The dramatic shift towards Republicans in New Jersey’s 2024 presidential election likely means that Democrats running for governor in 2025 will all want to incorporate a new message into their pitch to Democratic voters: that they, more than any of their opponents, are best-positioned to keep the state blue.
And two prospective contenders, Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) and Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), have some very recent evidence working in their favor.
In their races last Tuesday, Gottheimer and Sherrill – who are both expected to launch their gubernatorial campaigns in the next few days – each won by convincing margins. Sherrill beat Republican Joe Belnome 56% to 42% in the 11th congressional district, while Gottheimer defeated Mary Jo Guinchard 54% to 43% in the 5th district. (Results are subject to change slightly prior to certification as the remaining mail-in ballots and provisional ballots are counted.)
More critically, both substantially outperformed the top of the ticket: Sherrill did six percentage points better than Vice President Kamala Harris, who won her district 53% to 45%, and Gottheimer did a whopping ten points better than Harris’s 50%-48% win in his district.
Sherrill and Gottheimer each performed about as well as Joe Biden did four years ago, when he won the 11th district by 17 points and the 5th district by 12 points. In other words, the two members’ wins were more in line with a typical election year for New Jersey – and not the unusually close six-point presidential contest that this year turned out to be, a result that has made many New Jersey Democrats incredibly nervous about the state’s future trajectory.
Sherrill’s and Gottheimer’s strong performances are likely in part a result of Trump voters skipping downballot races, a phenomenon present across much of the country; Gottheimer, for example, got around 8,000 more votes than Harris in the 5th district, while Guinchard got 28,000 fewer votes than Donald Trump. But some voters clearly decided to split their ticket for a Republican president and a Democratic member of Congress.
Asked yesterday why they think they were able to outrun the top of the ticket, Gottheimer and Sherrill, both moderate Democrats who initially flipped their seats from Republicans, said that they’ve worked hard in their districts to build up local support and buck their own party when needed.
“I can just speak to what the people I represent in northern New Jersey think,” Gottheimer said. “People want you to focus on issues front-and-center to them, and that’s a combination of things like lower taxes and affordability, child care costs, health care costs, utility bills – and also making sure we get stuff done. I’m very proud of my record as someone who works with both sides to fight for things that we all care about that are good for Jersey.”
“We’re hearing from across the country that voters want change,” Sherrill said. “They didn’t want the status quo. I think the reason I did well is that people see me as an independent voice, somebody who centers my work on the needs of the people of New Jersey and not always in a partisan, political way, but actually delivering for people.”
It’s worth noting that Guinchard and Belnome, the Republican nominees for the 5th and 11th districts, didn’t offer too much in the way of opposition this year. Neither had much success in fundraising – Belnome raised $232,000 and Guinchard raised $302,000, a far cry from the millions Sherrill and Gottheimer raised – and state and national Republicans never chose to make their races a priority.
Still, the two members’ overperformances speak for themselves, especially in some of the towns that swung hardest against Democrats this year.
In Gottheimer’s 5th district, which is based in the diverse suburbs of Bergen County and also includes more rural territory in Passaic and Sussex Counties, the congressman did better than Harris in every single town, and managed to win seven towns that Trump carried.
The biggest overperformances, though, came in majority-minority towns like Bergenfield (Harris +11, Gottheimer +34), Englewood (Harris +32, Gottheimer +59), and Teaneck (Harris +23, Gottheimer +54 – an astounding 31-point difference). Each of those towns dramatically swung against Democrats this year amid a broader realignment of Hispanic and Asian voters, but Gottheimer was able to keep many of those historically Democratic Trump voters in his corner.
In Sherrill’s 11th district, which covers a suburban swath of Morris, Essex, and Passaic Counties, the results were a bit less dramatic, but still pointed towards a clear preference for Sherrill even among many swing voters who opted for Trump.
Sherrill did better than Harris in all but one town in the district (Millburn), putting up some of her biggest overperformances in the majority-Latino towns of Dover and Victory Gardens; she also won eight Trump-carried towns.
What does any of this mean for the 2025 cycle, when Gottheimer and Sherrill will likely be competing against several other Democrats for the right to succeed term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy? Maybe nothing.
There’s no telling yet whether Gottheimer’s and Sherrill’s appeal would extend beyond the boundaries of their districts, and impressive performances don’t necessarily transfer over from cycle to cycle. (Case in point: while Gottheimer did about four points better than Sherrill this year relative to the top of the ticket, the opposite was true in 2022, when Sherrill won by 19 points and Gottheimer won by 10.)
But when Gottheimer and Sherrill get in the gubernatorial race in the coming days, the fact that they have a proven ability to win swing voters will likely be a core part of their arguments to Democratic primary voters. It’s something that three of their four opponents – Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, and former Montclair Mayor Sean Spiller, all of whom hail from deep-blue territory – can’t necessarily say about themselves.
(Of course, there’s a double-edged sword to that argument: if Sherrill and Gottheimer are indeed such valuable electoral performers, is it really wise for Democrats to let them depart from a Congress that’s so narrowly divided between the parties? Gottheimer’s 5th district, moreover, could be genuinely vulnerable in a 2026 special election if he were to be elected governor.)
Sherrill and Gottheimer both said that, ultimately, listening to their district’s voters – and soon, perhaps, to the voters of the entire state – is the key to everything.
“When you listen to people, and you respond to what they want to do, and you act on it and you deliver for people, it’s hard to beat that,” Sherrill said. “It’s not rocket science.”