Sherrill’s victory bucks the state’s recent rightward trend
Former Navy pilot and congresswoman Mikie Sherrill (D.) defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli in her bid for the New Jersey governor’s mansion.
Sherrill led Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman and businessman, by over 14 points with 61 percent of the vote reported when the Associated Press called the race just before 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. The Democrat made the race more of a referendum on the Trump administration than a vision to transform Trenton.
New Jersey’s rightward trend put the state’s gubernatorial election on the national map, but Sherrill managed to buck it—the Garden State has voted in governors who oppose the party in the White House since the 1980s, though the 2021 election serves as an exception.
Ciattarelli and President Donald Trump both overperformed in the state in earlier elections. Trump lost by just 6 points, much closer than expected. The state also moved 10 points toward him between 2020 and 2024, with significant gains among Latinos in particular. Ciattarelli was 3 points shy of winning his 2021 gubernatorial bid.
Early in the race, Sherrill enjoyed a comfortable lead over Ciattarelli, but that deteriorated as questions surrounding her involvement in a Naval Academy cheating scandal mounted. Most surveys published in October put Ciattarelli within the margin of error, though an Oct. 30 Fox News poll showed Sherrill 7 points ahead.
While Sherrill admitted that she did not walk at her Naval Academy graduation as punishment connected to the 1994 scandal, her explanation as to why changed throughout her campaign. She initially claimed it was because she refused to turn in classmates who had been involved, but later said she told investigators “what I knew.”
As a congresswoman, Sherrill has watched her stock portfolio grow. Her financial disclosures showed her assets started between $733,209 and $4,321,000 in 2019 when she first took office. By 2024, those figures had ballooned to between $4,840,076 and $13,975,000, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Sherrill is one of the more prolific traders in the House, with hundreds listed on her reports since her election. In December, she paid a $400 fine after failing to disclose up to $350,000 in stock sales.
In the final weeks of her gubernatorial bid, Sherrill campaigned alongside Newark mayor Ras Baraka (D.), a Louis Farrakhan apologist, and state assembly candidate Chigozie Onyema (D.), a Defund the Police activist, in an attempt to rally her left flank, the Free Beacon reported.
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