It’s been a dirty race for the governor’s mansion in New Jersey.

It’s been a dirty race for the governor’s mansion in New Jersey. From my perspective, neither candidate’s campaign can claim to have clean hands. But Democratic gubernatorial nominee and representative Mikie Sherrill excavated her way to new muddy depths during a Wednesday night debate.

In a reprise of the Barack Obama campaign’s effort to accuse Mitt Romney of negligent homicide by virtue of his proximity to the avaricious capitalist enterprise, Sherrill branded her opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, a murderer for having once owned a medical publication company.

“You killed tens of thousands of people by printing your misinformation, your propaganda,” the Democrat declared. That’s a serious charge against a publishing house that produced “continuing education materials for major universities,” according to NJ.com, even if that venture relied for part of its funding on grants from the many New Jersey-based pharmaceutical companies.

The exchange devolved from there.

“Shame on you,” Ciattarelli retorted.

“Shame on you, sir,” Sherrill shot back.

The Republican called the accusation against him “a lie,” to which the representative said she would be “happy to publish the information” substantiating her sordid accusation.

“I think the people you got addicted and died deserve better than you,” Sherrill continued. “Tens of thousands here as you published misinformation, as you got more people addicted, as you worked to develop — got paid to develop an app so that more people could get more opioids and die.”

Ciattarelli, perhaps understandably perturbed, noted that at least he “got to walk” at his graduation — a reference to an emerging scandal around Sherrill’s proximity to a 1994 Naval Academy cheating scandal in which 130 midshipmen were implicated. Administrators “barred” Sherrill from participating in graduation ceremonies when she, in her own words, “didn’t turn in some of my classmates,” despite an honor code that compelled her to have done so.

“And I’m so glad,” Sherrill parried, “that you went on to kill tens of thousands of people in New Jersey, including children.” She restated that point — “that you killed tens of thousands of people by printing your misinformation, your propaganda” — once again for emphasis.

The heated exchange ended in a flurry of crosstalk and dueling accusations of malfeasance before the moderators managed to regain control of the proceedings. Ciattarelli allowed himself an indignant whistle.

This back and forth gives us some clues about the state of the race, which, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, has never been closer. It’s certainly much closer than the 2021 gubernatorial election, in which Ciattarelli outperformed the RCP average of his polling by a full five points.

Sherrill might have felt compelled to break the emergency glass behind which this seamy accusation should have remained interred. But it’s out now, and the onus is on the Democratic candidate’s campaign to back up its claim that New Jersey businessmen with ties to the pharmaceutical industry — one of the Garden State’s larger employment sectors — are themselves bloodless killers.

It’s an ugly charge. Sherrill will likely only be able to support it through the promotion of baseless insinuations and nasty assumptions about her fellow New Jerseyans. But this campaign has signaled that it believes its path to victory depends on activating as many progressives as possible. And progressives do seem inclined to regard their fellow Americans with ties to the health care industry as murderers these days, a despicable lot that is owed their own violent comeuppance.

That outlook is a plague on the national political landscape. Unfortunately, Sherrill has tacitly put herself in that camp. If her tactic works in November, we can expect many more Democrats will follow her lead, reinforcing the radical delusions abroad in the progressive ecosystem that American society must no longer tolerate. The stakes of this race were already high for New Jerseyans. With last night’s debate, the stakes got much higher with implications that are national in scope.