Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) has defeated Republican Joe Belnome to win a fourth term in the 11th congressional district, the New Jersey Globe projects, though Sherrill might not end up serving out that full term if her prospective gubernatorial campaign goes as well as she hopes.
As of 1:29 a.m., Sherrill leads Belnome, a Donald Trump superfan and building inspector from Belleville, 56% to 42%.
A former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, Sherrill launched her first run for public office in 2017 against Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Harding), instantly becoming one of Democrats’ most promising House recruits nationwide. Sherrill’s fundraising proved to be so strong that Frelinghuysen decided not to run for re-election at all; facing Assemblyman Jay Webber (R-Morris Plains) instead, Sherrill flipped the historically Republican 11th district 57% to 42%.
In the six years since then, Sherrill has cultivated a national profile as a moderate, national-security-focused legislator, teaming up with a group of other congresswomen with military and intelligence backgrounds. When Senator Bob Menendez was indicted last year, Sherrill’s name was at the top of many news outlets’ shortlists to run against him.
But Sherrill has instead spent the last several years laying the groundwork for a different race: the 2025 gubernatorial election, in which Gov. Phil Murphy is term-limited and a wide array of Democrats (among them fellow Rep. Josh Gottheimer) will likely run to succeed him. Sherrill has publicly said she’s looking at running, and behind the scenes it’s viewed as a near-certainty; last month, powerful Democratic Party chairmen in three of the state’s largest counties indicated that they were preparing to support her.
And thanks to the congressional map that was drawn by Democrats in 2021, Sherrill did not have to worry very much about her race against Belnome. She had been re-elected by 19 points under the new lines in 2022 against a stronger opponent than Belnome, and even Republicans saw no real hope of victory this year in a district that includes well-off North Jersey suburbs in Essex, Morris, and Passaic Counties.
Sherrill’s campaign didn’t go easy on Belnome, repeatedly attacking him as an election denier who was present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (Belnome has said he never breached the building itself). But the more than $4 million Sherrill spent this cycle mostly went into messaging geared more towards a prospective statewide campaign – one that will likely at last come out into the open in the next few weeks.