Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and four-term member of Congress, defeated Jack Ciattarelli, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, and quickly cast her victory late Tuesday as a referendum on the Republican president and some of his policies — from health care to immigration and the economy.
“We here in New Jersey are bound to fight for a different future for our children,” Sherrill told her supporters gathered to celebrate her victory. “We see how clearly important liberty is. We know that no one in our great state is safe when our neighbors are targeted, ignoring the law and the Constitution.” She was joined on stage with her husband and children.
Ciattarelli called Sherrill to congratulate her on the results and did not mention Trump in his address.
“It is my hope that Mikie Sherrill has heard us in terms of what we need to do to make New Jersey that place where everybody can once again feel that they can achieve their American dream,” Ciattarelli said.
She will be New Jersey’s second female governor, after Republican Christine Todd Whitman, who served between 1994 and 2001. Her victory also gives Democrats three straight gubernatorial election wins in New Jersey, the first time in six decades that either major party has achieved a three-peat.
New Jersey’s odd-year race for governor, one of just two this year along with Virginia, often hinged on local issues such as property taxes. But the campaign also served as a potential gauge of national sentiment, especially how voters are reacting to the president’s second term and Democrats’ messaging ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, chair of the Democratic Governors Association, praised Sherrill’s win as “a roadmap for how Democrats can overcome precedent and win in deeply competitive races when we stay laser-focused on our positive vision to address the biggest issues impacting families in their daily lives.”
In her speech on Tuesday, Sherrill said voters were concerned with attacks on their civil liberties as well as on their economic well-being. She said Trump is “ripping away” health care and targeting food benefits. Democratic governors across the country have been pushing back on those issues, as well as planned National Guard deployments in their states.
“Governors have never mattered more,” Sherrill said. “And in this state, I am determined to build prosperity for all of us.”
Sherrill steps into the governorship role after serving four terms in the U.S. House. She won that post 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.
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.
Also on the ballot Tuesday were all 80 seats in the Assembly, which Democrats control with a 52-seat majority.
New Jersey hasn’t supported a Republican for U.S. Senate or the White House in decades. The governor’s office, though, has often switched back and forth between the parties. The last time the same party prevailed in a third straight New Jersey election for governor was in 1961, when Richard Hughes won the race to succeed Gov. Robert Meyner. Both were Democrats.
