Almost a year ago, I wrote “A Very Rough Day in Jersey” in these pages about Donald Trump’s surprisingly strong showing in the Garden State in the 2024 presidential race. It became the second most viewed article at the Washington Monthly in the past 12 months, which surprised me, until it didn’t.
Why the broad audience? It may have been the mysterious workings of the Google algorithm. Still, I think the Democratic near-death experience in New Jersey, where Kamala Harris won by only 6 percent in a state that has been solidly Democratic in presidential elections for over a generation, was painfully emblematic of Trump’s 2024 triumph. I happened to write it in a way that resonated, with a lot of history and personal reflection as a Jersey native.
That Harris couldn’t win a swing state was one thing; that she almost lost fuckin’ Jersey was jaw-dropping. In 2020, Joe Biden won New Jersey by nearly 16 points over Donald Trump, and in 2016, Hillary Clinton beat the star of The Apprentice by 13 points as she lost nationally. Barack Obama topped Mitt Romney by 18 points in 2012. Like in the Rio Grande Valley and the South Bronx, Trump had made considerable gains with Blacks and Hispanics, and New Jersey is the most Hispanic state east of the Mississippi, save Florida. In Jersey, Trump held Republicans and chipped away at young voters. No state had a more dramatic blue-to-red shift.
In that gloomy-for-Democrats piece last year, I did see some light on the horizon for the party: Rebecca Michelle Sherrill, who had been called Mikie since she was a little girl growing up in Alexandria, Virginia. Her photo adorned the page. I wrote:
In the hothouse atmosphere of 2025, when Trump will be in the throes of his first year, it could be a promising contest for U.S. Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Navy veteran, moderate, bipartisan Democrat who proved a very good crossover candidate. The state has only elected one woman governor, [Christie Todd] Whitman, and none to the U.S. Senate, but I’d put money on Sherrill to take the nomination and the race if she runs.
I turned out to be right about Sherrill getting the nomination. It was more than a hunch. I’d followed Sherrill closely for some time. First, she represents my hometown, South Orange, in the U.S. House, and second, she seems to be one of the most politically talented members of the very gifted House class of 2018 elected during Trump’s first term. A former Navy helicopter pilot who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, the now-53-year-old was a federal prosecutor and mother of four who seemed like she was created in a political consultant’s lab as a symbol of change, but not scary change. Having flipped a Republican district in 2018, she seemed smart, nimble, and brave. She was just the seventh member of Congress to call for Biden to step aside after his June 2024 debate disaster, when most members were sitting tight.
I thought Sherrill was the best-equipped candidate to take on the GOP and could win what was sure to be a tough nomination fight. The state’s two U.S. Senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, weren’t going anywhere, so the line to run for New Jersey governor was long. (And it’s an excellent job; political scientists have long noted it’s the most powerful governorship in the country since no other official is elected statewide. The Lieutenant Governor runs on a joint ticket.) Still, Sherill trounced a very competitive field, including Representative Josh Gottheimer, an aerobic centrist and prodigious fundraiser, as well as the mayors of Newark and Jersey City, assorted state pols, and the head of the state’s teachers’ union, because, hey, you might as well cut out the middle man.
With just a few days left in the 2025 gubernatorial race, Democratic professionals are everywhere cautiously predicting that Sherrill is likely to pull this out in modest single digits. New Jersey reporters that I know allow a larger possibility that she could blow it. Call it a hard landing, not the easy touchdown I pictured. I still can’t help but wonder if her Republican opponent, Giacchino Michael “Jack” Ciattarelli, a businessman who was expected to lose by double digits in 2021 to Governor Phil Murphy but only lost by 3 points, and is once again the GOP gubernatorial nominee, is under polling. But early voting is going her way, with Democratic voters outpacing their vote-by-mail turnout in the 2021 gubernatorial race.
The physics of the race are in Sherill’s favor. This state has a huge 800,000-person Democratic registration edge, although it’s down from a million. It’s an off-year election, meaning that more affluent and educated voters make up a larger proportion of the electorate, which helps Democrats and Sherrill, who hails from the famously integrated suburb, Montclair, home of Stephen Colbert. Plus, Trump is hugely unpopular in the state, and Sherrill has done all she can to yoke Ciattarelli, a former legislator and businessman, who didn’t back Trump in 2016 but has, like so many Republicans, gone MAGA, to the 47th president. For what it’s worth, New Jersey Dems are outpacing Republicans in early voting, although that could be because Trump has returned to dissing early voting after briefly embracing the idea.
Ciattarelli, 63, is also disadvantaged compared to successful Republican gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey. The last Republicans to win the governorship in Trenton did so the year after a new Democratic president’s popularity faltered, and the sitting Democratic governor of New Jersey was really unpopular. For instance, Christie Todd Whitman won in 1993 as Bill Clinton struggled in his first year, and the state’s Democratic Governor Jim Florio was hugely unpopular over taxes and one of those state education funding equalization crises that inflames suburban and racial passions. In 2009, Chris Christie beat the unpopular Democratic Governor Jon Corzine, as Barack Obama floated around 40 percent approval. Ciattarelli is not in such an advantageous position.
The government shutdown doesn’t help him either. Voters tend to blame Trump and the GOP for the shutdown. While New Jersey ranks among the states with the fewest per-capita federal employees, the woes caused by the shutdown, such as overwhelmed Social Security offices, TSA delays, and other problems, can’t be good for Ciattarelli. Trump also wants to scuttle the massive Gateway Tunnel project to create a new rail line to New York City.
But Sherrill has some handicaps. No party has held the governor’s mansion, the stately Drumthwacket, for three terms in over 60 years. New Jersey Governor Murphy (like Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs C-suite denizen) has only a modest approval rating. One poll had his popularity lower than Trump’s as Jersey residents face not only higher costs like Americans, but also, in this, the most densely populated state, particularly steep auto insurance and housing bills. Republicans have been out registering Democrats of late, suggesting a late surge of interest.
New Jersey’s electorate is also elastic, according to the experts. Blue states like Virginia and New York tend to stay within specific parameters, as do Red ones like Alabama or Idaho, while Jersey can swing more wildly.
For 40 years, in the post-World War II era, New Jersey was almost solidly Republican in presidential contests except for the 1964 Lyndon Johnson landslide and 1960, when John F. Kennedy edged out Richard Nixon by less than 1 percent. It went for Thomas Dewey over Harry Truman, twice for Dwight Eisenhower over Adlai Stevenson, Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern. It went for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush over Michael Dukakis.
But starting in 1992, it went Democratic and never looked back.
Elasticity was seen in the governor’s races, where Florio’s popularity careened from a high winning in 1989 to his collapse in 1993. Christie had both the highest and lowest approval ratings for a New Jersey governor. Coming into office, he was perceived as a straight talker and, in 2012, as a competent manager after Superstorm Sandy. He was a pariah by the time of Bridgegate when he left office in 2018.
Plus, Sherrill has made missteps of her own. It’s fair to say she’s underperformed. Some errors have been widely noted, like the poor answer Sherrill gave about the millions her family made to the podcaster Charlamagne tha God, who asked her if she made millions from stock trades. “I, I haven’t … I don’t believe I did,” The truth was and is on Sherrill’s side. She doesn’t trade individual equities and seems to have seen her family’s net worth rise the way most Americans have since 2019, through a rising stock market and home prices. (Her husband is a banker and fellow USNA alum.) That she was unprepared for such a question feels like candidate malpractice, especially since her primary opponents had nibbled at her finances. In general, she’s been underwhelming on the stump.
Sherrill has probably overemphasized her exceptional Naval service, for which she received multiple commendations. She’s to be applauded for it, and Ciattarelli never served. But as with John Kerry in 2004, you can overdo it. I sat in amazement at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in the Massachusetts Senator’s hometown of Boston, watching the RNC oppo team turn elated, as Kerry devoted most of his acceptance speech to his decision to join the Navy during the Vietnam War and his admirable opposition to the conflict. Responding to focus groups and polling showing Congress in ill repute, Kerry largely elided a distinguished career in the U.S. Senate to be seen as a better commander-in-chief than his Republican opponent, George W. Bush. When the scurrilous Swift Boat attackers went after Kerry’s Naval service on the rivers of Vietnam, he was caught unawares.
Likewise, Sherrill seemed ill-prepared for the even more scurrilous and likely illegal leaks about her not walking at graduation with her 1994 class at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, which was embroiled in a cheating scandal. Sherrill didn’t cheat, but she didn’t turn in cheaters, which cost her a spot at the ceremony. Not ratting out friends violated USNA code, but it has a certain Jersey appeal, as any Sopranos fan knows. But Sherrill hasn’t addressed the matter in a forthcoming way and was caught off guard, but shouldn’t have been. If you put Naval symbols all over your campaign and are constantly filmed in a flight suit, being ready for a blemish on your sterling record would seem like due diligence.
Finally, she’s probably overdone linking Ciattarelli to Trump. I can understand the impulse. It’s driven by what might be called the tyranny of focus groups. Trump tests poorly. You tell people Ciattarelli backs Trump and Trump loves Ciattarelli, and it feels like a winning issue, which it is. But as with the Navy, it only gets you so far.
An example:
On September 21, New Jersey’s gubernatorial candidates met at Rider College for their first debate. Sherrill did well enough, but I remember an interview with a young Black man, presumably a student there, who said he was going to vote for Sherrill and thought on balance she won the debate, but complained that she talked too much about Donald Trump.
I agreed. Yoking your opponent to the omnipresent and unpopular Trump makes total sense, up to a point. Voters know that the governor’s job is not the same as a member of Congress and that while the 47th president and his wrecking crew stand astride the political landscape, attacking the MAGA posse is not enough. Sherrill, of course, has plenty of positions, but listening to her, the Trump bashing became repetitive.
Of course, Ciattarelli, who tries to project as an everyman and looks like about 50 guys I knew in Essex County, has had his share of boneheaded moments. Asked by a reporter about pursuing Black and Hispanic voters, he said, “Next question.”—a particularly dumb move given Trump’s inroads with said groups. His running mate for Lieutenant Governor said he was open to tax hikes on everyone but millionaires. “Taxes are on the table, but I’d be careful of millionaire taxes,” said James Gannon. “They’re employing us … what I’m saying, the millionaires, we can’t just beat up the millionaires. The millionaires, sometimes, are employers; they’re employing us.”
The best thing Sherrill has going for her is that no one inside the campaign thought this would be easy, and now they’ve had enough scares that they’re not taking anything for granted. The wind may finally be at Sherrill’s back, but as a helicopter pilot, she knows it can shift.
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