Two Democrats, one vote: Joe Hathaway for Congress

We are two lifelong Democrats and Essex County neighbors, one in North Caldwell, the other in Fairfield. One of us served 18 years as Democratic leader in North Caldwell and was twice elected its chairman, following a grandmother and a father who were district leaders before him. The other, the son of Holocaust survivors, led the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest for 19 years and came of age in a democratic socialist movement that stood with Israel without apology.

We don’t agree on everything. We agree on this: on November 3, the voters of the 11th District should elect Joe Hathaway.

In April, many of our neighbors gave Analilia Mejia the benefit of the doubt. Campaign rhetoric is campaign rhetoric. Six months later, she has a voting record. It deserves to be read.

Then it was rhetoric. Now it is a record.

On July 15, the House voted on an amendment from Rep. Thomas Massie that would have barred funds for Israel in next year’s national security spending bill and cut $3.3 billion in military financing. It failed, 314 to 104. Rep. Mejia voted yes.

This was not a vote about Benjamin Netanyahu. Many thoughtful Americans and Israelis criticize his government. Security assistance is something else. It is the foundation of a partnership that presidents of both parties have kept for decades.

Linda Scherzer, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater MetroWest, told the Jewish Link she was “deeply troubled” that Mejia voted “against the wishes of a majority of her constituents.” We agree.

The vote did not come out of nowhere. As a candidate, she was the only Democrat in the primary field to raise her hand at a forum when asked whether Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. In March, at a meet-and-greet in Florham Park, she called Israel’s prime minister a war criminal and told voters, “I have never said, ‘we’re not giving any aid.’” Four months later, she voted to bar it.

To be fair, she has said she does not extend her anger at Netanyahu to the Israeli people or the Jewish people. We would like to believe her. But we have heard that formulation before. “Only the government, never the people” has too often served as cover for hostility toward the Jewish state itself, and Jews have learned to meet it with skepticism. We cannot read her heart. We can read her votes, and they have moved in one direction.

She now sits on the House Homeland Security Committee. This month she called ICE “a rogue agency” and said Congress should claw back billions in additional ICE funding.

We learned our politics from Democrats who saw no conflict between progressive values and a steadfast alliance with Israel. Harry Truman recognized the Jewish state 11 minutes after it declared independence. Hubert Humphrey fought for civil rights at home and for Israel abroad, and never thought he had to choose. Bill Clinton called Yitzhak Rabin his chaver, his friend, and held Yasser Arafat responsible for the collapse of the 2000 peace talks. Al Gore chose Joe Lieberman as his running mate.

One of us was once a young socialist himself, in the movement of Michael Harrington, who put “Democratic” before “Socialist” because he had seen what socialism without democracy does. Irving Howe, Bayard Rustin, and Albert Shanker, president of the United Federation of Teachers, stood in that tradition, and they stood with Israel. Today’s Democratic Socialists of America have abandoned it for the boycott movement.

Rep. Mejia was national political director of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign and has been endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That is her right. Asked this month by Morristown Green where she would break with Sanders and the democratic socialist movement, she left the question blank. Hers is not the tradition that built the Democratic Party in this district, and it is not the tradition we were raised in.

That silence matters, because the movement she is aligned with has taken some very strident positions. The national platform of the Democratic Socialists of America reportedly calls for redirecting police funding as a step toward abolishing police and prisons. Tearing down the institutions that keep our communities safe is not reform, and no responsible person in either party should want it for the 11th District. We are not saying Rep. Mejia holds every position her allies do. We are saying we have not heard her repudiate them, and when she was given the chance, she said nothing.

Joe Hathaway grew up in Clifton, graduated from Yale, and served as mayor of Randolph. He is a Republican who does not ask us to pretend otherwise, and who does not treat the White House as his party boss. He told Morristown Green this month that he is “running to represent NJ-11, not Donald Trump, the Republican Party or anybody else in Washington.” He named where he has broken with the president: the Gateway Tunnel, Picatinny Arsenal, Affordable Care Act subsidies, and blanket tariffs. In the April debate he said plainly that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and that he would resist any unconstitutional attempt at a third term.

That independence extends to immigration, where moderation is hardest to find. He wants enforcement focused on “dangerous criminals, violent offenders, gang members,” with body cameras, proper identification, and accountability for ICE agents. He supports a way for long-settled immigrants who work, pay taxes, and stay out of trouble “to earn legal recognition.” He opposes the proposed ICE detention center in Roxbury.

We agree with him. We, too, are troubled by some of ICE’s tactics. But the lasting answer to our immigration problems will not come from abolishing an agency, and it will not come from raids. It has to come from a bipartisan law. In 2024, Republican Sen. James Lankford, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema negotiated exactly that kind of border bill. Senate Republicans blocked it after Donald Trump told them to “blame it on me.” We want a congressman who will help write the next one, not one who wants to tear the system down.

The same instinct shapes his approach to artificial intelligence, the issue that will define the next decade. Rep. Mejia has called for a moratorium on AI development; Hathaway calls that “utterly unrealistic” while China and Russia race ahead. But he also breaks with Republicans, President Trump among them, who want little to no regulation. He wants a national strategy that encourages innovation, protects American jobs, and strengthens national security under clear, consistent standards. “Not every issue has a simple, black-and-white answer,” he told us. “We need leaders willing to understand the nuances, strike the right balance between innovation and responsible oversight, and make thoughtful decisions that keep America leading the world.”

He opposes putting conditions on U.S. security aid to Israel. He told one of us, in a two-hour sit-down, that he supports a woman’s right to choose, particularly in the first 20 weeks. He calls the Gateway Tunnel “the single most important infrastructure project in the Northeast” and has pledged to keep it fully funded.

In the interest of full disclosure: we both support his campaign. On Sept. 9 we joined Democrats, Republicans, and independents at a Jewish community fundraiser for Joe at the Crystal Plaza. Nobody in that room asked anyone to change parties. They asked for a congressman who will stand with Israel and work for this district. We are not leaving the Democratic Party. We are asking it to remember what it stands for. Crossing the line for one race is not betrayal. It is how a party learns that our votes are earned, not owed.

A party that takes our votes for granted will keep nominating candidates who take our values for granted.

This district has been well served by moderates of both parties, Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen and Democrat Mikie Sherrill among them. We want it to stay that way.

Watch the candidates debate on October 26 at Saint Elizabeth University in Morristown. Read the record. Early voting runs October 24 through November 1, and Election Day is November 3. Join us in voting for Joe Hathaway.

Denny Klein is president and CEO of Rand, Feuer & Klein LLC, a four-generation independent insurance agency founded in Newark in 1922. He served 18 years as Democratic leader in North Caldwell and was twice elected chairman.

Max L. Kleinman of Fairfield was CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest from 1995 to 2014. He is president of the Fifth Commandment Foundation and a consultant for the Jewish Community Legacy Project.