New Jersey Sticks With a Conventional Democrat

Mikie Sherrill is an establishment Democrat made in a lab. A retired Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, she was so alarmed by the election of Donald Trump in 2017 that she decided to run for Congress in suburban New Jersey with the help of the pro-choice group EMILYs List. When she threw her hat in the ring for this year’s gubernatorial race, Politico called her strategy “the most traditional machine campaign possible.”

And it has paid off: Sherrill has been elected governor of New Jersey. Sherrill’s Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, was hoping that the post-Trump realignment (particularly among Latinos) would allow him to take a traditionally Democratic state. But Ciattarelli’s association with Trump turned out to be a liability, especially after Trump cancelled a major infrastructure project and many Latino voters were alienated by the administration’s immigration crackdown. In a poll published a week before the election, a majority of voters, including 78 percent of Democrats, said that Trump was a major factor in their decision.

Sherrill, on the other hand, offered a continuation of incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration. Many of her campaign statements were promises to let voters have their cake and eat it too—”What we have to do is put an immense amount of power in, but we also have to drive down carbon emissions as we do so,” she told WHYY—or new versions of familiar platitudes about cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.

“I legitimately cannot tell you what Mikie Sherrill is running on right now,” Democratic operative Julie Roginsky told Politico during the primary.

Beyond cutting red tape, Sherrill’s “Affordability Agenda” is filled with commitments to save money by clawing it back from “ultra-wealthy and corporate tax cheats” and “large corporations who jack up food prices and take advantage of consumers during a crisis.” She even accused Ciattarelli of profiteering on the opioid crisis, a claim that Ciattarelli is suing Sherrill over. These kinds of accusations are typical from politicians who want to dodge questions about budget constraints and basic economics.

She does have a few proposals that are positive from a libertarian perspective. She wants to drive down energy and housing costs by streamlining approvals for new construction, including an additional nuclear plant. (Unfortunately, she coupled that proposal with an unrealistic plan to freeze electricity prices, plus some promises of hefty housing subsidies.) For ordinary citizens, Sherrill has vowed to eliminate business registration fees and cut down wait times for professional licensing.

New Jersey is one of the most expensive states when it comes to buying or renting a home. Polling shows 75 percent of New Jerseyans saying there isn’t enough housing in the state, and 43 percent named housing as their most important issue. In 2024, the state passed a law codifying the Mount Laurel doctrine, which allows developers to sue for permission to build if a town has not zoned for enough affordable housing.

But many suburbanites are worried that more housing development will change their lifestyle and reduce their property values. And the town of Cranbury recently cited the Mount Laurel law when trying to seize a beloved family farm, which became a national controversy. Republicans have run on exactly these anxieties. One of Ciattrelli’s biggest boosters, former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac, made a name for himself opposing a new apartment building in his town.

“We’re taking the ‘garden’ right out of the Garden State,” Ciatterelli said during the gubernatorial debate in September 2025, pledging to “stop the overdevelopment of our suburban communities.” If you’re looking for things to like about Sherrill’s win, the best one might be that an appeal like that didn’t work.