2018 General Election Elected 56 — 43
If Democrats elect all the young ex-military candidates…….
Mikie Sherrill https://www.mikiesherrill.com/ has been running for Congress and against an institution for more than six months. She has less than a year to go.
Sherrill has a story. A graduate of the Naval Academy, she flew helicopters in the Middle East and in Europe. Married to a fellow Annapolis graduate, they now have four children. A Russian desk officer for the Navy in London, she added a Master’s Degree from the London School of Economics. A graduate of Georgetown Law School, she has served as a prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office in New Jersey.
Sherrill is good at this. She has raised a lot of money. She has collected endorsements — from VoteVets, from Senator Gillibrand’s PAC, from Emily’s List, from the Party Chairs of the four NJ counties in the district, from MA Rep Seth Moulton who has been orchestrating the candidacy of young veterans. She will win the nomination.
Winning the election is a different story. Sherrill is running against an institution — Rodney Frelinghuysen. He has been in Congress for more than two decades. His family has been around longer.
Google the name Frelinghuysen. You get a lot of New Jersey history. You get some New Jersey landscape. Peter HB Frelinghuysen was a Delegate to the Continental Congress and US Senator in 1793. There was a US Senator and Secretary of State Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen in the nineteenth century. Theodore Frelinghuysen was President of Rutgers from 1850 to 1862. Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen served a term from 1973-1975. There is a Frelinghuysen Township, a Frelinghuysen Middle School, a Frelinghuysen Arboretum, a Frelinghuysen Avenue, Frelinghuysen Road, a Frelinghuysen Hall at Rutgers.
In taking on the Rodney Frelinghuysen, Sherrill is fortunate that the Congressman has harmed his candidacy. As chairman of the appropriations committee, he could have prevented the tax proposal from wreaking harm on New Jersey and other high tax states. That might have cost him his chairmanship. It could have been a story of political courage. That’s not his story.
Health care doesn’t help him either. Frelinghuysen was against abolishing the Affordable Care Act before he voted to abolish it. He voted for the Republican proposal after voting against it. His vote for the Republican version of health care might have been a kind of wrong-headed courage. Instead, he hoped the Senate would change the bill he had voted for.
Frelinghuysen also has a story about political bullying. In a fundraising letter to the head of a local bank, Frelinghuysen included a personal note complaining about one of the bank’s employees. She was opposing him. The targeted woman lost her job. Actually, she resigned. She resigned dismayed about pressure because of her politics.
Sherillis situated to take advantage. The navy was Sherrill’s childhood dream. Her grandfather had been a navy pilot in WW II. In fifth grade, she said she wanted to be like him. She went to the Naval Academy and stayed in the navy for nearly ten years.
Like a lot of the women running for Congress this year, 2016 was the catalyst (the cataclysm) that impelled Sherrill to run for Congress. The Trump presidency was disturbing; disturbing to the suburban constituents of NJ 11, too.
Watch Sherrill manage signals for a suburban campaign. A prosecutor in the US Attorney’s office, Sherrill is particularly proud of her work with police and social service agencies to prevent crime. Sherrill alludes to parenting her four children with talk of coaching her daughter’s lacrosse team and managing her son’s baseball team. Look at her endorsements on You Tube. Notice the statement from Jim Johnson. Johnson is an African-American who lost the Democratic Primary for NJ governor.
With these signals, Sherrill tells her constituents she is a tough woman — a navy pilot and a prosecutor. Not only tough. She has a broad vision. Prevent crime if possible. Prosecute when necessary. Sherrill’s a mother. She’s a tough (at least toughish) mother. She teaches her children to be competitive. She also deplores the competitive nature of child rearing in the suburbs. However tough Sherrill may be, she is also an advocate for an inclusive society. She’s proud to have Jim Johnson’s endorsement.
Mikie Sherrill brings that combination of a broad vision and combativeness to her political positions.
She starts with the economy. New Jersey should be a center of innovation. It has not been. New Jersey has not kept pace with the rest of the country recovering from the deep recession. New Jersey needs to build on its strengths:
- Leverage the highly educated health care, biotech, and medical research workforce to attract new high tech jobs.
- Really fix the federal tax law so that New Jersey’s structure of paying $1 for every 74 cents it gets back improves rather than gets worse.
- Fix New Jersey’s infrastructure. The most important handicap to growth in New Jersey is traffic congestion.
- Strengthen education because good schools attract new businesses. Strengthen college level science programs and stop Betsy DeVos‘ agenda of privatization of K-12 education.
She continues:
- Stop President Trump’s plan for offshore drilling. She asks the incumbent to join her in condemning the plan.
- She condemns the new tax law will make New Jersey pay even more to the rest of the country while getting less back.
- She condemns the failure to combat climate change — noting that this is an issue of national security and an especially important issue for New Jersey’s coast.
- She is outspokenly pro-choice and adds Governor Christie’s cuts to women’s health to her condemnations.
Sherrill is running against an institution and a legacy. She can turn this endangered Republican seat into a Democratic victory. She needs your help. You make the wave. Your contribution makes a difference. Monthly donations are particularly helpful, even if they are small. Help Mikie Sherrill https://www.mikiesherrill.com/ get there; help us all get a Democratic Congress.
