East Bay state senator becomes first Afghan American elected to Congress
🗓️74 days to November General Election
CA14 SPECIAL ELECTION
Aisha Wahab won the 14th Congressional District special election Thursday, becoming the first Afghan American elected to Congress and overcoming an unprecedented $6 million spending blitz by Super PACs aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Wahab, whose political rise began eight years ago on the Hayward City Council before taking her to the state Senate, capped a surprisingly competitive special election against fellow Democrat Melissa Hernandez with a six-point victory, according to Thursday’s vote update.
A small number of ballots remain uncounted, but not enough to erase Wahab’s roughly 6,000-vote advantage.
The Alameda County Registrar of Voters is scheduled to certify the results on Aug. 28. Wahab could be sworn into Congress as early as September.
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An excerpt from the East Bay Citizen, the precursor to the East Bay Insiders, on Aisha Wahab’s election to the Hayward City Council:
The Final Word on 2018 - Dec. 30, 2018
The election of Aisha Wahab to the Hayward City Council is a singular moment that poses a glimpse of the future. She checks all the boxes when it comes to the national urging of progressives to run young, energized, women of color. Wahab is in her early 30s. She is grounded in the local progressive movement, along with experience with the county and state Democratic Party. She is smart. She is ambitious. She is the first Afghan American ever elected to public office in the United States.
That she echoes the strength and fortitude of progressive darling, New York Congressmember-elect Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, is not exactly by design, but its clear. Wahab’s inauguration speech earlier this month was like none ever heard in these part over the past decade. It was defiant. It was a warning to Hayward, the most entrenched status quo city in the entire East Bay that positive change is coming. I guarantee you the speech scared her council colleagues, the special interests that have sucked the life blood out of Hayward for decades, and those who believe they are destined to be the next assemblymember.
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