Joe Hathaway, Analilia Mejia stump in final week of special House election

With the special election to fill Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s old House seat just one week away, the race’s front-runners are pushing to turn out voters in a race that political observers believe will be an early sign of voter sentiment in advance of November’s mid-term elections.

Democrat Analilia Mejia and Republican Joe Hathaway have spent the last few weeks campaigning for votes in the 11th District in a contest that has grown increasingly bitter, with Hathway calling Mejia an antisemitic socialist and Mejia branding Hathaway a liar while pointing to his support for the president’s mass deportation efforts.

Democrats have a registration edge in this district, which includes towns in Essex, Morris, and Passaic counties. But Hathaway said he’s confident he can peel off some anti-Trump voters who may have never voted for the GOP before but want to test drive a Republican candidate, including Jewish voters who he claims are “very concerned about what Mejia has to offer.”

“They have an opportunity, a pretty unique one, to say, ‘I’m going to vote for this guy because either I’m really concerned about what his opponent has to say,’ or ‘I like what he has to say, and I’m going to have the chance to hold him to account for what he says he’s going to do from now until November,” Hathaway told reporters after an event in Madison Wednesday night.

Dan Cassino, a Fairleigh Dickinson University political science professor and pollster, is skeptical whether those voters exist in meaningful numbers. The most active voters in this special election will be strong partisans, he said.

“Democrats as a whole do not seem interested in finding common ground with Trump, or really questioning the Democratic candidate too much,” he said. “Partisanship is very, very dominant here.”

Mejia appeared at a Chatham community center on Monday, attracting nearly 200 people to hear her speak with former Rep. Tom Malinowski and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin (D) at an event billed as a “democracy and accountability town hall.” Malinowski is one of the Democrats Mejia defeated in the February primary.

For over an hour, the three Democrats attacked President Donald Trump over the war in Iran and his push for new federal voting restrictions. Several times throughout the evening, the crowd rose for a standing ovation.

Mejia denied that her appearance with Malinowski and Raskin was an attempt to make her appear more moderate, reminding reporters that she worked under the Biden administration and stumped for former Gov. Phil Murphy’s 2021 reelection effort.

“My point here was to show that we are going into this election united as Democrats, that we are going into this election knowing that our issues are not only of importance to people, that our perspective is on the right track, and that has nothing to do, honestly, with Joe Hathaway’s attacks,” she said.

Alan Bond is also in the race as an independent candidate.

Early, in-person voting for the district began Monday and runs through April 14. The election is Thursday, April 16, and the winner of the race will serve until the vacancy left when Sherrill (D) resigned from Congress to become governor ends in January.

Mejia is winning the fundraising contest, taking in $1.1 million to Hathaway’s $525,000. Mejia is also going into the final days of the campaign with more money in her war chest, $373,509 to Hathaway’s $109,237.

No matter who wins on April 16, Mejia and Hathaway will be back on the ballot in June in their quest to win the district’s House seat for the two-year term that begins in January.

Hathaway lobbed his claims of antisemitism directly at Mejia during their only debate last week, noting that she has indicated she believes Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Mejia has said her criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza should not be conflated with antisemitism, and she has pledged to “protect the rights of Jewish constituents.”

Cassino said that while Republicans may have seen a path to victory when Mejia won the primary — he called her more left of the district than a typical Democrat — she still has an edge because of voter sentiment 15 months into Trump’s second term.

“I don’t think you can underestimate exactly how angry Democrats are right now, and Mejia is working as an avatar of that anger and frustration,” he said.

Hathaway, a councilman and former mayor in Randolph, spoke to a crowd of roughly 70 people in Madison Wednesday, voters who asked questions about his stance on the state’s affordable housing mandate and his position on the SAVE Act, which would implement photo ID requirements for voting nationwide. Hathaway received resounding applause when he said he supports that bill, calling it “common sense, practical stuff.”

He also limited his mentions of Trump. Speaking to reporters, he said he wouldn’t be a “rubber stamp” for the president’s policies.

Cassino said that’s no accident.

“He knows he has to run away from his party. The problem is, when voters get to the voting booth, there’s a big R next to his name,” Cassino said.