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A progressive candidate supported by left-wing champions, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is close to leading the way to victory as votes are still being counted in the Democratic Alliance’s first congressional meeting for a blue-leaning seat in New Jersey.
Analilia Mejia, a progressive activist, has a narrow lead – about 900 votes out of more than 63,000 votes counted – over the former Democrat. Tom Malinowski in the battle for their party’s nomination in the 11th District of New Jersey.
Mejia and Malinowski are the leaders among a field of 11 Democratic candidates in the race to fill the seat left vacant by Gov. Mikie Sherrill stepped down after winning the November 2025 general election in the Garden State.
The results in the primary are being watched closely by the political world as an early testing ground in the debate between the progressives and the mainstream of the Democratic Party.
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Analilia Mejia, US Democratic House candidate for New Jersey, speaks to supporters and members of the media at Paper Plane Coffee Co. in Montclair, New Jersey, US, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026 (Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
And the victory of Mejia, who served as the national political director of Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, will be the latest push by the left against the establishment as the current Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, sent shockwaves across the country with his victory in the Democratic primary in June 2025.
“He represents a progressive populist economic agenda,” progressive leader Rep. Ro Khanna of California emphasized Friday in a social media post. “You are the future!”
And Mejia, speaking to his supporters on the night of the primaries, highlighted that “we must rebuild our party, we must rebuild what happened in our nation. We must restore our democracy. We know that our economy has been rigged to suit the billionaires.”
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Here’s a closer look at where Mejia stands on some key issues.
Immigration enforcement
In his primary campaign, Mejia focused on President Donald Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on illegal immigrants, and called for an end to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency most visible in the brutal tactics used in the administration’s massive deportation effort.
“I say I’m done with ICE now,” Mejia said on the campaign trail in January. “You can’t fix it. It can’t be fixed. Get it out.”
Analilia Mejia of New Jersey called for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). (Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Speaking to reporters Friday about his high school performance, Mejia took credit for his decision on immigration after opposing the Trump administration following the fatal shooting in Minnesota of two U.S. citizens protesting immigration enforcement.
“I think the fact that I was brave and not afraid to tell the truth was incredibly important,” he told reporters. “I think the voters feel that they want to have a representative who will really represent them, and they can’t look at what’s happening in Minnesota, what’s happening in Chicago, what’s happening in California, what’s happening in Morristown across this state.”
Supreme Court
Mejia, like many on the left, has criticized the rulings of the conservative-run court.
“The Supreme Court has been hijacked by right-wing radicals who care more about doing Trump’s bidding than the law,” Mejia said on his campaign website.
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He supports “impeachment articles against Justice Thomas and Alito” for what he says are “their corruption and conflicts of interest.”
Mejia also supports “term limits for newly appointed Supreme Court justices, a mandatory code of conduct that is the de facto law of all federal judges.”
Democratic congressional candidate Analilia Mejia of New Jersey supports term limits for newly appointed Supreme Court justices. (Valerie Plesch/photo alliance via Getty Images)
And Mejia says he will support “expanding the courts if necessary to restore balance.”
Student loan debt
On his campaign website, Mejia says “we will cancel all student loan debt.”
And he promises to “fight to make college tuition free at community colleges and trade schools for everyone.”
Taxes and minimum wage
As a part of him “Everybody’s economic agenda,” Mejia said, “If you work 40 hours a week, you should make at least $40,000 a year, and you shouldn’t have to pay a dime of federal taxes on that first $40,000.”
And he highlights that he helped lead the fight in New Jersey to “win a $15 minimum wage.”
When he comes to Congress, Mejia says “with the cost of living rising every day, it’s time to raise the minimum wage at the national level to $25 an hour.”
Israel
Malinowski, an assistant secretary of state in the administration of former President Barack Obama who later represented a congressional district in northern New Jersey from 2018 to 2022 before losing re-election, was considered the front-runner in the race heading into the first day.
But Malinowski was the target of a series of attack ads released by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which opposed Malinowski because he said he supported Israel’s aid conditions.
Jan 15, 2026; Caldwell, NJ, USA; Tom Malinowski during a meet and greet hosted by the League of Women Voters at Caldwell University with Democratic candidates to fill the Congressional seat vacated by Gov. Mikey Sherrill. (Michael Karas / USA TODAY NETWORK via Magn Images)
The AIPAC-aligned super PAC United Democracy Project has spent more than $2.3 million targeting Malinowski, even though AIPAC had supported Malinowski in his previous congressional run.
But this strategy may backfire, because Mejia is much stronger in Israel than Malinowski.
Mejia was the only candidate in the race to raise his hand at a forum last month when asked if he agreed with human rights groups that accuse Israel of killing Palestinians in its war with Hamas in Gaza.
Mejia has been encouraged by leftist support. Sanders made headlines for his actual rally the night before the primary.
And besides Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, he has also been endorsed by a large list of other progressive leaders, including Khanna, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Rep. Pramilla Jayapal of Washington State, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
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The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) is a leading group on the left, in a statement that “Analilia Mejia’s remarkable performance proves that voters, when given a choice, want Democrats with an inspiring vision who will boldly challenge powerful interests on behalf of working families.”
PCCC founder Adam Green, a New Jersey native who knocked on Mejia’s doors and spoke at a rally with Mejia and Sanders the day before the primary, added that early voters “made it clear that they want Democrats who will shake up the broken political and economic system — not just oppose Trump.”
While Mejia was the clear choice for the left side of the party’s base, the entire field appeared to split the moderate and center-left vote.
The winner will face Randolph Mayor Joe Hathaway, the only Republican running in the April 16 special election.
Hathaway will be considered the underdog in this race, in the northern state of New Jersey.
Sherrill won re-election in the district in 2024 by 15 points, the same margin by which he carried the district in November’s alderman race.
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But then-Vice President Kamala Harris won the district by just eight points in the 2024 presidential election, giving the GOP hopes it could flip the seat.
The special election comes as Republicans cling to a slim 218–214 majority House of Representatives.
