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Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Mikie Sherrill is the front-runner for NJ governor. But she has an enthusiasm problem.

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The interviewer asked each candidate a simple question: Would you fight for the right of New Jerseyans to pump their own gas?

Republican Jack Ciattarelli answered in one word: “no.” His opponent, Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, took 53, invoking President Donald Trump’s tariffs without ever giving a clear yes or no.

The exchange — which she later gave a more direct answer on — spoke to a growing worry among Democrats: That Sherrill, their only hope at holding the New Jersey governorship, is playing it too safe. Her front-runner caution — careful messaging, limited risk taking — has defined a campaign that some in her own party wish were bolder.

Beyond some signature policy proposals like freezing energy rates, Sherrill has largely avoided committing to stances on hot-button issues like immigrant protections and transgender health care for minors. Even her refusal to say that she wouldn’t raise the sales tax in a debate, which she had committed to elsewhere, made it into Republican attack ads.

“I don’t see a vision. I’ve seen ‘Donald Trump is bad,’” said Greg Lalevee, business manager of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 825, which backs both Democrats and Republicans and endorsed Ciattarelli after supporting Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy during both of his campaigns. “He’s telling you what he’s gonna do. I don’t see that from her.”

The New Jersey governor’s race is one of just a handful of major elections this year, and both parties are reading it as an early verdict on the political climate before the midterms. What happens in New Jersey will test how much ground Democrats have really lost since Trump’s comeback.

Many Democrats acknowledge that Sherrill has the difficult task of looking to claim a third term in a row for Democrats, which has not been achieved for decades in New Jersey. It remains a blue bastion, but Republicans have made major inroads in recent years.

“New Jersey is the best place, probably, for Donald Trump to actually stop the Democratic momentum, or at least minimize the Democratic momentum that we’ve seen throughout this year,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin. “They’re looking to blunt our momentum somewhere. And clearly they believe the best place to do that is actually in New Jersey.”

Sherrill, who flipped her red-leaning congressional seat amid the 2018 blue wave after serving in the Navy and as a federal prosecutor, has run heavily on her biography during her gubernatorial campaign. She leads by single digits in most public polling, and benefits from Democrats’ 850,000-plus voter advantage in New Jersey.

But she isn’t firing those Democrats up the way many in her party hoped she would, according to some of those same polls, which found that potential voters feel more enthusiastic to vote for Ciattarelli than her.

“Enthusiasm translates into turnout,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said. “When you’ve got more possibly likely turnout, that’s a good thing, no matter what your head-to-head says.”

Sherrill spokesperson Sean Higgins said in a statement that Ciattarelli is “floundering” while Sherrill has momentum. He added that “Democrats and infrequent voters are engaged and activated,” including in Republican strongholds like Monmouth and Ocean counties, pointing to vote-by-mail ballot returns.

“Given Politico’s track record around this race, including four days before the primary when they called it ‘uncertain‘ despite Mikie’s consistent polling lead, it’s important to be grounded in the facts and the data,” Higgins said. “Mikie continues to lead in all of the polls and ‘100% MAGA’ Jack is stalled and unable to break 45 percent, which puts him on the path to be a three time loser.”

Higgins criticized Ciattarelli for giving Trump an “A” rating in the latest debate, “defending Trump’s plan to ‘terminate’” the Gateway project, which would build a tunnel between New Jersey and New York, and for one of his advisers “making antisemitic and homophobic comments.”

Republicans see an opening

There are other signs of Ciattarelli, who is making his third run for governor, working to build upon his unexpectedly narrow loss in 2021. He’s posted strong fundraising numbers in blue counties (though Sherrill is outraising him overall). And he’s secured support from some local Democrats and labor unions that did not back him during his last bid.

Republicans think they can win back the governorship by painting Sherrill as scripted and out of touch with the concerns of New Jerseyans. Ciattarelli and his allies have highlighted some of her interview responses in advertisements to reinforce that point. That includes her prolonged pause when asked what legislation she’d like to pass in an interview with CBS News and saying she would “have to go see what that was alluding to” when asked by Charlamagne Tha God if she made $7 million from stock trades.

She has also given other sprawling answers about her plans.

When asked during the first gubernatorial debate whether she would continue key immigrant protections that limit New Jersey’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities, Sherrill was noncommittal.

“I’m going to make sure here in New Jersey, we’re following the law and the Constitution,” she said — an answer she repeated three more times that night in response to the same question.

That position has frustrated progressive immigrant groups when Trump is sending troops to so-called sanctuary cities to enforce immigration laws, challenging Democratic governors. Sherrill implied during the Democratic primary election that she would continue the directive but has since backed away from any commitments.

“I’ve heard Jack say time and again what he would do,” said Amy Torres, executive director of the left-leaning New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. “I’ve heard Sherrill say she’ll be an anti-Trump governor but I just don’t know how. A lot of people are really afraid of what Jack has proposed so we also deserve to know what the alternative is.”

Adam Carlson, a Democratic pollster at Zenith Research who is not working on the race, likened Sherrill’s approach of relying on her biography and not wanting to “rock the boat too much” to “a prevent defense” to get through Election Day.

“On some levels it’s smart,” he said in an interview late last month, “but it carries its own risks.”

A national Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that “enough of the polling, the griping and the sentiment is not great, so now you’re asking yourself, ‘Are we going to have the same problem we did in ’24?'”

“She’s running a very 2018 campaign, which is fine for her district, but we’re talking about the entire state of New Jersey,” the strategist said. “She’s trying to play it very safe.”

Sherrill on offense

Sherrill has had a change of tone in recent weeks — which Carlson called a “positive development” — taking more personal shots at Ciattarelli beyond tying him to Trump. She has accused him of working with the Trump administration to obtain her military records — a claim that gave her a bump in fundraising — and charged that he “killed tens of thousands” of New Jerseyans because of writings his former medical publishing company published about opioids. (Ciattarelli has denied both of these claims and has called Sherrill “desperate.”) Her campaign has also promoted messaging that he “repeatedly voted against bills that would have protected children from sexual predators,” which a pro-Sherrill group has put into a television ad.

Sherrill has also gone after Ciattarelli on the Trump administration’s threat to cut funding to the Gateway project, saying that the president “punched him in the face” with the move.

Since winning the six-person June Democratic primary with around one-third of the vote, Sherrill has had to work to unite the fractured Democratic base — especially after drawing a lower share of support in many of the Black and Hispanic areas that shifted most toward Trump last year. Quentin James, founder and president of the Collective PAC, a group that supports Black candidates, said he thinks Sherrill (and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger in the race for Virginia governor) will win, but “they’d win by bigger margins by more investment in turning out Black voters.”

“You losing 20,000 voters — Black voters — here or there, you can lose the whole thing,” said James, who is not working on the New Jersey race. “That means dedicating resources, staff and money to those efforts, and what I’m continually concerned about, including in New Jersey, is Democrats’ lack of prioritization, especially when it comes to financial resources to do that work.”

In response to a question about concerns regarding Black and Hispanic voter turnout at an event in Newark over the weekend, Dale Caldwell, Sherrill’s running mate who is a Black pastor, told reporters that “there are always people that are going to say something, but we’ve been connected,” adding that engaging with Black voters has been a “strong focus” of the campaign. Sherrill’s campaign on Tuesday received endorsements from close to 150 Black faith leaders.

But rallying the base is difficult in an off-year election — especially when Democrats are still on shaky ground nationally.

“The Democratic brand is still pretty damaged that she has to run with,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy, education and politics at center-left think tank Third Way. “Hopefully her individual credibility can overcome whatever frustrations people have with Democrats.”

Still, there are positive signs for Sherrill. She has raised more than twice the amount Ciattarelli has in small-dollar donations in the general election, according to the most recent campaign finance filings, an indicator of grassroots support. The recent Fox News polling showed her with an edge over Ciattarelli on her handling of health care, cost of living, taxes and energy costs, and a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll found that her policy positions were better received than Ciattarelli’s among independents, a key group that he needs to overcome Democrats’ voter registration advantage. And despite Republicans’ attacks, public polls show that Sherrill leads Ciattarelli when it comes to honesty and empathy.

If Sherrill does win, the big question will be whether her margin will be better or worse than former Vice President Kamala Harris’ smaller-than-expected six-point win in 2024.

“Democrats should take these results as a reality check of where we are,” Erickson said. “We still have a lot of work to do. We overread a win and decide, ‘Everything is fine now, we’re good to go now.’ That’s what we did in 2022 and that led us to where we are now.”

Ciattarelli won his party’s primary with 68 percent of the vote against four competitors. In the general election, he has made an effort to stump in areas where Democrats have historically had an advantage.

John Harmon, the president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, told POLITICO that Ciattarelli has been well received in traditionally Democratic areas.

“I’m hearing his name in communities that I probably have not heard a Republican’s name before,” he said. “I’m hearing from people that look like me that had conversations with him, and they’re saying, ‘Well, he’s not the boogeyman that he’s being portrayed as.’”

Harmon’s group recently hosted a remote interview with Ciattarelli while Sherrill’s lieutenant governor pick acted as a surrogate. Harmon said that Ciattarelli was specific on how he would address racial disparities in state contracts — a key issue for the group Harmon leads — while he said Sherrill has been “very vague” on the issue.

“He showed up, she didn’t,” he said. “So what does that say?”

Elena Schneider and Adam Wren contributed to this report.

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