Bernie Sanders champions Analilia Mejia in New Jersey’s special primary

From the packed aisles of a university theater in Wayne, New Jersey, a familiar, raspy indictment of the American condition echoed the message of Martin Luther King, and cut through the political fog with the clarity of a bell and the bite of a saw this evening.

Senator Bernie Sanders brought his Fighting Oligarchy tour to the Garden State, and the faithful, in numbers so great they spilled out of doors meant to hold nearly a thousand, came to bear witness not merely to a speech, but to a diagnosis of a national sickness.

The stage was set for a special primary election to replace a departing Blue Dog congresswoman, but the sermon delivered was a broader, more fundamental gospel: that a half-century class war, waged relentlessly by the wealthiest sliver of this nation, has picked the pockets and futures of the vast majority, and the hour to fight back is now.

The beneficiary of this clarion call in the February 5th primary is Analilia Mejia, whom Sanders championed as the most progressive warrior in the crowded field.

Yet, the candidate herself seemed, for a moment, a vessel for the larger, boiling sentiment in the room.

Sanders and Mejia spent time speaking in the cold to people who exceeded the capacity of the theater, where the event was held.

When Mejia spoke, the overflow crowd ignited, a palpable release of frustration that had simmered long before the doors opened.

“That machine has no fire like I see in the eyes of every single one of you,” Mejia told the audience.

This was not mere campaign politicking; it was the gathering of a congregation weary of what one attendee called the “brutal tactics” of a system tilted against them, and outraged by suggestions, even from a sitting Senator like Cory Booker, that a Gestapo-like immigration force simply needed better training and body cameras—as if a polished boot does not hurt less when it kicks a person.

Marc Chaban, who gave up his candidacy to endorse Mejia, spoke briefly before introducing Booker’s successor as Newark mayor, Ras Baraka, who inspired excitement among the crowd, as one of Mejia’s strongest endorsements in state politics.

The substance of the evening was a stark recounting of a nation hijacked.

Sanders, with the weary persistence of a man who has charted the same tragic graph for decades, laid bare the consequences of concentrated wealth and corrupted power.

He spoke of oligarchy not as some foreign concept, but as the domestic engine driving everything from unaffordable healthcare and crippling student debt to the cynical machinery of politics itself.

The evidence was not just in his words, but in the very faces present.

In the crowd sat Stewart Resmer, an outspoken Vietnam era Marine veteran who is considered Wayne’s leading Democratic activist.

Another recognizable figure was attorney Brett Pugasch, who helped strike a blow against one facet of that machinery—New Jersey’s uniquely undemocratic practice of rigging primary ballots.

There, too, was progressive firebrand Lisa McCormick, collecting signatures to challenge Senator Booker, an incumbent whose campaign coffers that have been fattened by the contributions of more than fifty billionaires—a living exhibit in the case against oligarchy.

Dozens of other noteworthy people were represented, too numerous to list, but the ground troops are the engine for the people powered campaign as it entered the final 18 days of the race.

The air was thick with the scent of intra-party rebellion.

Even the applause for 2024 Senate contender Patricia Campos Medina, as she walked before the stage, in a nod to her past key role in Sanders’ presidential effort.

Every detail fed the narrative.

The fierce opposition to groups like AIPAC, which backs Booker, shared by Sanders, Mejia, and McCormick, was not a footnote on foreign policy, but presented as another front in the same war—a battle against the financial interests that shape policy for their own ends, at home and abroad.

What unfolded in Wayne was more than a rally.

It was a stark tableau of an American crossroads, painted in the unvarnished colors of economic struggle and political defiance.

The message from the stage was clear: the fifty-year war has left deep scars, and the political establishment, of both parties, is too often a compliant partner.

The Fighting Oligarchy tour, in its New Jersey stop, reinforced that the prescription is not moderation, but a direct and unapologetic challenge to the power of concentrated wealth.

The overflowing theater suggests a significant number of citizens are ready to fill that prescription, convinced that the gentle politics of the past are but a tonic for a patient who is, in fact, bleeding out.

The test of whether the event is impactful will come on Thursday, February 5, when Mejia is running behind two AIPAC allies, carpetbagging stock trader Tom Malinowski and Brendan Gill, a notorious misogynist and ultimate insider.