With roughly a month to go until voters in the 11th Congressional District decide who succeeds Gov. Mikie Sherrill in the House, the two leading candidates have a similar strategy: convince voters that the other is the extremist in the race.
Democrat Analilia Mejia, who was national political director for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, and Republican Joe Hathaway, a councilman in Randolph, are each portraying themselves as the common-sense candidate as the special April 16 election nears.
Mejia, who stunned political observers in February when she won a crowded Democratic primary that included former Rep. Tom Malinowski, took shots at Hathaway this week after Hathaway’s campaign posted a photo of him posing in a group with Joe Belnome, a former congressional candidate who protested at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, before a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the building (Belnome said he did not enter the Capitol).
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Mejia said appearing with Belnome “speaks volumes” about Hathaway’s morals and values.
“My mother always used to say, ‘Tell me the company you keep, and I’ll tell you who you are.’ And I think that that adage is applicable here,” she said. “These individuals attempted to overthrow our government, were threatening the lives of our representatives, were injuring officers who were there to protect and serve. It runs counter to everything we uphold as a democracy.”
Belnome was never charged with any offenses related to the Jan. 6 riot.
In an interview, Hathaway pushed back on Mejia’s characterization of him. He said the photo with Belnome was taken at a meeting of Unico, an Italian American service organization he’s been connected to since childhood. He takes pictures with hundreds of people while running for Congress, he said, and doesn’t “claim responsibility for everyone’s individual views or where they were four years ago.”
Hathaway stressed that his position on Jan. 6, 2021, was that it was “one of the darkest days in American history.” He said Republicans are supposed to be the party of law and order, and that people who rioted at the Capitol “need to be held to the fullest extent of the law, period.”
This isn’t the first time Belnome has become an issue in a New Jersey campaign. Last year, Sherrill attacked her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, for campaigning with Belnome, who unsuccessfully challenged Sherrill when she ran for reelection to the House in 2024.
The winner of the April 16 special election, which will be on a Thursday, will fill the vacancy Sherrill left in the 11th District when she resigned after winning last year’s gubernatorial election (the vacant term expires on Jan. 3, 2027). The district includes towns in Essex, Morris, and Passaic counties.
During Hathaway’s campaign, he has painted Mejia as a “radical socialist,” calling her support of Medicaid for all a push for “socialized medicine that is going to inhibit patients” from medical procedures. He has also criticized her referring to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide, saying her comments show she is not a friend to the Jewish community.
“If she wants to spin and deflect, she can, but at the end of the day she’s going to have to answer for the actions that she’s taken and the words that have come out of her mouth,” he said. “The reason I say they’re radical positions is because they are, and that’s what she has said.”
Mejia rejected that characterization, arguing they amount to name-calling by a candidate without a comparable record to hers. She has worked for 25 years as a community organizer advocating for policies for working families like paid sick leave and raising the minimum wage, she noted.
“To call the gains that we have made through collaboration and peaceful deliberation as radical while you stand next to violent insurrectionists and are incapable of denouncing it or creating distance — that’s rich,” she said.
Dan Cassino, a government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University and director of the school’s poll, said the dueling charges of extremism show neither candidate is looking to win over persuadable voters in the middle.
“In both cases, the play is to keep your own people on your side,” he said.
The attacks won’t make any major impact on the race, Cassino predicted. Historically, he said, attacks calling an opponent “far left” have been more effective than “far right” attacks. But he doesn’t think they’ll stick this time because of the lack of spending in the race by Republicans, along with President Donald Trump’s unpopularity in New Jersey.
“Without spending, there’s really no easy way to communicate to voters the messages they want to get out,” Cassino said. “In the absence of that, you’re going to have a lot of voters who go to the polling booth, see a D and an R in front of them, and if all else equal, they’re going to vote for the D.”
Democrats have a voter registration edge over Republicans in the 11th District, state records show.
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