Four Nigerian Americans won races in the November 3 US midterm elections, securing state and local offices in Maryland, Texas, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. A fifth candidate, Georgia state Representative Segun Adeyina, was leading in his race, which remained uncalled as votes were counted.
In Maryland, Democrat Will Jawando defeated Republican Esther Wells in the race for Montgomery County executive. Results published by NBC Washington on Wednesday showed Jawando with 237,383 votes, or 78.15 per cent, to Wells’s 66,383 votes, or 21.85 per cent, with 72 per cent of the expected vote counted. Jawando, the son of a Nigerian father and an American mother, served on the Montgomery County Council before the election.
In Texas, Democrat Junior Ezeonu, 27, won the District 101 seat in the state House of Representatives. He defeated incumbent Chris Turner in the Democratic primary and was the only candidate on the general election ballot after no Republican entered the race. According to his campaign biography, Ezeonu 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, Democrat Oye Owolewa won an at-large seat on the District of Columbia Council. Local news outlet The 51st reported that he received 69 per cent of the vote, compared with 21 per cent for independent candidate Elissa Silverman. Owolewa, a pharmacist whose parents immigrated from Nigeria’s Kwara and Osun states, previously served as the district’s elected shadow representative, a role that advocates for DC statehood without carrying voting rights in Congress.
In Pennsylvania, Democrat Carol Kazeem retained her District 159 seat in the state House of Representatives, defeating Republican Michael Bannon, according to results published by MultiState Elections. Kazeem was among eight Nigerian Americans who won legislative seats in the 2022 midterms.
In Georgia, Adeyina, a Nigerian-born Democrat, was seeking re-election to the state House of Representatives in District 110 against Republican Charles Lollar. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s election tracker showed Adeyina leading by 1,353 votes to 689, with only eight per cent of the estimated vote counted at the time of the update.
First elected in 2022, Adeyina represents parts of Gwinnett County. His official legislative biography lists him as executive director of the Nigerian American Public Advisory Committee, which works on voter education and registration among immigrant communities.
The midterms, held halfway through a president’s four-year term, determine control of Congress and are widely viewed as a test of the sitting president’s performance and political influence. All 435 US House seats and 35 of the Senate’s 100 seats were contested in 2026, alongside governorships and other state and local offices.
