Analilia Mejia’s strategy for winning the Democratic nomination to succeed Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill revolves around consolidating the progressive vote as much as possible, and she got a new endorsement today that will likely help her accomplish that.
After being endorsed on day one by Senator Bernie Sanders, for whom she worked as a top campaign official in 2020, Mejia has now received official backing from Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, whose gubernatorial campaign earlier this year made him perhaps the most prominent left-wing politician in the state.
“Analilia has spent her entire career fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with working people, leading the fights for a $15 minimum wage and paid sick days,” Baraka said in a statement. “She doesn’t just talk about change but makes it happen… I’m proud to endorse her for Congress because I know she will be a relentless champion for justice and a critical partner to Essex County.”
Baraka’s constituency of Newark doesn’t overlap with the 11th district itself, but many of Newark’s close-in suburbs are in the district, and Baraka’s influence among progressive voters and in Black communities is nothing to scoff at. The mayor got 15% of the 11th district’s Democratic primary vote in the June gubernatorial primary, though he also had the challenge of running against Sherrill, the district’s local congresswoman.
A Baraka-Mejia alliance has evidently been in the works for a while. Politico reported that during the New Jersey League of Municipalities late last month, Baraka introduced Mejia and told the assembled crowd, “She’s running for Congress, y’all” – even though Mejia wouldn’t officially enter the race until several days afterwards.
Most of the 12 Democrats running to succeed Sherrill are pitching themselves as loyally liberal Democrats, likely a necessity in a Democratic-leaning district in the era of Donald Trump. But Mejia, who was the national political director on Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, has taken a more distinctly left-wing tack than most of her opponents, potentially setting up an ideological clash in the suburban district.
One of Mejia’s erstwhile opponents seemed to recognize that yesterday: Marc Chaaban, a 25-year-old former congressional staffer running on a similarly progressive platform, pulled out of the race and endorsed Mejia instead.
