Far-left candidate leads New Jersey race after AIPAC campaigns against her pro-Israel rival

Far-left activist Analilia Mejia posted a stronger-than-expected result in New Jersey’s special House Democratic primary on Thursday after pro-Israel lobby AIPAC spent over $2 million against her more centrist opponent, who refused to rule out limiting US aid to Israel.

The race between Mejia and former US congressman Tom Malinowski to fill the congressional seat vacated by New Jersey’s new governor, Mikie Sherill, in November remained too early to call on Saturday.

Malinowski, who maintained a largely pro-Israel record while in office, started election night with a significant lead over Mejia, based largely on early results from mail-in ballots, but the margin narrowed as results from votes cast that day were tallied.

With more than 61,000 votes counted, Mejia led Malinowski by 486, or less than 1 percentage point.

All three counties in the district report some mail-in ballots yet to be processed. Also, mail-in ballots postmarked by election day can arrive as late as Wednesday and still be counted.

Malinowski did better than Mejia among the mail-in ballots already counted in all three counties, leaving the outcome of the race uncertain. The Democratic winner will face Randolph Mayor Joe Hathaway, who was unopposed in the Republican primary, on April 16.

The special primary and April general election will determine who serves the remainder of Sherrill’s term, which ends next January. There will be a regular primary in June and a general election in November for the next two-year term.

The district covers parts of Essex, Morris and Passaic counties in northern New Jersey, including some of New York City’s wealthier suburbs. Sherrill, also a Democrat, represented the district for four terms after her election in 2018. She won despite the region’s historical loyalty to the Republican Party, a dynamic that began to shift during US President Donald Trump’s first term.

Malinowski, a former US State Department official, served two terms in the House before losing a bid for reelection in a different district in 2022. He had the endorsement of New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim, who has built support among progressive groups.

During the campaign, AIPAC-aligned group United Democracy Project (UDP) launched a series of attack ads targeting Malinowski for stock-trading while in office and voting as a congressman in favor of funding for US federal immigration enforcement, whose recent deployment in large American cities has sparked a fierce backlash. At the time, the funding was approved with wide bipartisan support.

The ads did not mention Milanowski’s record on Israel, and UDP did not run ads in support of any candidate in the race.

The attack ads began after Milanowski — who has been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct in Gaza following the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023 — said on the campaign that he “would not deny anything Israel needs to defend itself,” but also “wouldn’t promise a blank check in advance for anything a prime minister would ask for,” according to The New York Times.

“That’s not how American foreign aid works — for anyone — whether it’s Israel, Ukraine, or Taiwan,” he said.

UDP spokesman Patrick Dorton told the Times that Malinowski was “talking about conditioning aid to Israel,” and added: “That’s not a pro-Israel position.”

UDP seeks to “build the largest bipartisan pro-Israel majority in Congress,” said Dorton. He added that there were “several candidates in the race far more supportive of the US-Israel relationship,” but declined to name them, according to the Times.

A growing number of Democrats have supported conditioning aid for Israel amid the war in Gaza. Malinowski was quoted by the Times as saying that if UDP’s “definition of pro-Israel now excludes mainstream Democrats like me, the number of pro-Israel people in America will become so small it will be nonexistent.”

Malinowski’s criticism of Israel also paled in comparison with the rhetoric of Mejia, who accused Israel of genocide in Gaza less than a month after the October 7 attack, and has called for a full ban on the sale of offensive weapons to Israel, according to Jewish Insider.

In a statement cited by Jewish Insider following Mejia’s shock result in the Thursday special primary, Dorton said the outcome had been “an anticipated possibility.”

“Our focus remains on who will serve the next full term in Congress,” he said, adding that “UDP will be closely monitoring dozens of primary races,” including the New Jersey district’s regular primary in June.

Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky, who helped raise money for Malinowski’s campaign, said AIPAC’s conduct in the New Jersey race was bad for Jews and Israel.

“I ran the super PAC in support of Tom Malinowski’s campaign. I am also a pro-Israel Jew,” she said on X. “What AIPAC did in this race is bad for Jews, bad for Israel, and bad for having bipartisan congressional support for the very issues AIPAC claims to care about.”

Another ad against in Malinowski by AIPAC

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no commentary just a news clip from back in 2022 pic.twitter.com/QZn8vJxhqX

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An unnamed Jewish leader quoted by Jewish Insider said “some of the worst fears of the Jewish community in New Jersey have been realized.”

“I don’t know how much of this is to blame on AIPAC specifically, but I think there needs to be a serious after-action report if the intent to push out Malinowski had this unintended consequence of propping up a very, very progressive candidate,” said the leader. “If she were to win, this would be far worse than Malinowski winning.”

Mejia, a former head of the Working Families Alliance in the state and political director for left-wing US standard-bearer Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2020 presidential run, had the Vermont independent senator’s endorsement as well as that of progressive US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. She also worked in US president Joe Biden’s Labor Department as deputy director of the women’s bureau.

Progressives celebrated AIPAC’s failure in the Thursday primary. Sanders was quoted by Politico as saying Democrats were beginning to realize that “not only is [AIPAC’s] policy bad, but it’s going to hurt me politically.”

“I think you’re going to see a lot of candidates saying, ‘I’m being attacked by AIPAC. You should vote for me for that reason alone,’” Sanders was quoted as saying. “They’re going to turn it around because AIPAC is increasingly unpopular.”

Both Malinowski and Mejia were well ahead of the next-closest candidates: Brendan Gill, an elected commissioner in Essex County who has close ties to former Gov. Phil Murphy; and Tahesha Way, who served as lieutenant governor and secretary of state for two terms under Murphy until last month, and was endorsed by the Democratic Majority for Israel.

According to the unnamed Jewish leader cited by Jewish Insider, the Jewish and moderate vote in the district ended up being split between Gill and Way.

The other candidates were John Bartlett, Zach Beecher, J-L Cauvin, Marc Chaaban, Cammie Croft, Dean Dafis, Jeff Grayzel, Justin Strickland and Anna Lee Williams.