Analilia Mejia sworn in as New Jersey’s newest congresswoman

Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-Glen Ridge) has become New Jersey’s newest congresswoman, taking the oath of office in the U.S. House today just four days after winning a special election to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill.

Mejia’s arrival in Congress caps off a remarkable period in the 11th congressional district, one that saw the progressive new congresswoman rise from underdog activist to Democratic standard-bearer. Mejia beat ten opponents, many of them far better-funded and more electorally experienced than herself, in a Democratic primary upset in February before earning a 20-point landslide in last Thursday’s general election against Republican Joe Hathaway.

“I stand before you representing the great 11th congressional district of New Jersey, a place rich in history and eager to make more,” Mejia said in her forceful first speech on the House floor, a speech that included an fiery evocation of the 14th Amendment and shouts of “order!” from the Republican side of the aisle.

With Mejia now in office, the Republican House majority has narrowed to just 218 seats to 214, meaning that any two Republican defectors can join with Democrats to sink a bill. (The indefinite absence of another New Jersey House member, GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr., for medical reasons makes the Republican majority’s math even more of a headache.)

As her first official acts in office, Mejia signed onto a discharge petition led by fellow New Jersey Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden) reforming the National Labor Relations Act, then voted for a non-controversial bill on 9-1-1 outages. She said that as she settles into office, one of her first priorities will be making sure her constituents back at home remain informed about what’s going on in Washington.

“Voters in New Jersey’s 11th are hungry for information,” she said. “They want to understand what’s happening in Congress, what’s happening with this war, what’s happening in terms of trying to rein in the worst tendencies of this administration.”

One thing that Mejia doesn’t yet know, however, is her committee assignments. Members elected in special elections frequently take the assignments held by their predecessor, but Sherrill’s posting on the House Armed Services Committee has already been given to Rep. Herb Conaway (D-Delran); Mejia said she is “in conversation” with House leaders about her postings.

Mejia is the fourth person in the last 40 years to represent the 11th district in North Jersey’s wealthy suburbs, and she cuts a very different profile than her three predecessors. From 1985 through 2018, the district was represented by a pair of Republicans, Dean Gallo (R-Parsippany) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Harding); Sherrill flipped the district blue in 2018 after Frelinghuysen retired, but she ran and governed as a moderate.

The 48-year-old Mejia, on the other hand, is a longtime activist who made a name for herself working for the Working Families Party and Bernie Sanders. Last Thursday’s election results showed that most voters in the district didn’t hold that against her – she overperformed Kamala Harris’s showing in the district by around 11 points – though a pair of towns with large Jewish communities, Livingston and Millburn, swung sharply in the opposite direction.

“You can’t be 100% on everything,” Mejia said of the towns that rebelled against her. “It felt sufficient to get a 20-point margin, and to win Randolph [Hathaway’s hometown]. You can’t be good at everything.”

Mejia is one of three Hispanic members in what is now a majority-minority New Jersey congressional delegation – Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) beat her by a little over a year to be the state’s first Latina in Congress – and the first-ever New Jersey congresswoman to succeed another congresswoman. She was sworn in today on her late father’s Bible, which he brought to America from the Dominican Republic.

“At a time where our Constitution and our rights are under strain, we are called not just to serve but to stand up to protect and to deliver on the promise of equal protection and justice under our great laws,” Mejia said in her inaugural House speech. “That is the work ahead of us; that is the work that we must take on.”