Mikie Sherrill

Rebecca Michelle Sherrill ( MY-kee SHERR-əl; born January 19, 1972) is an American politician, former naval officer, and former federal prosecutor serving since 2026 as the 57th governor of New Jersey. A member of the Democratic Party, she was elected governor in 2025, defeating Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli. Sherrill is New Jersey's second female governor (after Christine Todd Whitman) and first female Democratic governor, as well as the first female military veteran to be elected governor of any U.S. state.

Sherrill served as the U.S. representative for New Jersey's 11th congressional district from 2019 until her resignation in 2025.

Early life and education

Sherrill was born in Alexandria, Virginia. She grew up in various places along the East Coast of the United States due to her father's job.

Sherrill attended South Lakes High School in Reston, Virginia from 1986 to 1990, participating in the school's marching band. In 1994, she earned her Bachelor of Science from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In 2003, Sherrill received an MSc in international and world history from the London School of Economics. In 2004, she received a certificate in Arabic language from the American University in Cairo. In 2007, Sherrill earned a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Military career

Inspired by her grandfather who served as a pilot in World War II, Sherrill wanted to be a pilot from an early age. She was among the flight school graduates in the first class of women eligible for direct assignment to fly combat aircraft. Sherrill graduated from the Naval Academy in 1994.

She later completed over a year of flight training, was designated as a Naval Aviator after graduation from the advanced rotary-wing training pipeline at NAS Whiting Field, Florida, and became a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, flying the H-3 Sea King. Sherrill flew missions throughout Europe and in the Middle East. In 2000, she was based at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas.

Following her first operational sea duty assignment in a flying squadron, Sherrill was a Russian policy officer assigned to the then-Headquarters, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR).

Sherrill served on active duty in the U.S. Navy for nine years, the last five with the rank of lieutenant.

Law career

In mid-2007, while earning her Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University Law Center, Sherrill was a summer associate at Kirkland & Ellis. After graduation from Georgetown University Law Center, Sherrill returned to Kirkland & Ellis's New York City office, where she worked in the litigation department from 2008 to 2011.

After leaving Kirkland & Ellis, Sherrill joined the United States Attorney's Office as an outreach and reentry coordinator. In 2015, Sherrill became a federal prosecutor, as an assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, working under U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman. She left that office in 2016. At the time, she planned on going into the field of criminal justice reform.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2018

On May 11, 2017, Sherrill launched her campaign for New Jersey's 11th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. The seat had been held by 12-term Republican incumbent Rodney Frelinghuysen, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who in January 2018 announced he would not seek reelection. The district had long been considered a Republican stronghold, even after it had been made slightly more Democratic on paper by pushing it further into Essex County, including a slice of Montclair around Sherrill's home. Frelinghuysen had been reelected three more times in this redrawn district without serious difficulty, but was thought to be vulnerable after Donald Trump carried it by one percentage point in 2016.

In November 2017, comedian Chelsea Handler, who is from Livingston, went to Montclair to support Sherrill's campaign. Sherrill was endorsed by the political action committee organization VoteVets.org, the pro-choice Democratic PAC EMILY's List, the editorial board of The New York Times, and the New Jersey chapter of Clean Water Action.

In June 2018, Sherrill won the Democratic primary with 77% of the vote, beating four other candidates.

Sherrill raised $2.8 million during the primary election, placing her among the top House fundraisers in the country. Her campaign raised $1.9 million in the second quarter of 2018, setting a record for a House candidate from New Jersey in one quarter.

On November 6, Sherrill defeated Republican state assemblyman Jay Webber with 56.8% of the vote to Webber's 42.1%. The election marked the largest partisan vote share swing in the 2018 cycle, with a 33-percentage-point swing from a 19-point Republican margin in 2016 to a 15-point Democratic one in 2018. Sherrill is the first Democrat to win this seat since 16-term incumbent Joseph Minish was defeated in 1984 after the district had been redrawn to be more Republican. She was the first Democrat since Minish's defeat to win more than 40% of the district's vote.

2020

Sherrill had a closer contest for reelection in 2020, defeating Republican tax lawyer Rosemary Becchi, 53.3% to 46.7%. That year Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the 11th district since it assumed its present configuration in 1984, carrying the district with 52.7% of the vote.

2022

With redistricting following the 2020 census, the 11th District became somewhat friendlier for Sherrill. It was pushed further into Essex County while losing its share of heavily Republican Sussex County. Had the district existed in 2020, Biden would have carried it with 58% of the vote. Sherrill won by a much wider margin than in 2020, defeating Republican Passaic County assistant prosecutor Paul DeGroot, 59% to 40.2%.

2024

In 2024, Sherrill easily won the Democratic primary over real estate consultant Mark De Lotto with 93.6% of the vote. In the general election, she was reelected with 56.5% of the vote over Belleville building inspector Joseph Belnome. Sherrill outperformed the Democratic Party's concurrent nominees for president and Senate, as Kamala Harris won 53% of the district's vote and Andy Kim won 54%. The New Jersey Globe partially attributed Belnome's political unpopularity to his attendance at the January 6 United States Capitol attack.

Tenure

Following her election, Sherrill joined the moderate New Democrat Coalition, the second-largest Democratic caucus in the House, and was named its freshman whip. She also joined the Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of moderate and conservative House Democrats, but left the group in 2023. She joined two other female veterans in the Democratic freshman class, fellow Naval Academy graduate Elaine Luria and former Air Force officer Chrissy Houlahan.

Per a promise to her constituents, Sherrill did not vote for Nancy Pelosi to retake the speakership, instead voting for Cheri Bustos of Illinois. She voted "present", essentially an abstention, in her second speakership vote.

In 2019, Sherrill initially opposed exploring the first impeachment of President Donald Trump, but reversed course in September after a whistleblower alleged that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden. According to one report, Sherrill was instrumental in motivating Speaker Pelosi to proceed with the impeachment inquiry and said her "grave concerns" about Trump's behavior were "rooted in self-sacrifice and principle". An op-ed she co-wrote with six other freshman Democrats with national security backgrounds—Houlahan, Luria, Gil Cisneros, Jason Crow, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger—said that "everything we do harks back to our oaths to defend the country" and described the claims against Trump as "a threat to all we have sworn to protect". Sherrill, Slotkin and Spanberger were described as the "mod squad", a moderate alternative to the progressive "squad".

Sherrill indicated her support for a second impeachment of Trump after the 2021 United States Capitol attack. She said she had seen some colleagues giving what she called "reconnaissance tours" of the building the day before the attack.

Sherrill voted with President Biden's stated position 100% of the time in the 117th Congress, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis. She voted with Biden 92.6% of the time in the 118th Congress through 2023, while Democrats in Congress voted with Biden 93% of the time on average during that period.

On February 1, 2023, Sherrill was among 12 Democrats to vote for a resolution to end the COVID-19 national emergency.

In 2023, Sherrill criticized the implementation of congestion pricing in lower Manhattan, New York City, calling the congestion pricing plan "New York's greedy cash grab from New Jersey commuters".

On July 9, 2024, Sherrill became the seventh House member to publicly request that Biden step aside as the presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2024 United States presidential election.

Sherrill resigned from Congress at 11:59 PM on November 20, 2025, after winning the 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial election.