Tag: Charlie Kirk

Jack Ciattarelli (R) and Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D) met at Rider University on Sept. 21, 2025, for the first of two scheduled debates between the two gubernatorial hopefuls. (Photos by Dana DiFilippo and Amanda Brown)

Jack Ciattarelli (R) and Rep. Mikie Sherill (D) met on Sunday night for the first gubernatorial debate of the general election campaign, a 90-minute session that occasionally veered into testy but never devolved into an outright slugfest.

The event was a town hall-style debate, with questions from three moderators — including our own Sophie Nieto-Muñoz — and from audience members gathered at Rider University in Lawrenceville. Here are my takeaways, in no particular order:

Joke of the night

Usually, candidates in a debate try to land jokes, but on Sunday, the debate’s host, Laura Jones with On New Jersey, easily had the best barb of the night when she said David Wildstein was not responsible for the bumper-to-bumper traffic headed onto the Rider campus before the event. Wildstein, editor of debate sponsor New Jersey Globe, was an architect of the 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closures that caused days of traffic jams in Fort Lee and led to state and federal investigations (Jones noted that Wildstein gave his OK for the joke).

Did you know that Sherrill was a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot?

Sherrill had the microphone for all of nine seconds before she noted that she was once a Navy helicopter pilot, in case you missed that bit of biographical info from her campaign ads and her campaign logo and her million tweets about it.

Political violence

In addition to being the day of this year’s first one-on-one gubernatorial debate, Sunday also saw the funeral for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose Sept. 10 killing sparked widespread condemnation and renewed calls to investigate and punish political violence. Asked whether they’d sign onto new GOP-led state legislation to label political violence a hate crime, Sherrill declined to answer, while Ciattarelli said he would and noted Sherrill’s evasive response.

Ciattarelli also used the moment to attack Sherrill for voting in favor of a House resolution honoring Kirk on Friday and later posting a message to social media condemning Kirk.

“I think that was wrong,” Ciattarelli said.

“That’s a neat trick to say you don’t want to divide people, and then in your answer, bring up something that’s very divisive,” Sherrill responded.

Jersey roots

Ciattarelli likes to remind voters that he’s a Jersey native and Sherrill is not (she’s from Virginia). He made a pointed reference to this on Sunday in a dramatic moment that saw him stare directly at her while he tied incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy’s support of offshore wind energy to the Democratic governor’s status as a Jersey transplant.

“Now if he was from New Jersey, and anybody who was from New Jersey would know, that the Jersey Shore is sacrosanct here in this state. Nobody wants wind farms off our Jersey Shore, male, female, young and old, Republican, liberal, conservative, liberal, for different reasons,” he said.

Taxes

Wildstein asked both candidates a yes or no question: Would you commit to not raising the state’s 6.625% sales tax as governor?

Ciattarelli answered, “We are not raising the sales tax here in New Jersey.”

Sherrill (eventually) answered, “I’m not going to commit to anything right now, because I’m not just going to tell you what you want to hear.”

Her answer was notable because Sherrill spent a lot of the debate hammering Ciattarelli over some votes he made in support of raising taxes as an elected official. Her campaign has also circulated a misleading audio clip of Ciattarelli to claim he’d support raising the state’s sales tax to 10% and slapping it on food and clothing.

Unanswered questions

Despite valiant efforts by the debate’s moderators and members of the audience to ask basic questions, the candidates skillfully avoided answering them when they didn’t feel like it, though it felt like Sherrill did this more than Ciattarelli.

The most obvious example came when the candidates were asked whether they would continue the Immigrant Trust Directive, an order from our attorney general that restricts when state and local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration agents.

Sherrill answered by saying she would not allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to walk around masked and accused Ciattarelli of supporting policies that allow people in the United States legally to be detained. When pressed about whether she would continue the directive, Sherrill again declined to answer.

“What I’m going to do is make sure we’re following the law and the Constitution, so that’ll include due process rights and the Constitution,” she said.

Ciattarelli, who liked to remind the audience when Sherrill evaded a question, said, “I don’t think she answered your question. Executive Order No. 1 on day one, we’re getting rid of the Immigrant Trust Directive.”

Segregated schools

The Sherrill campaign and her allies are making a lot of Ciattarelli’s answer to a question about segregated schools, one they claim reveals something far more sinister than I think it does.

The question was, would you as governor continue to fight a lawsuit filed by a group of parents and activists who allege the state’s school districts are unconstitutionally segregated and what do you think the state can do to achieve less segregated schools?

Neither of them initially answered the first part. Ciattarelli said he would focus on improving schools with “high-impact curriculum.” Sherrill said county-based school systems would help, as would high-intensity tutoring and phonics-based reading lessons in third grade. I’m not convinced these answers include a legitimate solution, though county-based schools might help if a Gov. Sherrill could get buy-in from towns (a gigantic if).

It was the initial part of Ciattarelli’s answer that won quick condemnation from Democrats.

“We do have the most segregated schools, but I wonder if we would be having this discussion if the performance of schools with predominantly Black student populations were outperforming schools with predominantly white populations. We need to get back on day one to improving all of our schools, and I intend to do that with a high-impact curriculum,” Ciattarelli said.

When I heard that, I heard him arguing that the problem is not segregation but terrible schools in districts that serve Black students. But a Democratic super PAC posted a clip of his comments — sans the bit about improving curriculum — and said, “Jack Ciattarelli defends racial segregation in schools,” a sentiment that appeared to be shared by some of Sherrill’s allies. Sen. Andy Kim (D) called the comments “shameful,” while Sherrill said Ciattarelli “doesn’t care about” segregated schools.

Boos

No one asked about the issue of trans students in sports, but that didn’t stop Ciattarelli from shoehorning the issue in.

Ciattarelli, who has told voters on the campaign trail that he would ax a state policy that allows school officials to keep students’ gender identity changes from their parents, interjected his thoughts on this when answering a question about vaccines.

Sherrill said she’s worried that declining vaccination rates will lead to the spread of serious illnesses. Ciattarelli said he also finds the rise in measles and mumps cases concerning.

“The obligation of any governor on day one after they take their oath of office is the public health and safety, and we’ll do that under Governor Ciattarelli,” he said, then added, “I just wish my opponent showed the same concern when it came to biological males participating in female sports. We should be protecting all students.”

To my ears, the comment elicited the loudest set of boos of the night.

If the idea was to bait Sherrill into a response, it did not work. In her response, she attacked Ciattarelli for not criticizing Trump health appointees.

The two candidates will meet for one more debate in about two weeks.