When Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) made the startling call on July 9 for Joe Biden to drop out of the race for president, the Democratic Party was in a place of deep division. After Biden’s woeful debate performance against Donald Trump and amid mounting concerns about the president’s age, Democratic politicians and voters battled for weeks over whether Biden should continue running and whether he was capable of winning in November.
Now, two weeks later, Democrats are for the most part joyfully united behind Vice President Kamala Harris, who took over as Democratic standard-bearer after Biden at last ended his campaign on Sunday. That’s in some ways vindication for Sherrill, the only New Jersey member of Congress to have called for Biden’s exit – but not everyone in New Jersey politics may be convinced.
Asked yesterday what led to her declaration, Sherrill said that it was simple: she wants to win, and she wasn’t sure Biden could.
“I just really came to the conclusion, after the debate, that we didn’t have a path to victory in November,” Sherrill told the New Jersey Globe yesterday. “My goal is to win in November and make sure [Trump] never enters into the White House again. I think he showed us on January 6 that if he gets back into the White House, he would like to never leave it.”
“Being a military member, you’re trained to work in those environments – collate information quickly, make the best decisions you have with the information you have, and move forward,” she continued. “I think a lot of people in tough, complicated times, when the decisions are so weighty – I mean, the future of the country is relying upon who the next president is – a lot of people shy away from making the tough decisions, and would rather not. That is why I think it’s so important to have leaders who are willing to step up.”
Sherrill (who also spoke to Politico NJ on a similar topic yesterday) was, at the time, the seventh congressional Democrat to publicly call on Biden to drop out; that number eventually grew to several dozen and likely would have continued expanding had Biden not bowed out last weekend.
She wasn’t the only New Jersey politician to express doubts about Biden after the debate. Two days before Sherrill’s declaration, former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes), now the chairman of the Hunterdon County Democrats, called on Biden to “pass the torch”; Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate this year, didn’t go quite that far but did acknowledge his concerns about Biden’s ability to beat Trump.
But it was Sherrill – a possible candidate for governor in 2025 – who faced the brunt of the blowback. Many top New Jersey Democrats, including some of her allies, were privately furious, and a few went public with their criticisms of Sherrill.
“The voters voted for [Biden] in a primary and he is the same person he was 3 weeks ago when you (and others) were praising him,” Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, a declared 2025 gubernatorial candidate, told Sherrill in a tweet. “A bad debate or Washington pundits commenting are not reasons to walk away from him. He is one of the most successful presidents in modern history + he deserves a second term. We should all be digging in and working harder on his behalf – not creating chaos.”
On social media, too, Sherrill was roundly criticized, with thousands of people calling her disloyal and saying that her political future was over. But in real life, the congresswoman said, her constituents understood why she made the decision she did, and largely agreed with it.
“I had a lot of positive feedback,” she said. “I had people texting me who I hadn’t heard from in years. I got a sense that a lot of the sentiment was just, ‘Thank you for saying what we are all feeling and seeing.’”
That last bit is critical – saying what everyone was feeling and seeing. Following Biden’s debate performance, the genie couldn’t be put back in the bottle for many voters, and Sherrill said it was a fool’s errand for her fellow elected Democrats to try to convince people things were fine.
“In far too many ways, our political parties let us down when we don’t just acknowledge simple truths of how the electorate is feeling or difficulties that we’re all facing,” she said. “People are feeling that they’re being gaslighted… When you’re in a place like New Jersey, where people expect their elected leaders to be responsive, it’s really important to be able to have the hard conversations.”
Shortly after Biden dropped out, Sherrill “wholeheartedly” endorsed Harris to be his successor, becoming one of the first in what eventually became a torrent of New Jersey endorsements for Harris. And according to her, a candidate like Harris is just what Democratic voters have been yearning for.
“When you have a candidate who represents opportunity and the future, and a vision for the future, I think you see this kind of excitement,” Sherrill said. “And I think it’s what people in this country have been waiting for. We’ve been hearing, for over a year now, that people are unhappy with both of the candidates at the top of the ticket. I think having a candidate now who people are excited about – there has been this pent-up energy waiting for a candidate like Kamala Harris.”