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Democrat Mikie Sherrill elected governor of New Jersey, defeating Trump-endorsed opponent

Published: 05 Nov. 2025, 14:40

Sen. Cory Booker speaks at New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill's election night party in East Brunswick, New Jersey, on Nov. 4. [AP/YONHAP]

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill was elected governor of New Jersey on Tuesday, shoring up Democratic control of a state that has been reliably blue in presidential and Senate contests but has shown signs of shifting to the right in recent years.

Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and four-term member of Congress, defeated Jack Ciattarelli, who U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed.

The voting period on Tuesday was disrupted after officials in seven counties received emailed bomb threats targeting polling sites, which law enforcement later determined to be unfounded, according to Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way, the state’s top election official. A judge granted a one-hour extension in response.

A former prosecutor and military veteran, Sherrill, 53, embodies a brand of centrist Democrats by appealing to some conservatives while still aligning with progressive causes. She campaigned on standing up to Trump, blaming his tariffs for voters' economic concerns.

At Sherrill's victory party, Democrats celebrated, framing the results as a rebuke to the Trump administration's agenda.

“Today, we said no to Donald Trump and yes to democracy,” New Jersey Democratic Party Chair LeRoy J. Jones Jr. told the crowd.

Sherrill will be New Jersey’s second female governor after Republican Christine Todd Whitman, who served between 1994 and 2001. Her victory also marks three straight gubernatorial election wins for Democrats in New Jersey, the first time in six decades that either major party has achieved a three-peat.

Ciattarelli lost his second straight governor's election. He came within a few points of defeating incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy four years ago.

Races for governors often hinge on local issues, such as property taxes. But New Jersey's odd-year race — one of just two this year, alongside Virginia's — also served as a potential gauge of national sentiment, especially regarding voters' reactions to Trump’s second term and Democrats’ messaging ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

In the final weeks of her campaign, Sherrill lambasted the president after he threatened to cancel a project to replace the aging, disintegrating tubes beneath the Hudson, currently used by trains headed to and from New York City. She also pledged to freeze electric utility rates, which have recently soared.

Sherrill steps into the governorship role after serving four terms in the U.S. House. She won that position in 2018 during Trump's first term in office, flipping a longtime GOP-held district in an election that saw Democrats sweep all but one of the state's 12 House seats.

During her campaign, Sherrill leaned hard into her credentials as a congresswoman and prosecutor, as well as her military service. But she also had to defend her Navy service record after a news report claimed that she was not allowed to participate in her 1994 graduation ceremony from the U.S. Naval Academy due to an academic cheating scandal.

Sherrill said the punishment was a result of not turning in some classmates, not because she herself had cheated. But she declined to release additional records that the Ciattarelli campaign said would shed more light on the issue.

For her part, she accused Ciattarelli of profiting off the opioid crisis. He is the former owner of a medical publishing company that made educational materials for doctors, including some that discussed pain management and opioids. Sherrill called it “propaganda” for drug companies, something Ciattarelli denied.

Sherrill will inherit a state budget that swelled under Murphy, who delivered on promises to fund the public worker pension fund and a K-12 school aid formula after years of neglect through high tax incomes for the wealthy. But some headwinds include unfunded promises to continue a property tax relief program begun in Murphy’s second term.

The ballot on Tuesday also included all 80 seats in the Assembly, which Democrats control with a 52-seat majority.

New Jersey has not supported a Republican for either the U.S. Senate or the White House in decades. The governor's office, however, has often switched back and forth between the parties. The last time the same party prevailed in three straight elections for New Jersey governor was in 1961, when Richard Hughes won the race to succeed Gov. Robert Meyner. Both were Democrats.

AP