won by organizing our communities and that work doesn’t stop now.”

By winning the seat vacated by now-Governor Mikie Sherrill, Democrats have another member in the House as they try to reclaim the majority.

Mejia’s win will be a short-lived victory for her, however, as she will again have to defend the seat in the regular primaries held in June and again in the general election this November.

Going into Thursday, Mejia had a sizeable advantage monetarily; she had more than $1 million in contributions through the end of March, while Hathaway’s campaign boasted little more than half of that.

She also had a comfortable lead in the scant few polls, including an internal poll last month that gave her a 17-point advantage over Hathaway and an 11-point advantage among independent voters. Political betting site Kalshi had Mejia with a 77% chance of beating Hathaway in the special election.

For more than three decades, the 11th congressional district — comprised of slivers of Essex, Morris and Passaic counties — was considered a “red” district. In 2018, Sherrill flipped the district blue when she handily beat opponent Jay Webber 57% to 42%. Her reelection in 2020 was much tighter, though Sherrill’s margins of victory again widened after redistricting in 2022.

In February, Mejia won her primary against 10 other Democrats, including former Representative Tom Malinowski, who initially was projected to win the primary. Other candidates had included former Lieutenant Governor Tahesha Way and Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill. Both Gill and Malinowski endorsed and helped campaign with Mejia.

During the primaries, Mejia had the backing of New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who called her a “fighter for working people who has been on the front lines” of immigration and health care battles — and her former boss, Senator Bernie Sanders.

In a statement online, Sanders said “Analilia will be a great progressive addition to the House in the fight for economic, racial, social and environmental justice." Mejia also received congratulations from numerous labor unions and Democratic activists after the swift win.

She also had nabbed endorsements from key New Jersey Democrats like Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and state Senator Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg.

The Republican primary was a race against nobody: Hathaway was the only one on the ballot.

In a statement posted online, Hathaway congratulated Mejia on the win, but took aim at the setup of the election by a “partisan Democratic governor,” claiming Republicans were disfavored by a low Election Day turnout environment and the prevalence of mail-in ballots.

“I still believe the broader electorate in NJ-11 is looking for balanced, pragmatic leadership, not the kind of far-left policies embraced by Ms. Meija,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the rematch in November, where more voices will be heard and the full electorate will have its say.”

Hathaway, the former mayor of Randolph Township and a one-time Chris Christie aide, had announced his candidacy for Sherrill’s seat in October 2025 even before Sherrill won the governor’s race.

On the campaign trail, Hathway had an uphill climb. With few media appearances and hoping to win a seat that had become more reliably blue in recent years, he also had not secured a nomination from President Donald Trump.

Hathway had been relatively silent on controversial subjects, hoping to position himself as a bipartisan “get things done” legislator. He has offered tepid praise for Trump and even opposed plans for a new immigration detention center in Roxbury, New Jersey.

However, Hathaway tried to slam Mejia as antisemitic for her criticism of Israel and painted her as a radical in support of such positions as universal health care.

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