Democratic Nominee Mikie Sherrill was elected on Tuesday to become the 57th governor of New Jersey, a Republican state that suggested a return to the Party after Donald Trump returned to office.
The Associated Press called the race for Sherrill, a 53-year-old congressman from the 11th Congress of the Congress of New Jersey, only two hours ended in the polls.
“I heard you, Jersey,” said Sherrill on the night of his election in East Brunswick, after walking a cheucing crowd and Bruce Springs was born. “Good government doesn’t manage problems, it solves them.”
The contest — one of only two gubernatorial races this year — focuses national attention for what will be the 2026 midterms and is an early measure of Trump’s standing with voters.
In June, New Jersey Democrats held a contest that primarily tested whether emerging candidates such as Newark Mayor Ras Baraka or longtime party stalwarts like the former State Senate president Steve Sweeney can take the strength of the Party. But voters chose Sherrill, a moderate former administrator and Navy helicopter pilot who was elected to Congress in 2018 blue wave to represent a suburban district.
Sherrill’s nomination provides a stark contrast to Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in Hudson on New York City’s Democratic front in the second Trump administration.
Ciattarelli, meanwhile, is the Republican nominee for the second time, after running in 2017 but losing the nomination to former Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, and surprising pollsters in 2021 with a closer-than-expected loss of Governor Phil Murphy. While Cattretelliji’s last bid for the governor’s mansion was more in line with New Jersey’s history of moderate Republicans, this time, he won Trump’s endorsement and tried to balance A campaign about cultural competence can be imagined to focus on gender identity and immigration.
Earlier in the day, in colts neck, a Buckic town near the Jersey Shore voted for Cattarelli in 2021 and one voter bucked the local trend. Two miles from a golf course owned by the President, retired worker John Stoz, 74, said he voted for the governor because, as a gay man, “the Republicans hurt me”.
In October, the politician reported that a Camparelli campaign ally advocated For banning same-sex marriage in the garden state. Cattarelli acknowledged his support for marriage equality, but did not condemn the comments. As a state meeting in 2012, Cattrelelli voted against A state bill to legalize same-sex marriage.
Marriage equality was legalized in New Jersey by a court ruling in 2013 and later codified into law in 2022 by Phil Murphy, the governor.
But competence may be the main issue for voters across the state in a race marked by drama. Recent polls SHOWS The embarrassingly thin margins between the candidates. At times, the campaign was marred by open scandal, including marshes in Sherrill’s military records by a cattarelli ally and Disasters in a eviction suit from Cattrelli against Shertrill after she accused him in their last debate of “killing thousands of people related to the crioid crisis.
“A lot of people make fun of the helicopter,” said Leroy Jones, the New Jerey Democratic Party Chairman logo. “But guess what? It got here today!”