Mejia Wins a Full Term With a $25 Minimum-Wage Bill

Card photograph: ARCHIVE. Analilia Mejia, second from left, at a White House Champions of Change event on paid leave, April 16, 2015. Photo: Shawn T. Moore / U.S. Department of Labor, public domain. Cropped for the card. Source photograph.

Analilia Mejia has won a full term in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, according to the Associated Press projection reported by New Jersey Monitor. She defeated Republican Joe Hathaway again after winning their April special-election contest to succeed Mikie Sherrill.

Decision Desk HQ separately called the race, with Mejia ahead in Essex, Morris and Passaic counties in its late-Tuesday returns. Hathaway is a Randolph councilman. The rematch gives the former community organizer a full two-year term after the shorter period completing Sherrill’s service.

Already serving after her April special-election victory, Mejia is an original cosponsor of the Living Wage For All Act, H.R. 8555. Delia Ramirez introduced the bill on April 28.

It sits alongside Greg Casar’s double-time overtime proposal as a demand for higher employer payments. Mejia’s bill reaches the basic hourly floor, including workers who receive no covered overtime.

Archive official portrait of Analilia Mejia, April 20, 2026. U.S. House of Representatives. Public domain; unaltered. Source photograph.

Two schedules for the same rate

The bill schedules a $25 hourly minimum for large employers in 2031 and other employers in 2038. It defines large employers as those with at least 500 employees nationwide or at least $1 billion in annual gross revenue. Both schedules are subject to the bill’s median-wage adjustment provisions; the text targets a floor equal to two-thirds of the national median hourly wage.

The proposed schedules leave workers at smaller employers waiting seven years longer for the $25 rate. Neither schedule is current wage law.

The bill’s indexing rule is consequential: if a scheduled annual rate exceeds two-thirds of the national median hourly wage, the median-based amount would apply instead. Once that ratio is reached, annual adjustments would maintain it. The headline $25 schedule therefore cannot be treated as an unconditional promise about the wage payable in each year.

The bill also phases out separate lower cash wages for tipped workers. At large employers, the schedule begins at $6 an hour and rises through $9, $12, $15 and $18 before reaching the applicable full minimum five years after the effective date. Other employers have a separate progression. Workers would retain tips in addition to the required wage.

Newly hired workers under 20 are another group covered by the changes. Their special lower wage would rise until it reaches the ordinary minimum, after which the separate youth provision would be repealed. This makes the proposal about which workers receive a full wage as well as the dollar figure attached to it.

The NAACP’s account of the launch places Mejia and Ramirez alongside One Fair Wage, civil-rights organizers and affected workers. The coalition seeks an end to subminimum wages as part of the wider push.

A second defeat for Hathaway

Morristown Green’s election-night report describes Hathaway’s attempt to portray Mejia as an extreme socialist. At her Montclair celebration, she argued that the country owes its people more than mere survival, including access to healthcare.

The introduced text still contains a phase-in beginning in January 2026, before its April introduction. Any path to enactment now would have to address that calendar. The published bill provides a clear direction on employer obligations, but it is not an instruction for workers to expect retroactive payments under current law.

Her full-term victory follows the special-election win and leaves the wage legislation with a returning sponsor. The bill’s long phase-in also defines an argument within the fight for higher pay: how long workers must wait, and why employer size would determine when they reach the same scheduled floor.