Analilia Mejia, a one-time labor organizer backed by progressive champions Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, is headed to Congress.
Mejia, running on a platform that emphasized Medicare for All, a $25 minimum wage with the first $40,000 tax-free, a wealth tax, abolishing ICE and holding President Donald Trump and his administration accountable, convincingly defeated Republican candidate Joe Hathaway in Thursday’s special election in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District.
With her nearly 20-point victory, Mejia will fill the final eight months of the term of Gov. Mikie Sherrill, the more moderate Democratic representative who stepped down from Congress in November after winning New Jersey’s gubernatorial election.
Mejia, who is likely to align herself with the so-called “Squad” of younger, diverse and progressive House Democrats, called herself the “sassy new member of Congress” in her victory speech.
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The special election came as the GOP clings to a fragile House majority. Republicans would have relished the opportunity to pick up the seat, but they faced a steep uphill climb to flip the suburban district Sherrill won by 15 points in her 2024 re-election and carried by roughly the same margin in last year’s gubernatorial election.
Hathaway, a former Randolph Township mayor and current council member who was unopposed for the GOP congressional nomination, aimed to paint Mejia as too far to the left for the district. He told Fox News Digital the choice for voters was “between a common sense, practical independent leader who’s gotten things done at the local level in New Jersey and knows the issues, contrasted with someone who’s running on pure ideology, far left-wing ideology, Squad-backed ideology.”
“I think we have the right math, the right bipartisan coalition to come together to win this thing on April 16,” an optimistic Hathaway predicted.
But Hathaway came up far short, given the rough political climate facing Republicans and the traditional headwinds for the party in power.
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Mejia, on Thursday night, pushed back against the claims she’s a radical.
“My opponent has spent his whole campaign calling me names and saying my ideas are too radical. But we know, that is a mind trick, on brand for a spin doctor, but easily countered if you just open your eyes,” Mejia said. “It is not radical to say that one of the wealthiest nations in the world should do more to protect the health of its people.”
Here’s a closer look at Mejia and where she stands on the issues.
Mejia was born in New Jersey and is the daughter of Colombian and Dominican immigrants.
After working as a union organizer, Mejia served as national political director on the 2020 Sanders presidential campaign. She later worked in the Department of Labor in former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Mejia pulled off an upset in the February Democratic primary, narrowly edging out a more moderate rival, former Rep. Tom Malinowski, in a field of 11 candidates. While Mejia was the clear choice of the party’s left flank, the rest of the field divided the moderate and center-left vote.
Besides the backing of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, Mejia was also endorsed by other top progressive leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Reps. Ro Khanna of California, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, the former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
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Mejia’s nomination victory was another big boost for the left against the establishment since now-New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, sent shock waves across the nation with his Democratic primary victory in June 2025.
Mejia repeatedly took aim at Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on illegal immigration and called for scrapping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency most visible in the aggressive tactics used in the administration’s massive deportation effort.
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“I say abolish ICE now,” Mejia said on the campaign trail. “You can’t reform it. It’s not fixable. Get it out.”
After her primary victory, Mejia gave credit to her stance on immigration in the wake of backlash against the Trump administration following the January fatal shootings in Minnesota by federal agents of two U.S. citizens protesting immigration operations.
“I think the fact that I was bold and unafraid to speak the truth was incredibly important,” she told reporters. “I think voters feel that they want to have a representative that actually represents them, and they cannot watch what’s happening in Minnesota, what happened in Chicago, what happened in California, what happened in Morristown across this district.”
Mejia, like many on the left, has railed against rulings by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court has been captured by right-wing radicals who care more about doing Trump’s bidding than the rule of law,” Mejia charged on her campaign website.
She supported “articles of impeachment against Justices Thomas and Alito” for what she says is “their corruption and conflicts of interest.”
Mejia also backed “term limits for newly appointed Supreme Court justices, a binding code of ethics with real enforcement for all federal judges.”
And Mejia said she would support “expanding the courts if necessary to restore balance.”
On her campaign website, Mejia stated, “We’re going to cancel all student loan debt.”
And she pledges that she’ll “fight to make college tuition free at community colleges and trade schools for everyone.”
As part of her “economy for everyone agenda,” Mejia argued, “If you work 40 hours a week, you should make at least $40,000 a year, and you shouldn’t pay a dime in federal taxes on that first $40,000.”
And she highlighted that she helped lead the fight in New Jersey to “win the $15 minimum wage.”
“With the cost of living rising every day, it’s time to raise the minimum wage at the national level to $25/hour,” Mejia emphasized on the campaign trail.
Malinowski, an assistant secretary of state in former President Barack Obama’s administration who later represented a neighboring congressional district in northern New Jersey from 2018 to 2022 before losing re-election, was considered the front-runner in the Democratic nomination race heading into primary day.
But Malinowski was the target of a slew of attack ads put out by a group affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which opposed Malinowski because he said he supports conditions on aid to Israel.
The AIPAC-aligned super PAC United Democracy Project dished out more than $2.3 million to take aim at Malinowski, even though AIPAC had previously supported Malinowski in his past congressional elections.
But the AIPAC strategy backfired, because Mejia is much tougher on Israel than Malinowski.
Mejia was the only candidate in the race who raised her hand at a forum in January when asked if they agreed with human rights groups who charge Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in its war with Hamas in Gaza.
Jewish voters make up a key part of the district’s electorate, and Hathaway, in the only debate in the general election, claimed Mejia was antisemitic, noting she has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
“She blamed Israel for the attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7,” Hathaway said. “I think Jewish individuals across this district, Republican or Democrat, are very afraid of this kind of rhetoric.”
Mejia pledged to “protect the rights of Jewish constituents” and said her criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza should not be conflated with antisemitism.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Mejia said, “Joe Hathaway’s inability to distinguish between criticism of a government or government official and bigotry is troubling and disgusting in equal measure.”
Mejia last week wrote that she was “honored” after being endorsed by the liberal pro-Israel political group J Street PAC. But her acceptance of the endorsement triggered pushback on the left, with the North Jersey Democratic Socialists of America calling her move a “heel turn.”
Hathaway told Fox News Digital, “I’ve spoken to more members of the Jewish community who have told me they’ve never voted for a Republican in their life, who are going to vote for me in this race. I mean, that shows you where the Jewish community is on the importance of this race and how they are not aligned with Mejia … and her platform.”
It appears Hathaway was right: Some towns with heavy Jewish populations swung significantly to the right in Thursday’s election.
But it wasn’t nearly enough to help Hathaway blunt Mejia’s overall support.
