RANDOLPH - When Analilia Mejia visited Delaney Hall a few weeks ago, Joe Hathaway was watching.

"She goes down there. ... They light this match and pull the grenade and kind of roll it out," Hathaway said.

"It got violent It was a complete disaster," he added during a chat Tuesday in a local diner.

It is that image of Mejia allegedly inciting chaos at an ICE facility outside her district that Hathaway wants people in CD-11 to remember.

Hathaway is the Randolph councilman who lost to now-Congresswoman Mejia by about 20 points in the April 16 special election. This was to replace Mikie Sherrill in the House.

The "real" election is coming up in November and Hathaway is undaunted.

So much so that he dwells on the positive.

Sure, he lost in April, but he says he did better than Republicans usually do in such Essex County towns as Livingston and Millburn.
That was no accident.

Both towns have fairly large Jewish populations and Hathaway campaigned hard on his view that Mejia, a harsh critic of the Israeli government, has anti-Semitic tendencies. During the campaign, she denied that, drawing a distinction between the government of Israel and Jews living in the district and the country.

Nonetheless, expect Hathaway to make the two aforementioned points during the fall campaign - Mejia is a threat to the Jewish community and her left wing views (Bernie Sanders campaigned for her in January) are not aligned with most of the district. CD-11 includes parts of Essex, Passaic and Morris counties.

Since Mejia joined Congress two months ago, Hathaway says, "She's voting as a progressive ideologue."

Nothing happens in a vacuum and Hathaway understands what he is up against.

Mejia's easy victory in a district long represented by the aristocratic Rodney Frelinghuysen (1995-2018) had a lot to do with Donald Trump.

Hathaway knows that and has tried - and will keep trying - to separate himself from the president when needed.

For example, he did criticize Trump for cancelling the Gateway Tunnel project. Funding was restored by the courts.

That shows a degree of independence, but he says it also shows how he and Mejia differ.

While he says he will disagree with the president for the good of CD-11, Hathaway says Mejia seems prone to concentrate only on a left wing agenda.

This brings up another, or maybe a related point.

Maybe condemning Trump in itself is good enough to win - at least in the current climate.

In that, Hathaway sees long term danger.

He says it looks like Democrats have allowed those who "check the box" of hating Trump more than anyone else to be nominated. And that can mean "terrible candidates."

He brought up Adam Hamawy, the Democratic primary winner in CD-12, whose ties to the "blind sheik," a now-deceased cleric with alleged ties to terrorism, drew fire during the primary.

Getting back to his race, Hathaway says he wants voters to understand that serving in Congress is about serving the people in your district first and foremost, not protesting in favor of "illegal alien criminals."

Hatthaway made a similar point back in April. So, how are things going to change?

His hope is that more voters will be paying attention and also that more will understand that his opponent is not in line with most of them.

Or as he says, it's time "for a return to sanity."