Eleven Democratic candidates running, millions of dollars spent, and long-running battles over the future of the New Jersey Democratic Party playing out in microcosm: Special Primary Day in the 11th congressional district has at last arrived.
Polls are open from 6 a.m. through 8 p.m. today, and you can find more information here about where and how to vote. Tens of thousands of voters, though, opted not to trudge through the snow on a Thursday in February and have instead already cast their votes through mail-in ballots or in-person early voting.
The 11th district’s year of nonstop elections is only beginning: voters will also go to the polls on April 16 for the special general election, where the Democratic victor will face Joe Hathaway, the mayor of Randolph who is uncontested in today’s GOP primary; again on June 2 for the regularly scheduled primary election; and again on November 3 for the midterm elections. Given the 11th district’s blue hue, though, the district’s next congressperson will likely be decided today.
Who will that person be? Some frontrunners have seemingly risen to the top, but no one knows for sure who will win, especially amid an unprecedented onslaught of outside money. After seven years of representation by now-Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who has opted not to take sides on who her successor should be, voters are likely to be discerning.
“We have high expectations, because we did feel very well-represented” by Sherrill, said Mara Novak, the co-executive director of the local activist group NJ 11th for Change. “I think it’s big shoes to fill.”
The candidates
When he entered the 11th district race two days after Sherrill won the governorship, former Rep. Tom Malinowski brought advantages that no one else could match. He had widespread name recognition from his first stint in Congress, a massive donor network that allowed him to raise well over a million dollars in just a few months, and close ties to Senator Andy Kim and his network of political reformers.
Malinowski also brought some significant liabilities, including the fact that his prior congressional tenure was in the 7th district, not the 11th, and only a few of his old constituents are in his new district. The former congressman also had an Ethics Committee review of his stock trades that was left unresolved when he lost re-election in 2022, an issue that’s made its way into several attack ads.
And then there’s the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which decided it cannot abide a Malinowski comeback and has spent $2.3 million opposing him; AIPAC says Malinowski is insufficiently pro-Israel for the group’s liking, though the ads it is running against him have nothing to do with Israel at all (and Malinowski has said he thinks they’ll backfire).
None of those obstacles turned into a death knell for Malinowski’s campaign, and all of the nearly one dozen local operatives and Democratic leaders the New Jersey Globe spoke to listed Malinowski as a frontrunner, if not the frontrunner, for the seat. Who has the best chance of beating him, though, is up for debate.
Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill (D-Montclair) is the closest thing the race has to an “establishment” pick, though he would protest – not unfairly – that he has a long list of progressive bona fides, too. A longtime political operative who has the backing of former Gov. Phil Murphy and dozens of prominent Democratic elected officials across the district, Gill might have been the odds-on favorite in an earlier, less free-for-all era of New Jersey politics; even just last year, before the election had truly began, some believed he would be a shoo-in for the seat, and he remains a top contender.
Staking out the race’s most progressive lane is Analilia Mejia, who was the national political director for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign. Mejia raised and spent less money than her top foes, but she’s compensated for that by rallying practically every prominent national progressive politician behind her campaign, which could go a long way if it motivates voters to get to the polls.
Finally, there’s former Lieutenant Gov. Tahesha Way, who hasn’t sought elected office in over a decade but who spent eight years as New Jersey’s top elections official under the Murphy administration. Way brought many of her own advantages to the race, but what really pushed her into the top tier of candidates is an extraordinary amount of outside spending on her behalf from a constellation of outside groups.
In December, Malinowski released a poll finding himself in the lead and Gill in a distant second; Malinowski’s campaign conducted a second poll a month later, and found a similar result. That was before the onslaught of outside spending, however, and the race may have shifted once voters got to know the candidates; two recent internal polls from outside groups, one supporting Malinowski and another supporting Way, found Malinowski with a small lead, Mejia in second, Way in third, and Gill in fourth.
In such a chaotic race, of course, there’s always the possibility of an upset, and a few other candidates have put themselves in a position to take advantage. Ex-Army paratrooper Zach Beecher, who started out the race as a total unknown, made himself into a serious contender thanks to his appealing background and strong fundraising; Passaic County Commissioner John Bartlett (D-Wayne), who ran for the same seat once before in 2018, has decades’ worth of relationships across the district.
Former Obama administration official Cammie Croft and Morris Township Committeeman Jeff Grayzel also put together serious, well-funded operations for the seat. Croft and Beecher, on their first runs for office, have made good impressions across the district and might get more political opportunities down the line if they lose today; so too might Anna Lee Williams, who never raised much money but who spent months doggedly campaigning.
Rounding out the field are J-L Cauvin, an attorney and Trump-impersonating comedian, and Chatham Borough Councilman Justin Strickland. There will be two other names on the ballot as well, but both have dropped out and will likely get a negligible share of the vote: Maplewood Committeeman Dean Dafis, who has endorsed Gill, and ex-House staffer Marc Chaaban, who is supporting Mejia.
The messages
How will voters sift through these many, many candidates?
All of the top Democrats in the race are loudly and proudly anti-Trump, anti-ICE, and pro-Sherrill, three things that align them with nearly every Democratic primary voter in the district. Voters have had the chance to hear from the candidates themselves at a huge number of local forums and via the ads that have inundated their TVs and mailboxes; in the well-educated, plugged-in district, many voters have likely known who will get their vote for months.
Mejia has laid out the most aggressively progressive platform in the race, including abolishing ICE and raising the minimum wage to $25, and would likely represent the biggest break from the more centrist Sherrill. Malinowski was more of a moderate during his earlier tenure in Congress, but he’s very much identified with the reformist wing of the state Democratic Party, and many of the progressive activists who helped elect now-Senator Kim are gunning for him.
Gill has taken plenty of progressive positions himself, but he’s likely to pick up his strongest support from his constituents in Essex County, from union members, and from anyone with whom he’s personally worked over his decades in politics. And Way has emphasized her work administering New Jersey’s elections and fighting back against Trump’s attacks on the state’s democratic procedures, a message that likely resonates among Democrats in the Trump era.
Mejia and Way may also benefit from being the lone prominent Hispanic and Black candidates, respectively, in a district that’s 17% Hispanic and 8% Black. And while none of the top candidates are Jewish, Way has the vocal backing of pro-Israel groups and has fostered support in the district’s sizable Jewish communities (Grayzel, who is Jewish and has emphasized his background during the campaign, may also do well there).
It’s probably reasonable to expect the candidates to do best in the counties where they have party support: Gill in Essex County (which made up around half of the district’s Democratic primary vote in past elections), Malinowski in Morris County (a little over 40%), and Way and Bartlett jointly in Passaic County (a little under 10%).
But Malinowski, Gill, Mejia, Way, Bartlett, and Beecher have all also gotten at least a handful of endorsements from local elected officials and activists around the district, and tonight’s results could bring some unpredictable coalitions. Malinowski, for example, has allied himself with a renegade faction in Belleville; Gill has made inroads in some Morris towns like Rockaway and Boonton; and the uber-progressive suburbs of South Orange-Maplewood might provide sizable bases for Malinowski, Gill, Mejia, and Way.
The money
Of course, no campaign message or endorsement matters very much without the money needed to reach voters. And if there’s one thing the 11th district has had no shortage of, it’s money.
As of pre-primary reports that cover money raised and spent through January 16, Malinowski was the field’s fundraising leader, leveraging his national connections to raise nearly $1.2 million. Gill was behind with $808,000, followed by Beecher with $504,000, Bartlett with $466,000, Grayzel with $428,000, Mejia with $420,000, Way with $404,000, and Croft with $372,000; all of those totals have surely increased even further in the more than two weeks since the books closed.
But far more so than candidate spending, what has really reshaped the race is a flood of independent expenditures, especially from two very high-dollar groups.
One of those groups is AIPAC, or more accurately United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s spending arm. Starting in mid-January, UDP spent more than $2.3 million opposing Malinowski, who once had AIPAC’s backing but now has evidently earned their ire; UDP has said it opposes Malinowski because he “talks about conditioning aid” to Israel, though it hasn’t shared which alternative Democrat it prefers.
UDP’s ads themselves focus on Malinowski’s stock trades and his 2019 vote for a bill that included funding for ICE, two potentially potent hits in a Democratic primary electorate. But it’s not clear that attack-ad-weary voters are fully buying it – especially when they learn that they’re coming from a group that also enthusiastically endorses pro-Trump Republicans.
The other big spender is the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, which dropped $1.7 million in support of Way. The DLGA’s reasoning for backing Way is fairly obvious, though there’s been widespread – but so far unproven – speculation that the money the group is spending ultimately ties back to AIPAC.
Way also got $350,000 worth of support from Article One Victory Inc., a brand-new group with no online presence or stated motive in the race. The entirety of the PAC’s funding came from a donor called the Guzman Foundation, which is… just as mysterious as the PAC itself.
Malinowski has an allied super PAC of his own, the 218 Project, which was set up over the summer by an ally, Julie Roginsky. The PAC, which spent more than $730,000 on pro-Malinowski ads, was funded by George Soros, former Gov. Jon Corzine, and a handful of other big donors.
Mejia, Beecher, and Gill have all gotten a bit of outside help, too: around $430,000 for Mejia from a constellation of progressive groups, chief among them the Working Families Party; $300,000 for Beecher from VoteVets, a group that supports Democratic veterans for office; and $170,000 for Gill (and against Malinowski) from Affordability and Progress PAC, which was funded by a handful of pro-Gill unions.
All in all, total spending in the race is likely to blow well past $10 million, which makes the 11th district race easily the most expensive House primary in state history; for voters in the district, that means a lot of ads, a lot of mailers, and a lot of phone calls.
The voters
The key question, and one that might make any prognostication or polling useless, is who, exactly, will be turning out to vote on a random Thursday in February.
28,135 voters have already cast their ballots, per @umichvoter, 19,648 of them by mail and another 8,487 during the six days of early in-person voting. (For reference, the day before the 2024 primary for the 11th district, 21,181 voters had cast early or mail-in ballots; turnout that year ended up being 51,848.)
Those banked votes break down 47% Essex, 45% Morris, 8% Passaic, a more Morris-heavy electorate than past elections – which might be a boon for Malinowski, or for Mejia, or for no one in particular.
Nobody knows yet, though, what those early numbers mean for who will show up at the polls today. It’s a tired cliché to say that an election all comes down to turnout, but when Election Day arrives at such an odd time and the makeup of the electorate is so malleable, the best voter turnout operation may crown the winner.
What comes after
Once the dust settles tonight and a victor emerges, then it will all be over. Or not.
Whoever wins the primary will have to gear up for the April 16 special general election against Hathaway, who never faced any opposition for the Republican nomination. Given that special elections often become closely watched barometers for the mood of the electorate, it’s possible that the race will take on some nationwide import.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Democrats will be at much risk of losing. Sherrill won the district by 15 points in both her 2024 re-election campaign and her 2025 gubernatorial campaign, and no Democrats in the district are particularly worried about holding the seat – nor are Republicans especially optimistic, at least at this point, about the possibility of an upset, though they do view some of the Democratic candidates as weaker than others.
But even assuming they beat Hathaway, the Democratic special election victor still may not be out of the woods yet. There have been widespread rumblings about the possibility that one or more of the unsuccessful candidates in today’s primary will come back and try again in June; the chances of that seem especially high if the winner only prevails by a narrow margin.
During the Morris Democratic screening process, Malinowski and Gill both explicitly pledged not to continue their campaigns into the regular election if they lose, and Mejia strongly indicated that she wouldn’t do so either. But not all of their opponents have made the same promise, among them Way, who said she would have to “give that some thought.”
The challenge for any Democrat who continues their campaign, however, is that they’ll have to be running against a fellow Democrat while also supporting that same Democrat in the special election against Hathaway – a very difficult messaging needle to thread. The regular election filing deadline is on March 23, long before the April 16 special.