Will Governor Sherill hear voters?
Photo by Matt Dragon.
New York City and New Jersey are separated by less than a mile, but a year from now, we could be separated by decades of policy. Crossing the Hudson could be like traveling from the late 1990s into Disney’s Tomorrowland, one train ride crossing completely disparate political eras.
Coming out of an election that inarguably rejected Republicans’ national platform of white supremacy, higher costs, and starving children, while weaponizing law enforcement to suppress dissent, the two newly elected Democratic administrations have policy starting points much further apart than the opposing banks of the Hudson.
Voters will have to see if Governor Sherrill’s pick for Attorney General ends up aligning with the “pro-law enforcement” positions that Sherril told police unions she was targeting on the campaign trail.
Sherrill said she’s against giving civilian complaint review boards subpoena power — … . She also lamented how the Murphy administration “does not properly address youth violence or the ability to charge either the youth or their parents” and either building more or expanding youth detention facilities, …. Sherrill also suggested the state was too strict in its restrictions on solitary confinement and said she opposes ending qualified immunity for police officers.
Sherrill’s insistence on engaging with bad faith attacks on her by issuing calls to protect and expand our violent carceral state is out of touch with voters, and reality. Voters consistently support non-police responses to issues like mental health crises and our unhoused neighbors. Voters largely support investing in community responses like the violence interruption programs that were exceeding expectations in our cities before the Republicans in DC gutted their funding. New Jersey regularly ranks as one of the safest states in the country, so why does Sherrill sound more like the 1994 Crime Bill than the community violence interventionists who drove Newark’s Homicide rate to the lowest it’s been in 60 years?
In an era of falling crime and consistently rising police misconduct in a state still hurting from several high profile murders of victims in mental health crises by police officers, it’s particularly difficult to see how a former assistant U.S. attorney could look at our current landscape of policing and say it’s the cops who need more support. Sherrill’s stance on law enforcement is one of many that put her to the right of her opponents in the primary. Without fellow Representative Josh Gottheimer in the race, Sherril would have been the most centrist Democrat in the 2025 field, an impressive accomplishment in a race that included former State Senator Steve Sweeney. Yet after winning the primary, Sherrill hasn’t seemed to embrace the policy positions to her left that led runners-up Ras Baraka and Stephen Fulop to capture more votes combined than Sherrill.
Maybe her centrism was just wildly popular, as she easily sailed past two-time gubernatorial first runner-up, Jack Ciattarelli, by over 450,000 votes. But interpreted another way, that’s 300,000 centrists she could have alienated into sitting out the election, while still winning comfortably. Or 150,000 center-right voters she could have driven to vote for Ciattarelli, to still have the election called in her favor early on election night. And that’s assuming that she didn’t pick up any votes from the progressive wing of her party, the folks who never entertained voting for Ciattarelli given his Chris Christie/Donald Trump vibe.
It’s particularly hard to understand how Sherrill, whose front-row seat in Washington has given her an unobstructed view of the destruction of norms, the rule of law, institutions, and potentially our democracy, could mis-read the intentions of die-hard Republicans and the visible and loud disgust of voters. Listen to any Republican centrist podcast and you hear host after host and guest after guest volunteer that they don’t care how far left some of a Democratic candidates' stances are. They know what’s at stake and they will support those who are pushing back. Yet, centrist Democrats like Sherrill, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, and House Minority Leader Jefferies will gaslight you with claims they can work with the Republicans who are crashing our economy, terrorizing our neighbors, and ripping away the healthcare and public health that keeps our family members alive.
But that gaslighting is failing to hold up as ICE expands their attacks to violently target everyone, regardless of skin color or status. The escalation in violence and blatant racial targeting is forcing state and local officials to choose sides. Will Governor Sherrill choose to allow local and state police to assist ICE in enforcing civil immigration laws? Maybe the legislature will force her hand. Or will extrajudicial executions make her centrist positions politically untenable?
Beyond ICE, maybe Governor Sherrill can address the chronic and systemic racial inequities our Black and brown neighbors suffer under every day.
Maybe she could adequately fund and desegregate our schools.
Maybe she will hold the police accountable.
Maybe she’ll fix the NJ Transit bus service that hundreds of thousands of working class commuters suffer on every day, while their upper-class Wall Street bound neighbors hop on the train to cruise the, no longer sledge hammered into place, rails into Socialist MamdaNYC. Or will she ease the transition to our Republican Governor in 2030 by insisting on rolling back Governor Murphy's meager accomplishments on these critical issues.
The voters were clear — no more cuts, no more pain, no more terror. Invest in our neighborhoods, our schools, and our commutes, not in corporations or youth prisons. Failure to hear those voters will make Sherrill a one-term centrist failure.
