California Democrat Aisha Wahab won a special election Thursday to fill the congressional seat vacated by Eric Swalwell, making her the first Afghan American ever elected to the U.S. Congress.

Wahab, a progressive state senator, defeated BART board director Melissa Hernandez to win California's 14th Congressional District, which covers parts of Alameda County on the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay, according to PBS NewsHour. She'll serve out the remainder of Swalwell's term, which runs through January.

A rematch already on the calendar

The win came despite a late surge of outside spending against Wahab in the campaign's final stretch, according to KQED. Wahab and Hernandez will face off again in November in a separate election to determine who serves the next full two-year term — meaning Thursday's result settles only who holds the seat through the end of the current Congress.

THE FIRST AFGHAN AMERICAN EVER ELECTED TO THE U.S. HOUSE.

Wahab's win extends a streak of firsts. Born in New York City to Afghan refugee parents and raised in Fremont, she made national headlines in 2018 as the first Afghan American elected to public office in the United States when she won a seat on the Hayward City Council. She later became the first Muslim and first Afghan American elected to the California State Senate, according to The 19th.

She takes the seat once held by Swalwell, who resigned earlier this year amid sexual misconduct allegations that upended his political career. The circumstances of his exit made the special election unusually closely watched for an off-year Bay Area House race, drawing national donors and advocacy groups into what would otherwise have been a low-profile contest.

Wahab holds a doctorate in social work from the University of Southern California and has built her legislative record in Sacramento around housing, labor and consumer-protection bills. Her congressional campaign leaned on that record along with her personal story as the daughter of refugees, framing her candidacy as a rebuke of the outside money that flowed into the race against her.

With her win, Wahab becomes the newest member of California's House delegation, and attention now shifts to the November rematch against Hernandez for the seat's next full two-year term. The compressed special-election calendar gives way almost immediately to a fall campaign, with both camps expected to resume fundraising in the coming weeks.