Analilia Mejia, a progressive Democrat, was elected on Thursday to a New Jersey House seat after a race that was heavily defined by attitudes toward President Trump and outside spending by a pro-Israel lobbying group.
Ms. Mejia, an organizer by trade who helped run Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, will replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill in the largely affluent and suburban 11th Congressional District. Ms. Sherrill, a moderate Democrat, resigned from her seat after being elected governor in November, leaving a rare vacancy at a critical moment for Congress.
Ms. Mejia was ahead of her Republican opponent, Joe Hathaway, by about 59 points when The Associated Press called the race in her favor minutes after polls closed at 8 p.m.
Ms. Mejia will serve out the remaining eight months of Ms. Sherrill’s term and has already entered the race for a full, two-year term in November. In a district where registered Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans, she is expected to have a distinct edge as she competes for the seat as an incumbent.
The size of the victory is likely to drive much of the debate among Democrats who remain split on the types of candidates best positioned to fare well in November’s midterm congressional races. Republicans loyal to Mr. Trump control the House and the Senate, and Democrats are hoping to gain a majority in at least one chamber as a way to blunt the president’s power in Washington.
Ms. Mejia, who supports abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, was the most liberal of the 11 Democrats who competed for the nomination in a February primary, which was also held on a Thursday, an atypical day for elections.
Turnout surged, a trend Democrats see as a strong indicator heading into the midterms. As in other recent races across the country, the results also reflected a leftward shift by voters in a district that had historically favored moderates. Ms. Mejia, who lives in Glen Ridge, was perhaps best known in New Jersey as the leader of the left-leaning Working Families alliance before she left to join Mr. Sanders’s campaign. More recently, she helped run Popular Democracy, a nationwide group that advocates for low-income and minority voters.
Mr. Hathaway, a former mayor of Randolph, N.J., had tried to distance himself from Mr. Trump, who he acknowledged loomed large during the race. “The general issue with our district when I talk to a lot of people is people’s points of view on the president,” he said last week at a candidate forum.
Ms. Mejia also benefited in the primary from spending by a group linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying powerhouse. She ended up narrowly beating Tom Malinowski, a former House member and the race’s early front-runner, who was battered by misleading, negative ads paid for by the United Democracy Project, a super PAC aligned with AIPAC.
Most of those ads were focused on Mr. Trump and ICE. The ads began appearing soon after two people were killed in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents.
Mr. Malinowski, a longtime supporter of Israel, had criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after the start of the Israel-Hamas war and had refused to rule out placing conditions on foreign aid to the country.
Ms. Mejia, however, has been even more critical of Mr. Netanyahu, and she was the only candidate to call Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza a genocide. When she arrives in Congress, Ms. Mejia is likely to align herself with the most liberal wing of the party. She has noted that she, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading member of the so-called “Squad,” prefers red lipstick.
After Ms. Mejia’s primary win, a spokesman for the United Democracy Project said that the outcome was “an anticipated possibility.”
But many Jewish leaders saw it as a cynical miscalculation by AIPAC. The group’s involvement in what might have otherwise been an under-the-radar special election for a term lasting only eight months also intensified the debate on issues tied to Israel.
Ms. Mejia’s willingness to criticize Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza and her initial reluctance to make clear that she believed Israel had a right to self-determination alarmed some Jewish voters in the North Jersey district. Mr. Hathaway went so far as to suggest that her views were antisemitic, a charge she strenuously rejected.
“As a member of Congress, I would use every legislative power at my disposal to protect the rights of Jewish constituents and convene spaces to educate and to fight antisemitism, because I know it’s real,” she said during the campaign’s only debate, citing her experience as the daughter of Latino immigrants and the mother of two Black boys.
“I know how dangerous othering is,” she added. “But that doesn’t mean that we cannot call into question violations.”
The state’s top Democrats, including the governor, rallied to her side soon after her primary win. Last week, JStreetPAC, a liberal, pro-Israel advocacy group, also endorsed her.
Mr. Trump was never far from the lips of Ms. Mejia’s supporters.
“At every turn, we have seen an out-of-control president,” Ms. Sherrill said on Sunday at a rally for Ms. Mejia, who she said would be an effective “check” on Mr. Trump.
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
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