After huge Q1, Sherrill sitting on a skyscraping $5.5 million warchest

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) raised $823,957 during the first quarter of 2022, giving her a massive campaign warchest of $5,523,624 as she seeks a third term in the Morris and Essex County-based 11th district.

In total, Sherrill has raised $3.7 million since the beginning of the cycle. A former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, Sherrill’s earliest fundraising reports – $1.2 million raised as a challenger in 2017 – helped scare Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Harding) into retirement, and she hasn’t let up since.

Sherrill faces no opposition in the June Democratic primary, while five Republicans are competing to take her on in the general election. 

Those Republicans have struggled to pull in the resources necessary to compete with the congresswoman. Morris County Commissioner Tayfun Selen, the frontrunner for the nomination, raised just $50,000 in the first quarter, and his main opponents, U.S. Army veteran Toby Anderson and former Assistant Passaic County Prosecutor Paul DeGroot, raised even less.

The 11th district once leaned strongly Republican, but Sherrill flipped it easily in 2018 and Republican Rosemary Becchi’s bid to unseat her in 2020 was not considered a top-tier race. 

While Republicans are excited this year more generally about their prospects in a favorable political environment, congressional redistricting removed some of the 11th district’s most conservative towns and gave it liberal suburbs like Millburn and Maplewood instead; the newly drawn district would have voted for President Joe Biden by an intimidating 17 points.