Tom Malinowski, a former member of Congress, conceded on Tuesday to his main opponent, Analilia Mejia, in the Democratic primary to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey in the House.
The Associated Press has not officially declared a winner in the race. But Mr. Malinowski, who was battered by negative advertising from a pro-Israel group, congratulated Ms. Mejia for a “hard-won” victory four days after polls closed on Thursday.
“Analilia deserves unequivocal praise and credit for running a positive campaign and for inspiring so many voters on Election Day,” Mr. Malinowski said in a statement. Ms. Mejia was expected to hold a news conference later on Tuesday to discuss the development.
As of Tuesday morning, fewer than 900 votes separated the two top candidates, and election officials had said that they did not expect to finalize the count before the end of this week.
Ms. Mejia is a former director of the state’s Working Families alliance who left that job in 2019 to help run Senator Bernie Sanders’s second presidential campaign. Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist from Vermont, campaigned in New Jersey with Ms. Mejia, as did several other members of the Democratic Party’s liberal flank during a compressed, two-month campaign for a seat that Ms. Sherrill vacated soon after she was elected governor.
The Democratic winner will face the Republican nominee, Joe Hathaway, in a special election on April 16 to complete the final eight months of Ms. Sherrill’s term in the 11th Congressional District, which includes parts of three North Jersey counties. An election for a full, two-year term will be held in November.
The district was redrawn after the 2020 census, making what was once a Republican-leaning seat far safer for Democrats. Ms. Sherrill was re-elected by a nearly 15-point margin in 2024, and the Cook Political Report has ranked the district a “solid D.”
Ms. Mejia ran an energetic but lean campaign. She earned endorsements from prominent members of the Democratic Party’s liberal icons but lagged far behind other front-runners in fund-raising. She embraced her underdog status in rousing speeches to crowds filled with young, working-class voters.
Mr. Malinowski, who represented a neighboring district in Congress until 2023, worked in the State Department during the Obama administration and as a director for Human Rights Watch. Seen as an authority on foreign policy, with high name recognition, Mr. Malinowski had raised the most in campaign contributions and was considered the candidate to beat.
Then, in the final three weeks of the campaign, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee began flooding airwaves and mailboxes with attack ads aimed at Mr. Malinowski. The super PAC, United Democracy Project, spent at least $2.3 million trying to defeat him.
Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for the organization, has said that its aim was winning a pro-Israel majority in Congress and electing representatives who will not place conditions on U.S. aid to the Jewish state.
Ms. Mejia was the most progressive of the 11 candidates who vied for the seat and the only one to say she believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. If she wins in April, Ms. Mejia would be likely to join Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Representative Ayanna Pressley, who also campaigned with Ms. Mejia in New Jersey, in a left-leaning wing of the House known as “the squad.”
In 2024, United Democracy spent roughly $24 million to help oust two of the group’s other members, Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, according to AdImpact, a group that tracks political spending.
Last week, Mr. Dorton maintained that the outcome was “an anticipated possibility.” But the attack on Mr. Malinowski, a moderate lawmaker and longtime supporter of Israel, was criticized by many Jewish leaders as a flawed and cynical strategy that damaged the prospect of peace in the Middle East and faith in democracy.
The negative ads funded by United Democracy made no mention of Israel. Instead, they mainly criticized Mr. Malinowski for a vote to authorize spending for immigration enforcement during President Trump’s first term.
Mr. Malinowski, who emigrated from Communist Poland as a 6-year-old and has railed against the president’s policies, attempted to turn the barrage of negative advertising into a badge of honor, claiming he was “proud to be the only candidate in the race to be attacked by Trump’s dark-money allies.”
On the campaign trail, Ms. Mejia denounced the negative advertising, and on Friday she called the attack against Mr. Malinowski a “disgusting tactic” that confused voters and flooded the airwaves with misinformation.
But the commercials and mailers also elevated immigration as a salient topic just as opposition to Mr. Trump’s immigration policies was intensifying in the weeks after federal agents shot and killed two people, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.
Voter turnout surged. More people cast ballots in Thursday’s race than voted in any Democratic congressional primary in New Jersey in 2024 — a presidential election year that featured a contested race for U.S. Senate.
“AIPAC miscalculated badly,” said Yael Bromberg, an election law lawyer and voting rights scholar whose family is from Israel.
“That AIPAC fought Tom Malinowski — a longtime ally of Israel with a direct connection to the Holocaust and an expert in foreign policy and human rights — is not good,” she said. “That they did so by falsifying his immigrant rights’ record is perhaps worse. That kind of campaign damages sustainable democracy.”
Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder and president of J Street, a left-leaning Jewish lobby group, said the results demonstrated that “no matter how many millions of dollars they spend, AIPAC isn’t going to be able to bully or intimidate candidates or voters into supporting unconditional support for Israel.”
“Their aggressive intervention here and elsewhere is alienating many who should be allies of the Jewish community and of Israel,” he added.
Ms. Mejia, of Glen Ridge, had focused on affordability as she campaigned, and she regularly noted her immigrant parents’ struggles as they raised a family in nearby Elizabeth. She held campaign events that doubled as migrant rights teach-ins. Two days before the election, she joined students as they walked out of Bloomfield High School to protest actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in New Jersey.
“It is shameful, shameful, my people, that those with power sit on their hands while working people are out in the streets armed with whistles, demanding justice,” she told an audience in January, adding tartly: “Braver than anything I ever see out of Congress.”
In addition to Mr. Malinowski, the race included several other well-known candidates, including Tahesha Way, the state’s former lieutenant governor, and Brendan Gill, an Essex County commissioner who ran former Gov. Philip D. Murphy’s first campaign.
The race featured millions of dollars in spending by outside interest groups.
Ms. Way, New Jersey’s former secretary of state who also benefited from an infusion of funds from outside groups, finished in third place. Mr. Gill, who was endorsed by Mr. Murphy, landed in fourth place.
Maureen O’Toole, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the victory by a left-leaning Democrat had opened a clear lane for Mr. Hathaway, the mayor of Randolph who was an aide to former Gov. Chris Christie.
She said Ms. Mejia would “turn New Jersey into a socialist hellscape.”
“Mejia and her radical agenda stand no chance against Joe Hathaway, who is committed to making New Jersey safer and more affordable,” Ms. O’Toole said in a statement.
The winner of the April election will serve out the remaining eight months of Ms. Sherrill’s term and is expected to have an advantage in November’s race for a full, two-year term.
As the first House contest of 2026, the Democratic primary was seen as a preview of campaign tactics that could be replicated this fall in pivotal congressional midterm elections. And the millions of dollars in advertising by outside groups elevated what might have been an under-the-radar special election to a raucous showdown between factions within the Democratic Party.
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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