What’s at stake in the race to replace Mikie Sherrill in Congress

On Thursday, Democratic primary voters in North Jersey will choose from a diverse and crowded field of 11 candidates in the special election to fill Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s vacated congressional seat.

The individuals vying to represent parts of Essex, Passaic and Morris counties have had less than three months to convince voters they’re the right choice. The race was widely expected to focus on affordability issues. But in the wake of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, several candidates say ICE’s actions and the Trump administration’s authoritarian overreach is now top of mind for voters.

Democrats are expected to have an easy time retaining the seat in the special election. When Sherrill first won in 2018, she defeated a three-decade Republican incumbent and flipped the district by more than 30 points. And the 11th Congressional District was redrawn to make it even more safely Democratic after the 2020 Census.

The results of the Democratic primary in New Jersey will provide a glimpse of the types of candidates party voters are favoring ahead of November’s national midterm elections.

“What I am watching for is who Democratic voters choose when they have a very robust set of choices,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “Do they choose the most progressive candidate in the race? Do they choose sort of an organization stalwart?”

With so many Democrats running in what could be a low turnout election, experts say less than 25% of the vote might be enough to win the primary.

The Democratic winner will take on presumptive Republican nominee Joe Hathaway, the mayor of Randolph in Morris County, in the April 16 general election. He’s the lone Republican running in the GOP primary on Thursday.

While the actions of federal immigration agents in Minnesota have commanded much of the national political conversation, local episodes involving ICE are front and center for New Jersey voters.

In Morristown, where the seat of NJ’s 11th District lies, ICE agents raided a laundromat and detained 10 people on Jan. 11, leaving a 6-year-old child behind while his father was taken away. And the Washington Post reported that the Department of Homeland Security is considering a warehouse in Roxbury, located just outside the district, as a future detention center for its immigration enforcement campaign. Following the report, local town officials passed a unanimous resolution, 7-0, stating that the facility was not appropriate for this use.

Democratic candidate Analilia Mejia, a veteran New Jersey labor activist and former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign operative, gathered with supporters at Paper Plane Coffee in Montclair on the first day of early voting last Thursday.

Mejia, who has carved out a progressive lane in the election, thanks in part to high-profile endorsements from Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told Gothamist that she sees voters’ anger toward ICE and the Trump administration as a “galvanizing force” in this election.

“I think it gives so many people clarity that Donald Trump, that MAGA, that this current administration is not in fact interested in upholding the constitution or protecting the rights and liberties of all Americans,” she said. “That what they are after is total control and they’re trying to scare people into submission.”

Mejia’s campaign said they’ve held five training sessions over the past couple weeks for residents on what to do if they encounter ICE agents in their communities and more than 400 people have attended.

Mejia may not have the left lane all to herself: Former Rep. Tom Malinowski has the backing of New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, a liberal darling in the party.

Malinowski once represented parts of the 11th before redistricting. In the lead up to voting, a slew of attack ads from political action groups pointed to his previous votes in Washington to fund ICE. Malinowski calls them misleading. He recently told Gothamist he is “proud” to be the candidate in the race most attacked by ads from outside groups.

“ I think when all the guns are aimed at you, that probably means that some folks out there think that I have the advantage,” he said.

The Democratic candidates in the race have all cast a similar tone with their positions on ICE. Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill and former Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way, two that political experts have cast as top-tier candidates in the crowded field, both said they don’t think that Congress should continue to fund ICE.

”Not another dollar should be appropriated to fund this malicious style operation that has made us less safe,” Way said.

With very little daylight between the Democrats running in the 11th District on this topic, Dan Cassino, a government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said that although ICE is on voters’ minds, it may not be as big a factor as name recognition.

“There’s not a progressive versus middle of the lane divide on this issue. It’s not like, well, OK, I’m against ICE, so therefore I vote for the progressive candidate,” he said. “It’s not clear which candidate is the most anti-ICE.”

Inside the Paper Plane coffee shop, David Unger of Glen Ridge said choosing a candidate who will protect the community from ICE enforcement and will  ”put themselves on the line to fight back against authoritarianism” has become the election’s central issue.

“ If you had asked six weeks ago, most people probably would’ve said affordability,” he said.

Unger was one of a half dozen people Gothamist spoke to inside the coffee shop who brought up ICE when asked about their key election issues.

Still, voters at Paper Plane Coffee made it clear that this has not become a single-issue election. They also discussed the importance of key affordability issues on their minds.

“I’m big on  health care and I’m also big on child care,” said Oral Fitzsimmons of Bloomfield.

“My daughter’s raising two young sons now, and we know what it’s like, the struggle to have children and work at the same time,” she said . “When I think about who I’m going to vote for, it’s still those issues. Health care, child care.”