Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
EAST BRUNSWICK — U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a four-term member of Congress and former Navy helicopter pilot, won the New Jersey governor’s race, defeating President Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, the Associated Press projected. Sherrill, 53, beat Ciattarelli, 63, following the most expensive gubernatorial battle in state history, underscoring the stakes of the contest, which Democrats saw as a must-win moment to build momentum ahead of the 2026 midterms. Sherrill’s campaign focused on Trump’s impact on the Garden State and Ciattarelli’s steadfast support of the president, including his tariff policies and federal funding decisions. The Associated Press called the race for Sherrill at 9:23 p.m. on Tuesday. Sherrill is just the second woman to win the office, following Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman’s two terms in the 1990s. Sherrill is the first female veteran to be elected a governor in U.S. history. Her election, succeeding term-limited Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy, also marks the first time since the 1961 election that the same party has been elected to the governor’s mansion for three consecutive terms. Sherrill celebrated the win at the Hilton in East Brunswick. The Montclair mother-of-four represents parts of Essex, Morris, and Passaic Counties. She is a former prosecutor, who flipped her previously red district in 2018, defeating a Republican opponent after the GOP incumbent retired. She won a six-way primary earlier this year, beating other elected officials and powerful union leaders by more than 100,000 votes Still, Democrats were stewing with worries in the weeks leading up to the election, wary of results in the 2024 presidential race that showed the state shifting red, and concerned over whether Sherrill had put up a bold enough counter to Ciattarelli’s attacks. While Democrats have a roughly 850,000 voter registration advantage over Republicans, their lead has been shrinking, and the state is also home to 2.3 million unaffiliated voters, who had a crucial role in the race. Record-breaking spending in the governor’s race exceeded $225 million, including more than $80 million since the primary. Polls largely showed Sherrill with a narrow but consistent lead in the race, though a few had the race in a dead heat. Vice President Kamala Harris only won the state by six percentage points last year, the first single-digit Democratic presidential victory here since 2004. Ciattarelli, running for a third time with more support and name recognition, raised the prospect of a GOP upset. But Sherrill prevailed with a disciplined campaign focused on making New Jersey housing, healthcare, and utilities more affordable, and standing up to the Trump administration. More than half of New Jersey voters disapprove of Trump, according to a recent Rutgers-Eagleton poll, but almost half also disapprove of Murphy, who Ciattarelli tried to tie to Sherrill. Sherrill kept her distance from Murphy until the final leg of the campaign when he campaigned with her in Newark at a rally headlined by former President Barack Obama. She was propelled to victory by women, with whom she had a significant lead in the polls. Sherrill’s gains appear to have come in areas where Democrats have lost ground to Republicans in recent elections. In the 2024 presidential election, Trump flipped five New Jersey counties from Democratic to Republican: Atlantic, Cumberland, and Gloucester in South Jersey; and Morris and Passaic in North Jersey. In early returns Tuesday night, Sherrill had flipped them all back. She was also leading in the three South Jersey counties that Ciattarelli had flipped from Gov. Phil Murphy in the 2021 gubernatorial race: Atlantic, Cumberland, and Gloucester. Ciattarelli, who had previously disparaged Trump and distanced himself, joined the MAGA movement in his third run, a decision that likely propelled his GOP primary victory. But he offered very little daylight between himself and the president throughout the general election, likely costing him with unaffiliated voters and Trump-wary Republicans. Cherry Hill resident Scott Frahlich, 68, said he voted for Sherrill more “as a vote against the Trump administration than a vote for the Democratic Party” or for Sherrill herself. Ciattarelli, he said, is “too closely aligned with President Trump.” “I don’t really trust the Republicans anymore,” he said. Gloucester Township resident Amy Papa said she’d never vote for Ciattarelli precisely because he’s aligned himself with Trump on many issues. “We live under a regime, not a government,” said Papa, 75, a former nurse. “The president is doing terrible things, especially saying he’ll release just half of SNAP money to people who really need it.” Trump suggested on social media Tuesday he would withhold Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, despite his administration telling a federal judge the previous day it would use contingency funds to pay 50% of the benefit during November amid the ongoing shutdown. Sherrill’s win coincided with a Democratic victory in Virginia, where U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger cruised to victory after a campaign focused on Trump. Spanberger, like Sherrill, has a national security background and was first elected to Congress in 2018 during Trump’s first presidency. A member of the Armed Services Committee, Sherrill developed a reputation as a centrist Democrat with an independent streak during her time in Washington. She was the first House Democrat in New Jersey or Pennsylvania to call on former President Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 presidential primary, following a disastrous debate performance. She twice declined to vote for U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the long-time party leader, as speaker and joined a group of freshman Democrats who called for Trump to be impeached during her first term in 2019. Sherrill graduated with the first class of female Naval officers eligible for combat roles, a career milestone she shared on the trail often. She served active duty for more than nine years, completing missions in Europe and as a Russian-policy officer. She worked as a federal prosecutor for about a year from 2015-2016 after getting a law degree from Georgetown University. She has a Master’s degree in global history from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Sherrill’s experience as a helicopter pilot has long been a hallmark of her campaign, but her service became a point of attack after Ciattarelli questioned why her name didn’t appear in her 1994 Naval Academy’s graduation program. She said she did not walk at graduation because she refused to snitch on students under investigation for a widespread cheating scandal and resisted calls from the GOP to release her school disciplinary records to back up her story. In a separate controversy that emerged at the same time, a Ciattarelli ally obtained Sherrill’s Navy records – not her school records – through a federal public information request, but her personal information was unredacted. Sherrill blamed Ciattarelli for what the National Archives called an internal error before launching a federal investigation into the matter. Sherrill also dropped a fiery attack on Ciattarelli in their second and last debate, accusing him of “killing tens of thousands of people” because of his former medical publishing company’s publications about opioids. Ciattarelli rejected her claims and threatened legal action. Those controversies were standout moments in a race full of constant attacks and legal battles. Despite boatloads of money pouring in from both sides, polling on the race remained remarkably stable over the course of the summer and fall. Selena Pastrana voted for the first time Tuesday in New Brunswick. Wearing scrubs, the 20-year-old, who is training to be a patient care technician, lamented the irony of working in healthcare and having no health insurance. “I’ve heard a lot of stuff about she wants to make things change, fight for everybody who is not in the upper class. Of course, I am not in the upper class, so I want to hear that out,” Pastrana said. Pastrana, who is Mexican and Dominican, said she noticed Latino friends and family opting to give Trump a shot in the 2024 presidential election but she sees a lot of them disappointed with policies that haven’t improved their lives. “People see it’s not going their way,” she said. Thaiz Cedres, 27, a drug and alcohol counselor in New Brunswick, also said she voted for Sherrill in hopes she improves affordability in the state. “I have siblings and I have family on food stamps and SNAP,” she said, “and I think it’s important to raise awareness – care for people that look like us because if it doesn’t start with us setting the example, then the youth is just lost.” At Sherrill’s event, campaign vice chair Patricia Campos-Medina praised the coalition that worked to elect the Democrat. “We are progressive, we’re moderate, but at the core we are New Jerseyans,” she said. “We are the firewall for Donald Trump in the United States of America, and the firewall has been built in New Jersey today.”
