Analilia Mejia, a progressive Democrat backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), has won a special election to represent New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District.

Mejia’s victory over Republican Joe Hathaway, a member of the Randolph Township council, will cut into the GOP’s extremely-thin majority.

She will serve the remainder of the term for the seat vacated by Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill.

More below:

CNN has more:

After winning a crowded primary in February, Mejia was heavily favored in a district where there are about 65,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, according to the state’s Department of Elections. Mejia united most of the Democratic Party behind her, including former Rep. Tom Malinowski, who ran in the primary and lost after facing a barrage of spending from a group linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Her win is a boon for progressives, notably Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who endorsed her after she was national political director for his 2020 presidential campaign.

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It also shrinks House Speaker Mike Johnson’s majority. When Mejia is sworn in, Johnson will only be able to afford a single GOP defection on party-line votes and still pass legislation. The partisan breakdown will stand at 217 Republicans, 214 Democrats, one independent and three seats vacant. The one independent, California Rep. Kevin Kiley, was elected as a Republican and continues to caucus with the GOP even though he officially left the party earlier this year.

Hathaway and Mejia are both also running in their party’s June primaries for a full two-year term that would start in January.

Mejia handily won the reliably blue seat, 59 percent to 40 percent, with 94 percent of the votes tallied.

Fox News shared further:

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.

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.

“I say abolish ICE now,” Mejia said on the campaign trail. “You can’t reform it. It’s not fixable. Get it out.”

 

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