Noticias

A Democratic newcomer with national political connections has entered the special election for Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair)’s House seat – an election which may not happen at all if Sherrill doesn’t win this November’s race for governor.

Cammie Croft, who spent several years working in President Barack Obama’s administration before entering the nonprofit world, officially launched her campaign this morning to succeed Sherrill in the 11th congressional district, home to blue-leaning North Jersey suburbs and some of the most engaged voters in the state.

“Running for Congress was never part of my plan,” Croft says in her launch video. “But I realized that one day, my kids will ask me what I did. And when they ask, ‘What did you do?’, I need to be able to tell them that I did everything I possibly could.”

Croft is among the first candidates on either side of the aisle to enter the race for Sherrill’s seat; most other would-be contenders, including plenty of local politicians and one former member of Congress, are holding off until Sherrill is elected governor to kick off their campaigns. But while she may be getting into the race early, Croft said she firmly supports Sherrill and has no intention of running against the congresswoman if she loses the governorship and seeks re-election to the House.

Born into poverty in small-town Pennsylvania and raised by a mom who had four kids by the age of 20, Croft said her family relied on government assistance to make ends meet – the type of assistance that President Donald Trump’s administration, through the Big Beautiful Bill and other funding cuts, is directly targeting.

“My mom worked really really hard, but we needed food stamps and public housing and Medicaid to be able to get by,” Croft told the New Jersey Globe. “So when Trump cut these programs this summer, I know what that means. It’s personal.”

The first in her family to go to college, Croft got her start in politics in Washington State, managing the state legislative campaign of an underdog Democrat who’s now the majority leader of the Washington State Senate. In 2008, Croft joined Barack Obama’s campaign for president; when Obama won, she followed him to D.C., working as his deputy new media director and as a communications strategist at the Department of Energy.

After departing the White House, Croft worked for a number of nonprofit and advocacy organizations, eventually joining Rewiring America, a nonprofit focused on helping Americans afford home electrification. Croft witnessed a huge expansion of Rewiring America during the Biden administration, but at the beginning of this year, the group found its funds suddenly frozen by the new administration and was forced to downsize.

“The same month that we were acknowledged for being one of America’s most innovative nonprofits, the Trump administration froze our bank accounts, and our federal funding became in limbo,” Croft said. “We were doing everything right, using every tool at our disposal, and it still wasn’t enough. In this moment where families are feeling like they’re doing everything right just to get by, it just feels like it’s unfair and the system is rigged.”

If she’s elected to Congress, Croft said her first priority will be to lower costs, and that means opposing and reversing the policies put in place by the Trump administration.

“We need to stop Trump and stop the corruption where the ultra-rich are just making themselves richer on our backs,” she said. “At the congressional level, one of the first things we need to do is reverse Trump’s cuts to Medicaid. We also need to reinstate the investments in clean energy that are going to reduce energy demand while also increasing energy supply.”

In 2021, Croft moved with her family to New Jersey; now 43, she and her husband are raising their three children in Montclair, the famously progressive suburb that’s at the heart of the 11th district (and that’s also home to Sherrill). The district, which re-elected Sherrill by 15 percentage points last year against a little-known GOP foe, is chock-full of ambitious politicians, setting up an unpredictable – and, for now, hypothetical – Democratic primary.

Only one other Democrat, Anna Lee Williams, has officially launched a campaign to succeed Sherrill; Williams, who has garnered relatively little attention for her bid thus far, has said that unlike Croft, she’ll continue her campaign even if it means running against Sherrill.

But if Sherrill does win in November against Republican Jack Ciattarelli – the pair met for their first debate yesterday – the floodgates of interested candidates, especially on the Democratic side, will open rapidly.

Two candidates, Morris Township Committeeman Jeff Grayzel and Chatham Borough Councilman Justin Strickland, have filed campaign finance paperwork to run. Plenty of others – among them Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill (D-Montclair), Passaic County Commissioner John Bartlett (D-Wayne), Assemblywoman Rosy Bagolie (D-Livingston), South Orange Mayor Sheena Collum, and former Biden administration official Jack Miller – are certain to at least take a look at the race.

Perhaps the most prominent name of all is former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes). Malinowski lost re-election in a neighboring district in 2022 – and currently chairs a county party far outside the borders of the 11th district – but he would bring name recognition and fundraising abilities that may be tough to match.

The timing of a special election if Sherrill wins remains somewhat unclear. If Sherrill waits until she’s sworn in as governor to resign her House seat, then a special election would take months, but she could also depart the House earlier, pushing the special primary up to as early as late January or early February.

If that’s the case, then candidates interested in succeeding her will have to put together campaigns extremely quickly to avoid being left behind. By announcing now, Croft said she wants to give herself as much time to build out her campaign as possible, but she recognizes that New Jersey political attention will be focused elsewhere through November.

“Part of the impetus for making the announcement now, rather than waiting for November, is so that I have more runway to raise money and build name ID,” Croft said. “But I’m very cognizant of making sure that, while I’m doing that, I am doing everything I can to make sure that Mikie Sherrill and other Democrats win in November.”

The post Cammie Croft, Obama White House alum and nonprofit leader, will run to succeed Sherrill in NJ-11 appeared first on New Jersey Globe.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) and former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli met for their first debate of the fall Sunday night in a bout that touched on energy costs, political violence, Donald Trump, and more. 

At a 90-minute, town-hall style debate in the gym of Rider University, Sherrill and Ciattarelli stayed aggressive but failed to deliver knockout punches.

In opening statements, they stuck to their campaign messaging. Sherrill said Ciattarelli would follow President Donald Trump’s demands no matter what and offer a lot of “nonsense” during the debate, while Ciattarelli said she would be a continuation of eight years of Democratic control in Trenton.

Organizers said more than 1,600 people attended the debate, the largest audience of a gubernatorial debate in the state’s history. While there were no severe interruptions, the crowd exhibited a fair share of raucous moments — at several points, Ciattarelli motioned for a group of his supporters in the bleachers to quiet down.

The debate was combative, but not extremely so. The candidates mostly kept to their allotted time and rarely spoke over one another.

Sherrill regularly accused Ciattarelli of unabashed fealty to Trump, a continued strategy as her campaign seeks to tie him to the president. One such moment came when he defended the dismantling of the federal Department of Education.

“The farther away you get from the classroom, the less impact I think any governmental institution has on what’s taking place in the classroom and student learning,” Ciattarelli said. “So I don’t necessarily have a problem with the president and the administration downsizing the Department of Education. Just because they got rid of the Department of Education doesn’t mean they got rid of federal funding.”

Sherrill rejected the premise, pointing to major cuts to research funding and Pell Grants under Trump. She said she would “claw back” funding sent to the federal government if cuts continue.

“So at almost every level, the federal government right now has limited the money that they’re sending back to New Jersey for education,” she said

Immigration came up toward the tail end of the debate — Ciattarelli repeated his stump-speech promise to ban all “sanctuary state” policies on his first day in office.

Sherrill was asked twice during the debate and twice by reporters afterward whether she would keep or repeal the Immigrant Trust Directive, a state policy limiting how often state and local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration agents. While she didn’t discuss the policy, she vowed to bar immigration agents from wearing masks and said New Jersey officials should follow the law and the Constitution.

She also didn’t say whether she would support legislation that would classify political violence as a hate crime — such a bill has yet to be introduced, but it’s garnered support from a bipartisan pair of top state senators. Speaking with reporters afterward, she disavowed political violence but said she want to see the language of such a bill to make sure it doesn’t unjustly limit free speech.

“We see this time and time again in the campaign,” Ciattarelli said. “Generalities, platitudes, ducking the direct question by not giving a direct answer.”

At the press gaggle afterward, Ciattarelli refused to take a question from NorthJersey.com columnist Charlie Stile, saying the journalist is in the “penalty box.”

Ciattarelli said the congresswoman wouldn’t be able to address the spike in energy prices better than Gov. Phil Murphy. Sherrill has promised to unilaterally freeze rate hikes (Murphy and others have wondered how such a policy could be implemented) in addition to more power generation, and Ciattarelli said the state should expand its natural gas, nuclear, and solar energy capabilities.

As the debate roared forward, thousands of people, including the country’s top Republicans, mourned at an Arizona memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed last week in Utah. After both candidates said leaders should work to limit violence, Ciattarelli criticized Sherrill for voting for a House resolution that honored Kirk’s legacy and then releasing a statement that criticized his political beliefs.

“I also think it’s fair, Jack, to speak up when you disagree with something. So if you want to stand up that Martin Luther King [Jr.] was a bad guy, or that women should submit to their husbands, you have a right to do that,” Sherrill said, referring to statements from Kirk that have garnered controversy. “And I have a right to say I disagree with it.”

They are each looking to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. Public polling has consistently shown Sherrill with a 6 to 10-point lead. One internal poll released by the Ciattarelli campaign found he held a 1-point lead. 

Sunday’s debate was the first of two between Ciattarelli and Sherrill. The second debate between the pair will be held on Wednesday, October 8, and sponsored by WABC and WPVI. A debate between the two lieutenant governor nominees — Republican James Gannon and Democrat Dale Caldwell — is scheduled for Tuesday, September 30, at 7:00 PM, sponsored by PIX11/WPIX-TV, PHL17/WPHL-TV, Kean University, and New Jersey 101.5.

The New Jersey Globe, On New Jersey, and Rider University sponsored Sunday’s debate. David Wildstein, editor of the New Jersey Globe; Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University; and Sophie Nieto-Muñoz, a reporter at the New Jersey Monitor, served as main panelists. Laura Jones of On New Jersey moderated.

Mail-in ballots will begin to reach voters this week.

You can watch the debate, including pre- and post-debate coverage, here. 

The post In first debate, gubernatorial candidates wrangle over energy, Trump appeared first on New Jersey Globe.

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On Saturday, Anthony Cirz won a redo of a February fire commissioner election in Toms River after a write-in vote mishap and a series of other ballot issues forced a runoff.

In February, two seats were up for grabs. The first was claimed by Richard Tutela, who won 690 votes and whose victory was not in question. Behind Tutela were Cirz and Michael Hopson, who, according to initial certified results, received 615 votes. The initial certified results also showed James Golden to receive 614 votes and a total of five write-in votes.

After the certification, election officials apparently realized two of the write-in votes had gone to candidates listed on the ballot — one to Cirz, and one to Golden. Dawn Halliwell, the Fire District’s financial clerk, asked the Ocean County Board of Elections whether to count write-in votes for candidates who also appeared on the ballot. She was informed the Board of Election “would not count” those votes, but Halliwell then made a “unilateral decision” to count the votes anyway, saying the fire district “d[id]n’t have a policy and it’s our election.” An appellate court later ordered a redo.

The Ocean County Board of Elections oversaw the redo.

The post Anthony Cirz wins Toms River fire election redo appeared first on New Jersey Globe.