The daughter of Colombian and Dominican immigrants, Mejia ran on an adamantly anti–Donald Trump message and secured a whopping 70 percent of the vote as a result. The Associated Press called her victory shortly after the votes started rolling in.
70 percent… wow!
The progressive Democrat’s positions echo several of the policies that made Sanders a national phenomenon, including support for universal health care coverage, tuition-free college, student loan forgiveness programs, and strengthening unions and expanding labor protections in order to bolster America’s middle class.
She sounds like a Democrat who wants to win and is against genocide.
Mejia has also been vocal in her criticism of Israel, publicly denouncing the state’s war on Palestine as a genocide. That caught the attention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which funneled money into the race to bolster her opponents. In the end, the pro-Israel lobby’s efforts may have been one of the reasons that voters in New Jersey sent Mejia to Congress.
Awesome!
I’m not going to lie and say that this is someone who I would enthusiastically vote for, but based on her campaign website I think that’s still a decent candidate. Personally, I’m ideologically a social democrat and that candidate’s campaign statements smell a bit too liberal for me to get excited over it, but she seems passable. If that’s the best out of this year’s batch, then vote for them and start agitating for people who you think would do a better job to run in 2028.
This is just the kind of stuff that keeps so many of us from even bothering in red states. I vote every chance I get in big and local elections, but damn is it hard to have it feel worth the time waiting in those long lines just to either vote for a moderate dem that most likely won’t win or a third party that even more likely won’t win. I feel better just working with the smaller political parties in my area that aren’t aligned with the major 2 to do things cause at least they understand what’s needed (shout-out to the upcoming May Day general strike that none of the Dems running here have acknowledged). They just don’t have the funds to run for an individual state.
This is a serious suggestion, however blasphemous it may seem: Change your registration to Republican and then vote in the Republican primary for the most respectable person who is running. Changing your registration doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t affect anything. The Republican Party will also send you election material by post which you can simply discard or send back empty donation envelopes to waste their money on postage.
Oh you don’t register with a party here in Missouri. You just tell them which ballot you want when you go to vote between Democrat, Republican, or Independent. This does mean we get postage from every party either asking for donations or just the usual “why my opponent sucks” ads.