Mejia Wins NJ Special Election, Faces Primary in Six Weeks

Analilia Mejia won New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District special election Thursday, but she didn’t have long to celebrate. Six weeks from now, she’ll be back on the ballot in a Democratic primary, with a November general election to follow.

Mejia pulled 60% of the vote against Republican Joe Hathaway, filling the seat left open when Gov. Mikie Sherrill resigned from Congress. The margin wasn’t close. But to stay in that seat past January, she has to beat three more Democrats in June and then face Hathaway again in the fall.

“Our work is not done tonight. This is only the beginning,” Mejia told supporters gathered in Montclair Thursday evening.

The June primary field includes former Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello, tech engineer Joseph B. Lewis II, and Justin Strickland, a Chatham councilman who ran in February’s special primary and finished sixth. Dan Cassino, a pollster and professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said Strickland is the only challenger who’s been actively pursuing this seat, but he doesn’t have the money or name recognition to make it competitive.

Cassino put the problem bluntly. “He’s got to somehow convince voters that Mejia is both too liberal for the district, despite the fact that she just won a competitive primary; unelectable, despite the fact that she just won a general by 20 points; and that he would be a better fighter against Trump, despite just saying that she was too liberal,” Cassino said.

That’s a tough sell.

Hathaway runs unopposed in the GOP primary next month. He congratulated Mejia after the results came in Thursday, but didn’t let the moment pass without a shot at the election’s setup. He criticized the “structure and timing, set by a partisan Democratic governor,” arguing Thursday special elections drive down turnout in ways that favor Democrats. The special primary and election dates were set by former Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, who scheduled them on Thursdays.

“We saw heavy vote-by-mail participation, limited Election Day turnout, and far too many Republican and unaffiliated voices left out of the process,” Hathaway said in a statement. He pointed out that Mejia has now won two elections where turnout was thin, citing 3.2% of the total electorate in the primary and just over 10% in Thursday’s general.

His argument sets up the frame he’ll use heading into November, when turnout patterns look very different. Cassino, as reported by NJ Monitor, acknowledged that a fall election will draw more Republicans to the polls than a Thursday special election in April. But the 11th District, which covers parts of Essex, Morris, and Passaic counties, still tilts toward Democrats in a general electorate, and Mejia now carries an incumbency advantage she didn’t have two months ago.

The next six weeks will tell voters something about whether Mejia’s primary challengers can cut into her support with a district-wide audience, or whether she runs through June with the kind of ease Cassino is predicting. Hathaway, meanwhile, faces no such complication on his side of the ballot, giving him time and resources to build toward a November race against an opponent who won’t be caught low on name recognition again.