The results of Thursday’s special Democratic primary to fill Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s former House seat indicate a rising sentiment among voters against federal immigration enforcement that Democrats hope to tap into as they seek to take control of Congress next year.
The 11-person race’s erstwhile front-runner, former Rep. Tom Malinowski, is lagging behind progressive organizer Analilia Mejia after an outside group spent millions attacking Malinowski for a 2019 vote on a bill that included funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mejia campaigned on abolishing ICE, calling it an agency that cannot be reformed.
Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, said the issue galvanized Democrats in the district in a way that reshaped the race. She pointed to ICE raids in Morristown— which is part of the 11th — and the possibility of an immigration detention center in Roxbury, which is just outside the district’s borders.
“Democratic voters are feeling much more passionate about it, and have much more resolve where they cannot deal with what may seem like any kind of wavering support of immigration or any kind of sympathy or support of ICE,” said Koning, who lives in Morristown.
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Dan Cassino, who teaches government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University and runs the FDU poll, said the results show what a motivating factor ICE actions are for Democrats.
“They’re voting at almost Presidential levels in these elections, and Republicans just can’t keep up,” Cassino said.
The 11th District is a collection of towns in Essex, Morris, and Passaic counties, and it was a Republican stronghold until Sherrill flipped it for Democrats in 2018. Its boundaries have since been redrawn to make it more Democratic.
Its House seat became vacant when Sherrill stepped down after winning last year’s governor’s race.
The anti-Malinowski advertising blitz came courtesy of Unite Democracy Project, a super PAC linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It poured more than $2 million into ads attacking Malinowski for his 2019 vote, which approved a spending bill also supported by other Democrats in New Jersey’s House delegation.
Koning said the ads, which said Malinowski “voted with Trump and the Republicans to fund ICE,” kept immigration enforcement front and center in voters’ minds in the 11th District amid escalating immigration actions in Minnesota and nationwide. While the results of the race remain up in the air, the ads likely led some Democratic voters away from Malinowski and toward Mejia, Koning said.
Mejia, speaking to reporters Friday, condemned the ads’ portrayal of Malinowski, saying they took his vote out of context.
“There is no space for those kinds of tactics, that outsized money, in a real, true participatory democracy. It silences people, it confuses voters, and it is actually unfair and actually detrimental to our democracy,” she said.
A spokesperson for Malinowski’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Malinowski, who served two terms in Congress representing the 7th District before voters ousted him in 2022, has been sharply critical of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort. In January, after the raids in Morristown, Malinowski stood with protestors to “demand that ICE be held accountable and that Congress refuse to fund their violent masked raids on American families.”
Koning said the plethora of attack ads “definitely put chinks in his armor,” and damaged Malinowski in areas where his name recognition should have given him a stronger advantage.
Mejia, who served as a senior advisor on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, made opposition to ICE a centerpiece of her campaign, organizing “know your rights” meetings in the district and hosting events called “ICE Out.” In one campaign ad, she called for the abolition of the 22-year-old agency, a position she reiterated when speaking to reporters Friday. She called ICE “a clearly unjust and unwieldy and dangerous institution.”
“It must be replaced by something that isn’t violent, that isn’t shooting Americans in the streets, that is respecting our Constitution, and that resonated with folks,” she said.
It may be days before we know the winner of Thursday’s primary. Mejia leads Malinowski by fewer than 700 votes, and there are provisional and mail-in ballots that have yet to be counted.
The winner will face Randolph Mayor Joe Hathaway, the Republican in the race, on April 16, and the winner of that election will fill out the remainder of Sherrill’s term, which ends Jan. 3, 2027.
But 11th District voters will hit the ballot box again in June and November to choose Sherrill’s more permanent successor, someone to represent the district in the two-year House term that begins in January.
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