Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders taps Analilia Mejia as national political director for 2020 primary campaign

Rutgers Analilia Mejia Vermont senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders hired Rutgers alumna Analilia Mejia to be his 2020 national political campaign director.
Vermont senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders hired Rutgers alumna Analilia Mejia to be his 2020 national political campaign director.
Courtesy: Analilia Mejia

"I always say that it (comparative literature) taught me how to look at a piece of literature, the context it has to history and the struggles going on. In politics, I can look at a campaign and understand how to tell its story.”
 
– Analilia Mejia 
 

Analilia Mejia, the national political director for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2020 Democratic primary presidential campaign, has been paying attention to politics since she was 8 years old.

That’s when she got her own library card and took out her first book on former President Richard Nixon to figure out why he was idolized by sitcom character Alex Keaton, played by Michael J. Fox in the popular sitcom Family Ties.

“It’s something my sister still laughs at me for,” Mejia said. “All these years later, though, it was my sister who told my family that I had no choice but to say yes to Senator Sanders because I had been talking and thinking about politics since I was a kid.”

The wife and mother of two young boys has been an activist since her days as a student at Rutgers-New Brunswick when she was involved in Latino organizations on campus. It is where Mejia received an undergraduate degree in comparative literature in 2000 and two master’s degrees, one in public policy from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy in 2002 and the other in labor education from the School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) in 2003.

It’s her degree in literature that actually helps her most in politics.

Analilia and Obama
Analilia Mejia with her son, Langston, getting a high-five from President Barack Obama when she was named a White House Champion of Change in 2013.
Courtesy: Analilia Mejia

“I remember my parents couldn’t understand what I was studying, wondering what I could do with comparative literature,” she said. “But I always say that it taught me how to look at a piece of literature, the context it has to history and the struggles going on. In politics, I can look at a campaign and understand how to tell its story.”

Mejia has been telling stories about how policy relates to people for more than two decades. After graduating from Rutgers, she spent about 10 years working with several unions in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and New Jersey. Until she accepted the job to work for Sanders, Mejia was executive director of New Jersey Working Families Alliance, where she successfully led the push to enact earned sick time leave in New Jersey and increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Her progressive activism comes from her immigrant and working-poor roots, she said. Her mother, from Colombia, and her father, from the Dominican Republic, faced major economic and social challenges. She remembers times when her parents had to worry about what bills to pay and hope that there was enough food until the next paycheck.

“I know how hard it is, especially for the working poor, to be able to grow and flourish and not have to worry every minute about just making ends meet,” she said.

That is why Mejia threw her support behind Sanders, a self-described progressive and Democratic Socialist, when the Vermont senator ran against Hillary Clinton. It’s why she will begin this new political journey with Sanders as he tries to win the Democratic nomination against a younger crowd of progressive candidates who Mejia calls “Bernie Light.”

Debra Lancaster, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Women and Work at SMLR, said she wasn’t surprised that Sanders chose Mejia to help him map out his political strategy. Working with her on the fight for $15 campaign, Lancaster said Mejia was unflappable, focused and passionate.

“When it comes to working with different organizations and coalitions she definitely has a knack for bringing people together, keeping them focused and not giving up,” Lancaster said. “She wants to include as many people under the tent as possible and believes we have more in common than not.” 

Mejia expects to be at Sanders headquarters in Washington D.C. four days each week throughout the primary season. She was with him in Brooklyn when Sanders kicked off his campaign and traveled with him to Chicago for a second rally. She will go with Sanders to South Carolina and California – two important early primary states – later this month.

In the meantime, Mejia is busy assembling a team of political operatives who can run individual state campaigns as she travels throughout the country with Sanders building the operation.

“Sometimes we think a presidential campaign is one big campaign, but it’s really made up of multiple state races,” she said. “So I’m working with folks that have done this before and identifying those in the progressive movement that want to join us.”

While Mejia was known to bring her older son with her to rallies and organizer training sessions in the past, now that he is in school, he and his 2-year-old brother will stay at home with their father Robert Rogers – a Rutgers graduate as well – and Mejia’s parents, who live with her.

“The campaign understands that I am a working mother,” said Mejia, who was named a White House Champion of Change in 2013 by President Barack Obama. “Technology allows us to telecommute when we need to and everyone realizes that to accommodate working families we need to be flexible.”

The issues important to Mejia are ones that are being touted on Sanders's campaign trail: Medicare-for-all, action on climate change, free tuition at colleges, lower drug prices, new labor laws to encourage union formation and a $15 minimum wage, which was recently passed in New Jersey and signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy.

So from now until the end of the primary season at least, Mejia will be on the campaign trail doing what she loves best: helping to tell Sanders’s story – who he is, where he came from and the policies he believes in – all while she juggles work, activism and motherhood.

“The work begins the moment you say yes,” she said. “So now for me, it is the White House or bust.”