We have two more major ‘off-year’ elections left on the calendar in 2025 in the United States: the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, scheduled for November. These are two states that voted for Vice President Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party in the 2024 presidential election by around six points each.
Given that off-year elections typically advantage the party not in power, it would figure that neither should be a real contest for the Democratic candidates. That seems to be the case in Virginia. Governor Glenn Youngkin, a fairly popular Republican, is the ‘victim’ of his state’s unique one-term limit. His Lieutenant Governor, Winsome Sears, is expected to lose handily to Democrat Abigail Spanberger. Still, supporters of President Trump should watch the margin in the race: if it is within a couple of points of the 2024 result for president, it is not a bad sign for his national support.
The race in New Jersey, however, is shaping up to be a tight one. The major polling firm Emerson has recently put out a poll in which the two candidates, Jack Ciattarelli on the Republican side and Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill on the Democratic side, are tied. Shortly before, a Republican internal poll by National Research was leaked, which shows Ciattarelli in the lead by one point. National Research was the most accurate pollster in the last governor’s race in the Garden State in 2021; however, Ann Selzer in Iowa has taught us that past accuracy in a state does not guarantee much for a pollster…
Since these two polls’ release, things have gone horrendously for Mikie Sherrill. It seems that she has been hit with a new scandal, or simply bad news, every day.
Last week, the New Jersey Globe broke the story that she was barred from marching with her class during the graduation ceremony at the Naval Academy in 1994 due to her involvement in a cheating scandal. According to the Congresswoman, she was punished because she did not report her classmates who violated exam rules, but she herself did not participate in any misconduct. This scandal alone may be survivable for her, especially given that she was able to change the narrative to some degree and raise concerns over her sensitive personal information, such as her social security number, being released along with her disciplinary records by mistake.
However, soon after this story hit the press, the Democratic Mayor of Dover, New Jersey, James P Dodd, came out to break party lines and endorse Ciattarelli for governor. In his interview with Fox News, he explained that ending sanctuary cities in New Jersey was the specific issue that pushed him to that decision, and detailed the complaints his fellow citizens have shared with him about the effects of illegal migration.
However, even before the news of the cross-party endorsement could really spread, a new scandal involving Sherrill started to receive a lot of attention on social media. For a little ‘variety’, this one is a nepotism scandal. As it turned out, Representative Sherrill gave two of her five available so-called ‘principal nominations’ for the Naval Academy to her own children earlier this year.
Sherrill has also received scrutiny for allegedly making $7 million through trading stocks since she took office in Congress in 2019, before the new series of scandals were revealed in the last few days. The implication here is that she may have used insider information she was privy to as a sitting member of Congress to make profitable trades in the stock market. This issue has been a broader topic of conversation in the US in recent years, typically through accusations directed at Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Will this be enough to put Ciattarelli over the top in blue New Jersey?
That is not certain. As of now, Sherrill is leading the polling aggregate on RealClearPolitics by 6.5 points. However, back in 2021, Governor Phil Murphy led the RCP aggregate by 7.8 points on election day, but ultimately won by only 2.8 points. His Republican opponent was vastly underestimated at the time, who was none other than Jack Ciattarelli.
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