Aisha Wahab, a Democratic state senator from California, has won a special election to fill the congressional seat vacated by former Representative Eric Swalwell, becoming the first Afghan American ever elected to the US Congress. US media projected her victory on Thursday, with final results from Alameda County showing Wahab receiving approximately 53 percent of the vote to around 47 percent for her rival, fellow Democrat Melissa Hernandez. The win came despite a combined roughly $6.4 million in spending by political action committees linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the prominent pro-Israel lobbying organisation, aimed at boosting Hernandez and attacking Wahab's record.
Wahab will now represent California's 14th congressional district — covering the southeastern part of the San Francisco Bay Area — for the remainder of Swalwell's term, which ends in January. Swalwell resigned in April following allegations of sexual assault, which he denied. The race is seen as part of a broader pattern in the 2026 midterm election cycle, in which progressive candidates including Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed have prevailed despite heavy spending by pro-Israel groups. Some of that spending came in the form of attack advertising that avoided the subject of Israel directly: one advertisement against Wahab made misleading claims about her record on laws protecting minors from sex trafficking, which she forcefully denied, calling the campaign "$5 million of lies."
Wahab's story has attracted significant attention beyond the immediate political contest. Born in New York in 1987 to Afghan refugee parents, she entered the foster care system as a child after her father was killed and her mother died young. She and her sister were adopted by a family in the San Francisco Bay Area. A later period of economic hardship — her adoptive family lost their home to foreclosure in 2011 — drew her into local activism around housing affordability in Hayward, a city in the East Bay. She went on to earn degrees in political science, business administration, and social work, and served on Hayward's city council before winning a seat in the California state senate, where she authored legislation on housing, workers' rights, and — controversially — a bill to ban caste-based discrimination that Governor Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed.
On the question of Gaza, Wahab has stated publicly that she believes the violence against Palestinians constitutes genocide, a position she reiterated at a candidate forum in April. She co-authored a state resolution last year calling for an end to the war and denouncing what it described as a "horrific humanitarian catastrophe." Hernandez, by contrast, declined to use that language, saying that while Israel had a right to defend itself, the destruction in Gaza had gone "too far." Foreign policy was not a central pillar of Wahab's campaign, but the issue loomed over the race given the source of the outside spending against her.
Wahab's victory is not yet the final word on who will hold the seat. She and Hernandez are set to face each other again in November's general election, competing for a full two-year congressional term. "I will fight for this district that raised me," Wahab said in a statement after her win. "This victory shows that our district cannot be bought." Progressive Representative Ro Khanna of California congratulated her, saying he looked forward to working with her on issues including Medicare for All and a living wage.