Sanders and AOC-backed Democrat wins New Jersey special election seat

Republicans fall far short in their bid to turn down a vacancy US House It’s a seat in a blue-leaning district in northern New Jersey.

Progressive champions include Sen. of Vermont, the Associated Press reported. Democrat Analilia Mejia, backed by Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of neighboring New York, convincingly defeated GOP candidate Joe Hathaway in a special election in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District on Thursday. The race was called minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m.

With his victory, Mejia will complete the last eight months of his term as Governor. Mikie SherrillDemocratic representative who left Congress in November after winning the New Jersey gubernatorial election.

The special election comes as the GOP clings to a fragile majority in the House of Representatives. Republicans would welcome the opportunity to capture the seat, but they face a steep uphill climb to flip the suburban district that Sherrill won by 15 points in his 2024 re-election and by nearly the same margin in last year’s gubernatorial election.

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While congratulating Mejia on his victory, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said “his grassroots campaign appealed to hard-working families in New Jersey. I know he will fight to lower costs, protect health care, and tackle the affordability crisis head on.”

Mejia, a progressive organizer who served as national political director for the 2020 Sanders presidential campaign, suffered a defeat in February’s Democratic primary, narrowly edging former Rep. Tom Malinowski, a more moderate opponent, in a field of 11 candidates. While Mejia was the clear choice of the party’s left wing, the rest of the field appeared to split the moderate and center-left votes.

His primary victory was another boost for the left against the establishment, following the democratic socialist Mayor of New York. Zohran Mamdani He sent shock waves across the country with his Democratic primary victory in June 2025.

Hathaway, the former Randolph Township mayor and current council member whose bid for the GOP congressional nomination is unopposed, aimed to portray Mejia as too far to the left for the district. He told Fox News Digital that voters’ choice is “between a level-headed, practical, independent leader who gets things done at the local level.” New Jersey and he knows the issues, as opposed to someone who is driven by pure ideology, far-left ideology, Squad-backed ideology.”

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Analilia Mejia has secured the Democratic Party nomination in the special election to see who will take over newly elected New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill’s vacant House seat. (Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Mejia recently appeared at a town hall with Malinowski and on Sunday worked with Sherrill on the campaign trail, aiming to unite Democrats, who hold a significant registration advantage in the district. Sherrill, a moderate Democrat, flipped the district in the 2018 Congressional election.

Hathaway claimed that Mejia was trying to disguise “some of his rhetoric a little bit because he knew these policies were completely irrelevant, but it wasn’t fooling the voters, it certainly wasn’t fooling us.”

Jewish voters make up a significant portion of the district’s electorate, and Hathaway claimed in the only debate in the special election that Mejia was anti-Semitic, saying Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

“HE blamed israel “Because of the attacks by Hamas on October 7,” Hathaway said, “I think Jewish individuals in this region, whether Republican or Democrat, are very afraid of this type of rhetoric.”

“I talked to more members of the Jewish community and they told me they had never voted for a Republican in their lives and they would vote for me in this race,” Hathaway said. “So that tells you where the Jewish community is on the importance of this race and how they are not aligned with Mejia and his platform.”

Mejia promised to “protect the rights of Jewish voters” and said his criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza should not be confused with antisemitism.

“Joe Hathaway’s inability to distinguish between criticism of a government or government official and bigotry is both disturbing and disgusting,” Mejia said in a statement to Fox News Digital. he said.

Mejia wrote last week that he was “honored” after he was endorsed by the liberal pro-Israel political group J Street PAC. But his acceptance of the endorsement caused pushback on the left, with the Democratic Socialists of America in North Jersey calling the move a “heel turn.”

As Hathaway works to win over independents and Democrats, she points out where she agrees and disagrees with the President. Donald TrumpLosing the region by eight points in the 2024 presidential election.

REPUBLICANS WON, BUT DEMOCRATS ALSO CLAIM VICTORY IN TRUMP REGION WITH THEIR BALLOT SIZE

Campaign signs for Republican candidate Joe Hathaway and Democrat Analilia Mejia in the NJ-11 special congressional election in Randolph, N.J., April 13, 2026 (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)

“I’m always going to do what’s right for this district first. And I’ve been clear: If the president is going to do things that are good for the district, if he’s going to increase the SALT cap cut, if he’s going to put money back in people’s pockets, especially in New Jersey, affordability is very difficult here. If we’re doing things like border security, reducing fentanyl deaths, as we’ve seen in our community, those are good things. I support those policies,” Hathaway said.

“But on the other hand, if the president is going to do things that are not in the best interest of our district, it’s my job to reverse that, and that’s exactly what I did.”

Hathaway noted Trump’s move last year to end billions of federal dollars for the Gateway Project, which funded a new train tunnel under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York, and the president’s plans to cut nearly 1,000 jobs and fund nearly $1 billion for an Army base in New Jersey.

“I’m going to call balls and strikes in this race. I’m not going to mark anyone,” Hathaway said.

“I think we have the right math and bipartisan coalition to come together to win this thing on April 16.”

Republican congressional candidate Joe Hathaway speaks to voters at the Randolph Diner in Randolph, NJ on April 13, 2026 (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)

But given the difficult political environment facing Republicans and the traditional negatives of the party in power, Hathaway failed.

Mejia has repeatedly linked Hathaway to Trump and Republicans in Congress.

“MAGA Republicans are driving up daily costs with the extreme policies my opponent supports. Health care and critical programs are being gutted just to fund tax cuts for the ultra-rich. We can’t afford one more vote for Trump in Congress,” he wrote in a recent social media post.

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Fairleigh Dickinson University political science professor and pollster Dan Cassino called Hathaway’s hopes of catching crossover Democrats a “pipe dream.”

“Democrats as a whole do not seem interested in finding common ground with Trump,” Cassino said Monday, predicting that most voters in the special election will be strong partisans.

“Democratic turnout is through the roof and Republican turnout is low at this point.”

Hathaway, who is looking forward to a potential rematch with Mejia in November, said in a statement Thursday night: “I believe the broad swath of voters in NJ-11 are looking for balanced, pragmatic leadership, not the kind of far-left policies Ms. Mejia has espoused. This conversation is not over.”