In a solemn comedy fit for our times, the great political machines of New Jersey and one of Washington’s most formidable lobbying groups have been handed a stinging and unexpected rebuke.
What was declared settled is now unsettled; what was counted as certain is now a cliffhanger.
The race to succeed Governor Mikie Sherrill in her former congressional district has become a spectacle, a late-night drama unfolding on a rare Thursday in February, proving once again that the only thing predictable about democracy is its glorious unpredictability.
Earlier in the evening, the experts and the algorithms called the race for Tom Malinowski, the carpetbagging former congressman, a man with the establishment resume and the weight of serious money behind him.
It was, we were led to believe, a return to form. But then, as the evening wore on, a different story began to pulse through the wires from Morris County.
A surge, quiet but undeniable, began to tilt the scales. The early returns, dominated by mail-in ballots, had shown one picture.
The votes cast in person by those who showed up on this odd winter Thursday told another.
Analilia Mejia, the progressive organizer armed with the endorsements of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plus a fervent belief in a different politics, has pulled ahead by a hair.
The call from Decision HQ questionhas been retracted.
The political class is rubbing its eyes. It appears a several-million-dollar campaign by the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC to sideline Malinowski may have succeeded only in clearing a path for someone they would presumably find far less palatable—a delicious irony, if you have a taste for that sort of thing.
One observer wondered if the anti-Malinowski advertising was a ruse, intended to exploit the enmity of Democrats who object to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
If AIPAC was sincere about throwing their longtime friend under the bus, they may sorely regret this defeat.
They wrote Mejia off, of course.
They spoke of county organizations and financial advantages and the sober realities of New Jersey politics.
Yet here we are, with over 95 percent of the vote counted, and the candidate with the party machinery running a distant third. AIPAC’s preferred candidate in forth place after being showered with $2 million in advertising.
The insurgent organizer is dancing to Bad Bunny in a headquarters that dared to hope. The former congressman is watching a lead evaporate.
It is a tale of two parties within a party.
On one side, the experienced hand, tempered in the Washington foreign policy crucible and tainted with an ethics scandal that could be revived upon his return, who incurred wrath from AIPAC after he argued for a more nuanced support of an enraged ally.
On the other, the movement candidate, risen from the ranks of labor and activism, championing a vision that makes the old guard uneasy.
And in the middle, millions of dollars in outside spending that seems to have accomplished little but to make the race a national proxy war, a footnote that may have inadvertently decided the outcome.
Last night, New Jersey has delivered a verdict that is still being tabulated, but the message is already clear: the voters, even in the wealthy suburbs, remain delightfully unruly.
The coronation was premature.
The political obituaries for the progressive left were, as Mark Twain might have quipped, greatly exaggerated.
The way it turned out on the fifth of February, 2026—reminds us that in American politics, the last word is always, and forever, reserved for the people, whenever they choose to finally speak.
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