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As the old saying goes, “it’s not how you start, but how you finish.” In the case of the gubernatorial race between Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey, it’s Ciattarelli who has all the momentum as we head into the home stretch.
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Quantus Polling, which was the most accurate of the 2024 presidential election, nailing the exact number of electoral votes President Donald Trump would receive (312), shows Sherrill and Ciattarelli in a dead heat. That same polling firm showed Sherrill with a 10-point lead back in early September. Emerson’s most recent poll also has the candidates tied.
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So why is the race tightening? Three factors are in play, and none are good for Sherill.
First, Sherrill had a patently horrible debate against Ciattarelli last month, with the lowlight coming when Sherrill, after voting for a House resolution honoring Charlie Kirk‘s legacy, proceeded to lie about the slain activist while dumping on his memory in one of the most disgusting displays we’ve seen out of any politician lately.
“Charlie Kirk was advocating for a Christian nationalist government and to roll back the rights of women and Black people — this flies in the face of every value I hold dear and that I fight for,” she declared.
Roll back the rights for women and Black people? When did he even remotely advocate for anything like that? She said this just one week after Charlie was executed in front of his family. She then took the opportunity to criticize Trump.
“On one hand, he denounced Kirk’s politically motivated killing, while on the other hand, he is instigating a witch hunt worthy of Joseph McCarthy to shut down the free speech rights of anyone who disagrees with Kirk’s racist, anti-American views,” she said.
Racist.
Anti-American.
Charlie Kirk was arguably the biggest advocate of the First Amendment and the free exchange of ideas. Sherrill has yet to offer even one example of racist or anti-American rhetoric from Kirk, because there aren’t any.
Problem No. 2 for the Democrat is her Kamala Harris-like explanation about how exactly she made $7 million in stock trades in recent years after being elected to Congress seven years ago. “I also don’t trade individual stocks,” she said in a radio interview with Charlamagne Tha God. “It’s been widely reported, [but] we don’t trade individual stocks. I don’t think anybody in Congress should quite frankly.”
That also is a lie. In 2021, Sherrill paid a $400 fine for violating the federal STOCK Act by failing to disclose stock sales.
Charlamagne followed up by asking her to explain the $7 million she made in the market. “I haven’t. I don’t believe I did, but I would have to go and see what that [report] was alluding to…”
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You don’t believe you did? Not exactly a strong defense. This is also a devastating development when considering most polls show about 90% of registered voters do not think Congress should trade stocks. Sherrill made her boatload already, hence why she would have no problem voting for such a resolution now because there’s an election that needs to be done.
A New York Times investigation in 2022 found that Sherrill had 12 potential conflicts with the stock trades she claims she never made. “Ms. Sherrill reported both buying and selling shares of several defense contractors while she was a member of the House Armed Services Committee. She also sold shares of Alphabet and Meta in 2019 while she was the chairwoman of the oversight subcommittee of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, which has held hearings about online disinformation,” the report reads.
Overall, Sherrill bought and sold several major defense stocks during her time on the Armed Services Committee, including Raytheon, Honeywell, and General Dynamics. And given the amount of money she made in such a short period of time, it’s fair to question if she simply has the stock picking prowess of Gordon Gekko-meets-Paul Pelosi, or if something nefarious happened here.
Problem No. 3 for Sherrill is the fact that she wasn’t allowed to participate in her own graduation ceremony due to a cheating scandal, nor was her husband.
“I didn’t turn in some of my classmates, so I didn’t walk, but graduated and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving for nearly ten years with the highest level of distinction and honor,” Sherrill explained after a report in the New Jersey Globe called her out on it.
Until the report came out, Sherrill never talked about the scandal publicly.
When asked if she would release her disciplinary records publicly to show that her explanation around not ratting out her classmates checked out, she refused to do so.
“What we learned today is that she was part of it in some way, shape or form. Come clean, release the records. Tell us what’s in your disciplinary records. I think the people of New Jersey deserve that,” Ciattatrelli said on Fox News this week.
And he’s right.
Attacking Charlie Kirk and lying in the process.
Shady stock trades of defense and technology companies while on the Armed Services Committee.
A cheating scandal that isn’t going away, while Sherrill is acting like someone with something to hide.
It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.
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And as the race in this blue state heads to the finish, Ciattarelli has all the momentum while his opponent is barely hanging on.
And she has no one to blame but herself.