Copyright The New York Times
Representative Mikie Sherrill was elected governor of New Jersey on Tuesday by a convincing margin. She will take over in January, replacing Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat who has been in office for nearly eight years and was barred by term limits from running for re-election. She and her lieutenant governor, Dale Caldwell, the president of Centenary University, will arrive in the state capital of Trenton at a perilous time for New Jersey. The affluent state has both a structural budget deficit and some of the highest property and business taxes in the country. The Trump administration continues to prioritize deportations in New Jersey, which has an estimated 475,000 undocumented residents. And the state is bracing for an eventual $2.5 billion annual reduction in federal aid for Medicaid, the health care program that 1.7 million residents rely on. But before Ms. Sherrill starts selecting department heads or tackling problems, she must introduce herself to the state’s 9.3 million residents. Here’s what we know about Ms. Sherrill: She has four children, and a dog named Goose. Ms. Sherrill, 53, was raised in Virginia, the eldest of three daughters. She and her husband, Jason Hedberg, purchased a seven-bedroom home in Montclair, N.J., in 2010. Mr. Hedberg, an investment banker who recently started a new job at Royal Bank of Canada, said he welcomed his role as first gentleman. “I like the sound of that,” he said last month. The couple has four children: Margaret and Lincolnare first-year students at the U.S. Naval Academy; Ike is a sophomore at Montclair High School; Merritt is in middle school at Montclair Kimberley Academy. Their dog, a golden retriever, is named Goose. Margaret, who is known as Maggie, introduced her mother the night Ms. Sherrill won the Democratic primary by 13 points. “It wasn’t until Roe getting overturned that I ever really considered that maybe my country doesn’t love me as much as I love it,” Maggie Sherrill said, referring to the Supreme Court decision eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. Ms. Sherrill said that not all of her children are equally intrigued by her life in politics. She laughed as she described the first thing her youngest daughter said in New Brunswick, N.J., after watching her debate the Republican candidate, Jack Ciattarelli, for the second and final time last month: “ ‘Mom, have you gotten me a hair appointment yet?’ ” She was a Navy helicopter pilot. Ms. Sherrill, a helicopter pilot, spent more than nine years in the Navy after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1994. She served active-duty missions in Europe and as a Russian policy officer. While in the service, she studied Arabic in Cairo and Global History at the London School of Economics. She attended law school at Georgetown University after leaving the Navy and worked for several years at a law firm in New York City. In 2012, she joined the U.S. attorney’s office in Newark as a community outreach specialist. In 2015, she was hired as a prosecutor, working for the then-U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Paul Fishman. She remained in the job for just about a year. “She’s doing this while raising four kids,” former President Barack Obama said Saturday during a rally in Newark. “And then — because apparently that was a little bit too easy — she decides to run for Congress.” It was her first race, and she won. She arrived in the House in 2019 along with 35 other women elected amid the so-called blue wave during President Trump’s first term in the White House. In Congress, Ms. Sherrill roomed with Abigail Spanberger, a former House member and C.I.A. officer who on Tuesday was also elected governor — of Virginia. She focused on electricity rates during her campaign. Ms. Sherrill’s campaign focused on her willingness to stand up to Mr. Trump as it offered mainly broad, middle-of-the-road policy prescriptions. She has said that she will increase transparency in government and in the budget-drafting process by creating interactive tools that could be used to monitor a bill’s progress and keep tabs on state contracts. New Jersey’s electricity rates shot up this summer by 22 percent, more than every other state but one, Maine. Ms. Sherrill plans to declare a state of emergency on electricity costs on her first day in office. Her goal, she has said, is to freeze prices by forcing all parties to the table. She has also promised to try to make it easier for new electricity generators to be added to the power grid, which is managed by PJM Interconnection, a nonprofit organization. She also said she might replace members of the state’s Board of Public Utilities. Ms. Sherrill also wants to bar cellphones from New Jersey’s schools and hire more mental health counselors. “There’s a mental health crisis in our state,” she said during the first debate. “We need to address it.”
