More Mikie Sherrill's Please

Her win in New Jersey points to a brighter political future

By now, you’ve been inundated by press accounts of the off-year elections. Bright-blue California went big on redistricting to put more Democrats in Congress. In liberal New York City, a proud 34-year-old Muslim socialist, Zohran Mamdani, mayor. These headlines dominate the news but obscure more important (and hopeful) results in less glamorous places.

In Pennsylvania, voters re-elected three state Supreme Court justices who will guarantee a Democratic Party majority for years to come. In Georgia, two Democrats ousted Republicans from the powerful utilities board. Most importantly, Mikie Sherrill crushed her Republican opponent, Jack Citarrelli, by 13 points in the race for governor in the Garden State.

Pennsylvania and Georgia are truly “purple” swing states that become big prizes with every presidential election. In the last three elections, Georgia went for Trump, Biden, and then Trump again. Pennsylvania followed the same pattern. Voters in both states are also willing to back both Republicans and Democrats in down-ballot races. These factors make them bellwethers for 2026.

New Jersey is blue, but parts of the state are conservative and reliably Republican. Sherrill ran strongly in these places. She even won Morris County, which hasn’t gone for a Democrat in 52 years. She couldn’t have accomplished this without presenting a profile and a platform that could appeal to GOP moderates, who are endangered but not yet extinct.

The 53-year-old Sherill is a party strategist’s dream come true. She was a Navy helicopter pilot who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Her resume includes a stint as a federal prosecutor, establishing that she’s tough on crime. She punched her capitalist card with a job at one of the nation’s largest and richest law firms and then jumped into big-time politics in 2018 with a bid for Congress, which she won.

Sherrill and I served together for a few years. We did not share any committee assignments and only knew each other in passing. However, as a military pilot who also served in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was interested in her work as a member of the Armed Service Committee. Even as a freshman, she had a reputation as a serious, hard worker. She was hardly a dove as she supported a strong military and pushed for greater investment in cyber warfare.

As a candidate for governor, Sherrill drove down the middle of the road. Yes, she’s highly critical of Trump and his cult, but her plan for the state was focused on two practical issues that resonated clearly. First, she was a big booster for infrastructure development. This is hardly a sexy issue, but in a state with crumbling bridges, ancient mass transit systems, and an entrenched commuting culture, it matters. Indeed, when Trump canceled federal support for a railroad tunnel to Manhattan, he handed Sherrill a gift tied up in a bow.

But while Sherrill talked about building stuff, she mainly focused on the struggles of ordinary families coping with high housing costs, high utility bills, and one of the greatest tax burdens in the nation. As the mother of four kids, she also knows the struggle parents face as they try to balance work and family and meet a rising cost of living. With these problems in mind, she said she would:

· Freeze rate increases for electric and gas utilities.

· Reform the property tax system to benefit middle-class homeowners.

· Expand the supply of affordable housing

· Increase access to free pre-kindergarten classes in public schools

· Protect the state’s NJ Family Care Medicaid program.

While Sherrill went around talking about fixing the fact that life is just too damn expensive, Citarelli supported Trump’s controversial crackdown on undocumented immigration and, like Trump, opposed wind energy projects. When Trump endorsed him, Citarelli echoed the president with the promise to “Make New Jersey Great Again.”

In the end, Sherrill ran to the middle and clobbered Citarelli. Her margin of victory matched what the charismatic Mamdani achieved across the Hudson. The difference is that Mamdani faced an electorate that may be the most liberal in the country. For this reason, he doesn’t count in the way Sherrill does.

In the coming days, Mamdani will likely be everywhere in the press, explaining his socialist agenda = vastly more services and higher taxes on the rich -- and whacking Trump to the delight of his base. But there’s little the Dems can learn from him. Instead, they need to study Sherrill’s success and scour the country for more candidates like her. We need a lot more Mikie Sherrills.