EMILYs List, a powerful PAC that works to elect Democratic pro-choice women to office, has endorsed Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) for governor.
EMILYs List President Jessica Mackler said Sherrill, the only major female candidate of either party in the 2025 gubernatorial race, has shown the leadership needed to protect abortion access in New Jersey and bring down costs throughout the state.
“In the United States Navy and in Congress, Rep. Sherrill has shown her unwavering commitment to serving our country and the people of New Jersey,” Mackler said in a statement. “Her record passing bipartisan legislation to bring down health care costs, lower taxes for New Jersey residents, and fight for our reproductive rights is clear.”
EMILYs List previously endorsed Sherrill in her 2018, 2020, and 2022 congressional campaigns.
“We are thrilled to support Rep. Sherrill and to elect the first Democratic woman governor of New Jersey,” Mackler said.
If Sherrill wins, she will become the second woman to serve as governor of New Jersey. Republican Christine Todd Whitman won in 1993 and 1997; Barbara Buono, the lone woman Democrats have ever nominated for the office, lost her gubernatorial bid in 2013.
Sherrill announced her campaign for governor with a video Monday morning.
She is now the sixth Democrat to join the race to succeed term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy, along with Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, former Senate President Steve Sweeney, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, New Jersey Education Association President and former Montclair Mayor Sean Spiller, and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), who entered the race on Friday.
The endorsement from EMILYs List means that the group’s donors – who won’t have many other races to focus on in 2025 – will be directed towards Sherrill’s campaign, which could matter in what’s expected to be an expensive race. EMILYs List also has an independent expenditure arm that could choose to get involved on Sherrill’s behalf, spending money to boost the congresswoman against her five male opponents in the June Democratic primary.
EMILYs List provided critical early support to Sherrill in 2018 when she drove House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Harding) into retirement and flipped the 11th congressional district to the Democrats for the first time in 34 years.
The group had a mixed record in New Jersey in 2024, however. While the elections of Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) and Rep.-elect Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) mean that the state will have twice as many women representing it in Congress than ever before, three other female candidates who got early support from EMILYs List – Sue Altman in the 7th congressional district, Assemblywoman Carol Murphy (D-Mount Laurel) in the 3rd district, and First Lady Tammy Murphy for U.S. Senate – all fell short.
See here for a full list of endorsements in New Jersey’s 2025 gubernatorial contest.