Dem
47
GOP
53
NJ-11, the House district that Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) left in order to take her current job, is D+5. That's pretty blue, and between that, and the general anti-Trump sentiment that is in the air, the assumption is that the winner of the Democratic primary will also win the election to finish Sherrill's term.
That primary was held on Thursday, and it was almost literally Hillary vs. Bernie, Part 493, since former representative Tom Malinowski had the backing of the establishment, while insurgent progressive Analilia Mejia had the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) himself, as well as the other usual lefty suspects. At the moment, roughly 48 hours after polls closed, the election is too close to call.
Actually, to be 100% accurate, the election was already called, by several outlets, for Malinowski. But then, several tranches of votes where Mejia outperformed Malinowski by a roughly 2-to-1 margin came in, and she not only caught up, she pulled ahead. The latest released totals have her with 18,058 votes and him with 17,382. That's a margin of 676 votes with an estimated 4,900 ballots left to count. That means that Malinowski would have to take about 57% of the remaining votes to pull off a victory. Not impossible, but a pretty tall hlll to climb.
Because Mejia is progressive, and because the district itself is blue-purple, her likely victory is being treated as a watershed moment in advance of this year's midterms. For example, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) opined that the candidate's success "shows that the progressive wing... is ascendant." Steve Kornacki wrote a piece for NBC News in which he called it "an anti-establishment earthquake."
We aren't quite ready to buy this assessment. First, as we have written a million times, special elections are wonky. Second, as a D+5 district, it's not especially blue, but it's not especially swingy, either. A progressive winning in, say, Rep. Jared Golden's (D-ME) district would be a much, much bigger earthquake. Third, while Malinowski outspent Mejia (about $1.2 million to $500,000), AIPAC outspent them both ($2 million) in an effort to defeat Malinowski. That's a wildcard that won't have an analogue in most House contests this November.
If there IS a lesson to be found in NJ-11, we think it's this: It's more evidence this is likely to be a "throw the bums out" election. Voters, particularly Democratic voters, want new blood. And we suspect that Malinowski's biggest problem, whether he wins or not, is not that he's moderate, and is not the AIPAC money, it's that "former representative" means "old blood" in the eyes of many voters.
It is possible that, at this point, readers might think that our unwillingness to assign great meaning to the NJ-11 result is inconsistent with the significance we perceived in a different special election, the one for SD-9 in Texas. We've actually already heard from readers who think we overshot the mark. For example, R.T. in Arlington, TX:
I held off a few days reacting to the Texas SD-9 election results because it feels like a wonky special-election result to me. I live in Tarrant County (though not in that district) and I was completely unaware an election was going on. As I have written before, you need to think of this county (surrounding Fort Worth) as the most urban rural county in the state. When I look at the map of the district I see an economic barbell. The southeastern portion inside Loop 820, south of Hwy 183, north of I-30 is working class, heavily Latino in northwest Fort Worth and mixed White/Black/Asian/Latino to the east of that. The northern portion of the district, a band running from Southlake to Saginaw, is new-money, newer housing, upper middle-class and lower upper-class. So the results of a special election in this district will be dominated by which kind of voter shows up in greater numbers. In a low-turnout, low media election it doesn't take much of a difference in grassroots campaign engagement to swing the percentages. The lesson here is not that there is a big broad Latino shift in sentiment, just that Rehmet's team tried harder, à la AOC's first run for Congress, and the Republicans took their advantage for granted. They won't make the same mistake twice.
With the benefit of a couple more days' reflection, well... we still don't agree.
Yes, special elections are wonky. However, it is not correct that the Republicans did not take this one seriously. Quite a few prominent Republicans lobbied for the GOP candidate, among them Donald Trump. Further, a 32-point move toward the Democrats? That's almost impossible to explain away, no matter how wonky the electorate is, and is considerably more instructive than "progressive MIGHT eke out narrow victory in blue district." It is also important that Latinos might be the single-most important bloc in deciding the 2026 elections, this district is overwhelmingly Latino, and it turns out that Latino votes were what propelled Taylor Rehmet (D) to victory (he took nearly 80% of the Latino vote).
Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter much what we think. What matters is what the professional politicians think. And, as we wrote, Republicans across the nation are scared witless that SD-9 is a canary in a coal mine. By contrast, it is improbable that Democrats will be left shaken to their cores by NJ-11, whatever happens there. So, it's a different kettle of fish.
Whichever Democrat advances, incidentally, will face Mayor Joe Hathaway (R-Randolph) on April 16. If Hathaway wins, THEN Democrats will freak out. If the candidate who loses (in this hypothetical) is Malinowski, there will be lots of carping about "See? We NEED new blood!" And if the candidate who loses is Mejia, there will be lots of carping about "See? We HAVE to choose candidates who are a good fit for their districts!" But for now, no freak outs. (Z)