Four Nigerian-Americans Win U.S. Midterms
Four Nigerian-Americans have won elective positions in the November 3 midterm elections in the United States, while the result of another candidate, Segun Adeyina, remained uncalled as votes were being counted.
The winners are Will Jawando, Junior Ezeonu, Oye Owolewa and Carol Kazeem, who secured positions in local government and state legislatures across Maryland, Texas, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania.
Jawando, the Democratic Party Candidate, won the race for Montgomery County executive in Maryland, defeating Republican candidate Esther Wells.
Results published by NBC Washington on Wednesday showed Jawando with 237,383 votes, representing 78.15 per cent, against Wells’s 66,383 votes, or 21.85 per cent, with 72 per cent of the expected vote counted.
Jawando, a member of the Montgomery County Council before the election, is the son of a Nigerian father and an American mother.
The Baltimore Banner and The Washington Post have previously reported on his Nigerian heritage and political career.
In Texas, 27-year-old Ezeonu, also a Democrat, secured a seat in the state’s House of Representatives for District 101 after defeating incumbent Chris Turner in the Democratic primary.
Ezeonu was the only candidate on the November general-election ballot after no Republican opponent entered the race.
His campaign biography says he was born in Onitsha, Anambra State, and moved to Texas at the age of two.
He was elected to the Grand Prairie City Council in 2021 and later became the city’s youngest mayor pro tempore.
In Washington, DC, Owolewa, the Democratic candidate, won an at-large seat on the District of Columbia Council.
The 51st, a local news publication, reported that Owolewa secured 69 per cent of the vote, against independent candidate Elissa Silverman’s 21 per cent.
Owolewa, a pharmacist and the son of Nigerian immigrants from Kwara and Osun states, previously served as the District’s elected shadow representative, a position that advocates for statehood but does not carry voting rights in the US Congress.
Meanwhile, Kazeem, also a Democrat, retained her seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, representing District 159.
She contested on the Democratic Party platform against Republican Michael Bannon. Election results published by MultiState Elections listed Kazeem as the winner of the race.
Kazeem was among eight Nigerian-Americans who won legislative seats in the 2022 US midterm elections.
Adeyina, a Nigerian-born Democratic incumbent, was seeking re-election to the Georgia House of Representatives for District 110, where he faced Republican Charles Lollar.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s election tracker initially showed Adeyina leading Lollar with 1,353 votes against 689, but only eight per cent of the estimated votes had been counted at the time of that update.
Adeyina was first elected to the Georgia House in 2022 and represents parts of Gwinnett County. His official legislative biography says he is the executive director of the Nigerian American Public Advisory Committee, an organisation involved in voter education and registration among immigrant communities.
The US midterm elections are held halfway through a president’s four-year term and determine the composition of Congress, with all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the Senate’s 100 seats contested in the 2026 elections.
Governorships and state and local government positions are also decided during the polls.
The elections are widely seen as a test of the sitting president’s performance and influence.
