KEY POINTS
- Four Nigerian-American Democrats won races in Maryland, Texas, DC and Pennsylvania.
- Will Jawando won the Montgomery County executive race in Maryland.
- Georgia’s Segun Adeyina led early, but his race was not yet called.
Four Nigerian-Americans won elected offices in the Nov. 3 U.S. midterms, while the race of a fifth, Georgia state Rep. Segun Adeyina, remained uncalled as counting continued, The Punch reported.
Will Jawando, Junior Ezeonu, Oye Owolewa and Carol Kazeem, all Democrats, won local and state legislative seats in Maryland, Texas, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Jawando, Ezeonu among US midterms winners
In Maryland, Jawando won the race for Montgomery County executive, defeating Republican Esther Wells. Results published by NBC Washington on Wednesday showed him with 237,383 votes, or 78.15%, against Wells’ 66,383, or 21.85%, with 72% of the expected vote counted. A former county council member, Jawando is the son of a Nigerian father and an American mother.
Meanwhile, in Texas, 27-year-old Ezeonu won a seat in the state House for District 101. He had beaten incumbent Chris Turner in the Democratic primary and faced no Republican in the general election. His campaign biography says he was born in Onitsha, Anambra State, and moved to Texas at age 2. He later won a seat on the Grand Prairie City Council in 2021 and became the city’s youngest mayor pro tem.
In Washington, Owolewa won an at-large seat on the D.C. Council with 69% of the vote, against independent Elissa Silverman’s 21%, according to local outlet The 51st. A pharmacist and son of Nigerian immigrants from Kwara and Osun states, he previously served as the district’s shadow representative, a post that advocates for statehood but has no vote in Congress.
Also, Kazeem kept her seat in the Pennsylvania House for District 159, beating Republican Michael Bannon, according to results published by MultiState Elections. She was among eight Nigerian-Americans who won legislative seats in the 2022 midterms.
Georgia count still underway
However, Adeyina’s race was still open at the time of reporting. The Nigerian-born Democrat, first elected in 2022, is seeking another term in Georgia’s House District 110 against Republican Charles Lollar.
An early update from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s tracker showed Adeyina leading 1,353 votes to 689. Still, that update reflected only 8% of the estimated vote.
Adeyina, who represents parts of Gwinnett County, is also executive director of the Nigerian American Public Advisory Committee, which works on voter education and registration in immigrant communities.
The midterms, held halfway through a president’s four-year term, decide all 435 House seats and, this year, 35 of the Senate’s 100 seats, along with governorships and state and local offices.
