Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss in the presidential race has given rise, again, to whispered worries in the Democratic Party about female candidates and electability — resurrecting a fraught conversation that bubbled for years after President Donald Trump’s first victory over Hillary Clinton.
The whisper campaign has started to some extent in New Jersey, where this year’s governor’s race will be one of Democrats’ first big electoral tests since Trump won his second term.
In the Trump years, some Democratic voters and strategists have worried aloud about whether it’s “safe” to back female candidates if there are male voters who wouldn’t support them in general elections. It was a theme for parts of the Democratic presidential primaries in 2020, when the party was choosing a candidate to take on Trump.
Even as some are once again questioning women’s electability, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the only woman in the crowded New Jersey Democratic primary for governor, has been racking up support in large part because her backers believe she is best positioned to win in November. But Sherrill did acknowledge that broader questions about women’s ability to win persist.
“I hear that from insiders,” Sherrill said in a recent interview. “And it’s funny, that’s always been kind of the case,” she added, saying someone at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told her during her first run for the House in 2018 that “people didn’t think a woman could win in New Jersey.”
“And I was like, ‘What? Watch me,’” Sherrill said. She flipped the longtime Republican seat, winning it by 15 percentage points.
Sherrill has touted her electoral wins, along with her background as a Navy helicopter pilot and a prosecutor, as she looks to succeed Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who can’t run for re-election because of term limits.
Some Democrats in New Jersey are anxious about the race after the state shifted 10 points toward Trump in November, compared with 2020, and after Murphy won re-election four years ago by just 3 points. It has also been more than 60 years since the same party has won three consecutive terms for governor.
Although Harris still carried New Jersey, her loss nationally has prompted some party officials and voters to raise questions about whether a woman can win this year’s governor’s race, according to four sources connected to New Jersey Democratic politics who described hearing those thoughts in conversations. (Several of Sherrill’s supporters said they haven’t heard those electability questions.)
“Honestly, I have heard: ‘Ah, I don’t know, maybe women aren’t electable. Maybe there’s an issue here,’” said an official who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, noting that the questions began after November and have persisted in the primary for governor.
Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said, “It’s part of the same chatter that has always kept women from ascending in the Democratic Party in New Jersey.” Roginsky, who isn’t involved in the governor’s race, said she has also heard party officials raise the electability questions.
“This is not a particularly feminist Democratic Party in New Jersey,” Roginsky added later.
Making her case
Sherrill faces five other major candidates in the Democratic primary: Rep. Josh Gottheimer, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, former state Senate President Steve Sweeney and former Montclair Mayor Sean Spiller, who leads the state’s teachers union.
Sherrill has already racked up endorsements from party leaders, and she has won several county party conventions, earning the backing of the local parties’ rank-and-file members. (Fulop has declined to participate in conventions as he runs an anti-establishment campaign, while Gottheimer is skipping conventions where he believes “the fix is in,” according to the New Jersey Globe.)
Several supporters of Sherrill, a veteran of battleground House campaigns, said they are backing her because they view her as the strongest general election candidate.
Electability was “the most important factor” for Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo Jr.
“I think she is our strongest candidate to win the primary and also the general, which I’m very much concerned about,” DiVincenzo said, noting that former state Assemblyman Jack Ciatarelli is running for governor again after having almost defeated Murphy in 2021.
DiVincenzo and other Sherrill allies pointed to her win in the 11th District in northern New Jersey in 2018 as proof that she can win tough races. GOP Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, a scion of a political family who chaired the powerful House Appropriations Committee, had represented the seat for more than two decades before Sherrill launched her campaign. Frelinghuysen announced his retirement several months later.
Sherrill went on to defeat GOP Assemblyman Jay Weber, flipping a district Trump had narrowly won in 2016. Sherrill said that in that race and subsequent campaigns she has won over Republicans and independents and built broad coalitions of progressives, union members and disillusioned voters.
“Through building that huge coalition, I was able to win with the largest red-to-blue swing in the entire nation,” she said. “And I think that speaks to what I’ve been able to do, who I’ve been able to turn out, the coalitions I’ve been building. I think that is something that people are taking into account as they think about this primary.”
“Half this field has never even run against a real Republican challenger,” Sherrill also said, appearing to refer to Fulop’s, Baraka’s and Spiller’s mayoral races.
Sweeney defeated a Democrat-turned-Republican incumbent for the state Senate in 2001, but he lost re-election 20 years later to underfunded Republican truck driver Ed Durr, who is also running for governor this year.
Gottheimer does have experience winning in Republican territory, having defeated GOP Rep. Scott Garrett in 2016 in his 5th District even as Trump narrowly carried the seat.
But Sherrill’s allies believe her victories stand out.
EMILY’s List, which backs female candidates who support abortion rights and has endorsed Sherrill, detailed in a memo this month how Sherrill has earned more votes than her New Jersey Democratic colleagues and run ahead of candidates for higher office.
“In any crowded primary, it’s really important to show that strength,” said EMILY’s List President Jessica Mackler, who said questions about electability typically come from “pundits and the media.”
Sherrill believes her record in office will also win over primary voters, even as “insiders” question female candidates’ electability.
“I certainly think that insiders are always making these calculations,” she said.
“But I think what people on the ground, what voters, care about is: Are you somebody that they trust? Are you somebody that can really deliver for them?” Sherrill said before she referred to a designation she received from the Center for Effective Lawmaking. “And after being named the most effective lawmaker in the New Jersey House delegation after only my second term in Congress, I think people see that I deliver.”
Still an ‘all-boys club’?
Some New Jersey Democrats say the electability doubts following Harris’ loss underscore a broader challenge for female candidates in the state.
Democrats have nominated a woman for governor only once, backing then-state Senate Sen. Barbara Buono to take on GOP Gov. Chris Christie in 2013. (New Jersey has had one female governor, Republican Christie Whitman, who served from 1994 to 2001.)
“We knew they weren’t going to let us into the all-boys club, so we just decided we’ve got to kick in the door,” Buono said after her bruising loss to Christie.
Leslie Huhn, a former Sussex County Democratic Committee chairwoman, said that there has been more support for women in the years since then but that “there’s still more work to be done in this area, no doubt about it.”
Huhn, who runs the grassroots group Door to Door Democracy, which is backing Sherrill, has also heard electability questions from party insiders, but not from the grassroots. But Huhn isn’t concerned that the “all-boys club” will be an obstacle for Sherrill, saying plenty of men are also drawn to Sherrill’s military background.
“They’re not worried that she’s not tough, because they know she’s tough. They know she’s strong,” said Huhn, who also said Sherrill has a unique ability to also be “warm and relatable.”
Sherrill is ready for a fight.
“Working in the military or working in New Jersey politics, these are some intense people, and they’re not afraid to throw punches here,” she said, later adding, “The lessons you learn are just taking it on. Don’t shrink from it; don’t back away. If somebody wants to test you, meet the test and engage.”
But does Sherrill still see the state as the “all-boys club” that Buono described?
“It’s changing. … It is really rough and tumble. But I guess, I’ve been through a POW training camp in the Navy. I’m used to rough and tumble,” she said. “I’m ready to go.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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