The special election for Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s old House seat is over, but winner Analilia Mejia and chief opponent Joe Hathaway will soon be on the campaign trail again.
Mejia, a Democrat who won Thursday’s special election to fill the vacancy left when Sherrill resigned from Congress last year, and Hathaway will appear on the ballot in six weeks when primary voters head to the polls to choose their nominees for November’s general election.
The potential rematch in the 11th Congressional District was on Mejia’s mind Thursday as she celebrated her election to Congress.
“Our work is not done tonight. This is only the beginning,” she told supporters gathered in Montclair.
Mejia won a resounding victory over Hathaway last week, nabbing 60% of the vote to Hathaway’s 40%. But to remain in Congress beyond January, she must defeat three challengers in June’s Democratic primary and then win again in November.
The primary may not be much of a fight, said Dan Cassino, a Fairleigh Dickinson University pollster and professor of government and politics. Mejia will face former Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello and tech engineer Joseph B. Lewis II, plus Justin Strickland, a Chatham councilman who ran in the February special primary against Mejia and came in sixth place.
Cassino said that while Strickland has been eyeing this seat for a long time, he lacks the name recognition and funding “to make it a race.”
“He’s got to somehow convince voters that Mejia is both too liberal for the district, despite the fact that she just won a competitive primary; unelectable, despite the fact that she just won a general by 20 points; and that he would be a better fighter against Trump, despite just saying that she was too liberal,” Cassino said.
Hathaway, who is running unopposed in June’s GOP primary, congratulated Mejia after the race was called Thursday evening. But he took aim at the election’s “structure and timing, set by a partisan Democratic governor,” suggesting it created a low-turnout environment that benefitted one party. Sherrill’s predecessor, Phil Murphy, a Democrat, scheduled the special primary and election for Sherrill’s old House seat on Thursdays.
“We saw heavy vote-by-mail participation, limited Election Day turnout, and far too many Republican and unaffiliated voices left out of the process,” Hathaway said in a statement. “The result is that Analilia Mejia has now won two elections decided by a small share of the overall electorate, 3.2% of the total electorate in the primary, and just north of 10% of the total electorate tonight.”
As for a potential rematch between Mejia and Hathaway in the fall, Cassino said a November race will undoubtedly attract more Republicans to the polls than a special election on an April Thursday, but he noted that the district is still one that favors Democrats. Sherrill won it by 15 points in 2024.
“The race will likely be closer,” he said. “But closer means that Hathaway is likely to lose by 15 rather than 20.”
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