Bernie Sanders, AOC-backed Democrat wins key House race; GOP fails to expand fragile majority
Republicans fell short in their bid to flip a vacant U.S. House seat in a blue-leaning district in northern New Jersey.Democrat Analilia Mejia, who was backed by progressive champions Sen....
By Fox News · Fox News
Republicans fell short in their bid to flip a vacant U.S. House seat in a blue-leaning district in northern New Jersey. Democrat Analilia Mejia, who was backed by progressive champions Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of neighboring New York, defeated GOP candidate Joe Hathaway in Thursday's special election in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District, the Associated Press reports. With her victory, Mejia will fill the final eight months of the term of Gov. Mikie Sherrill , the Democratic representative who stepped down from Congress in November after winning New Jersey's gubernatorial election. The special election came as the GOP clings to a fragile House majority. Republicans would have relished the opportunity to pick up the seat, but they faced an uphill climb to flip the suburban district Sherrill won by 15 points in her 2024 re-election and carried by roughly the same margin in last year's gubernatorial election. DEMOCRACY ’26: STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE FOX NEWS ELECTION HUB Mejia, a progressive organizer who served as national political director on the 2020 Sanders presidential campaign, pulled off an upset in the February Democratic primary, narrowly edging out more moderate rival former Rep. Tom Malinowski in a field of 11 candidates. While Mejia was the clear choice of the party's left flank, the rest of the field appeared to divide the moderate and center-left vote. Her victory was another boost for the left against the establishment after democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani sent shock waves across the nation with his Democratic primary victory in June 2025. Hathaway, a former Randolph Township mayor and current council member who was uncontested for the GOP congressional nomination, told Fox News Digital that the choice for voters was "between a common sense, practical independent leader who's gotten things done at the local level in New Jersey and knows the issues, contrasted with someone who's runnin…