No candidate on either side of this race cuts a top gun profile like Rep. Mikie Sherill (D-11th), as her campaign launch ad on Monday clearly showed.
Sherrill says it’s all in the name of serving the state. Her message is an upbeat, albeit very general theme, about coming together for Jersey to do “big things.”
“I want to do the biggest thing and that is make life more affordable for people in New Jersey, create that ladder to success,” she said. “You know, as they say we all know the opportunity New Jersey affords, now we just need to make sure people can afford New Jersey.”
Critics, including primary rival Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, have accused Sherrill and fellow Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who announced his candidacy on Friday, of office shopping.
“Think about how crazy it is that you are declaring for another office before you are sworn in for the office that you just told them you want to run for,” said the Jersey City mayor.
Sherrill responded: “You know my focus has always been on the people of New Jersey and how I can best advocate and deliver for them.”
On the issue of affordability, Sherrill said her solutions include repurposing commercial buildings and brownfields to increase affordable housing stocks, and incentivizing small grocers to open up in food deserts and bring down costs. She’s against congestion pricing tolls into New York City and blames a lot of NJ Transit’s problems on Amtrak.
She’s seen as a moderate compared to left-leaning candidates like Fulop, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller. But, that may not matter as much in a field of six, where endorsements from county organizations still mean something, even without the party-line ballot.
“Mikie Sherrill has the initial support of political leaders in Essex, Morris, Passaic and Middlesex, and those are a very formidable combination of counties,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “That’s one of every three votes that Phil Murphy got when he was first running for governor in the primary. It’s a really good head start for her,”
Sherrill is likely the final entrant into the field, barring a last-minute, big-budget surprise. A recent poll found that few New Jersey voters knew any of the candidates very well. But it’s also an opportunity for candidates like Sherrill — the only woman in the race — to write their own narrative before it’s done for them.
