Mikie Sherrill

After leaving Kirkland & Ellis, Sherrill joined the United States Attorneys' Office as an outreach and reentry coordinator.[18] In 2015 Sherrill became an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, a federal prosecutor, working under U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.[2][19] She left that office in the spring of 2016.[7] At the time, she planned on going into the field of criminal justice reform.[10]

On May 11, 2017, Sherrill launched her campaign for New Jersey's 11th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives.[20][21] The seat had been held by 12-term Republican incumbent Rodney Frelinghuysen, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who in January 2018 announced he would not seek reelection.[9][22][23] The district had long been considered a Republican stronghold, even after it had been made slightly more Democratic on paper by pushing it further into Essex County, including a slice of Montclair around Sherrill's home. Frelinghuysen had been reelected three more times from this redrawn district without serious difficulty, but was thought to be vulnerable after Donald Trump only carried it by a single point in 2016.[24]

In November 2017, comedian Chelsea Handler, who is from Livingston, went to Montclair to show her support for Sherrill's campaign.[25] Sherrill was endorsed by the political action committee organization VoteVets.org,[26] the pro-choice Democratic PAC EMILY's List,[27] the editorial board of The New York Times,[28] and the New Jersey chapter of Clean Water Action.[29]

In June 2018, Sherrill won the Democratic primary with 77% of the vote, beating social worker and entrepreneur Tamara Harris.[30][31][32]

Sherrill raised $2.8 million during the primary election, placing her among the top House fundraisers in the country.[33][34] Her campaign raised $1.9 million in the second quarter of 2018, setting a record for a House candidate from New Jersey in one quarter.[35]

On November 6, Sherrill defeated Republican Jay Webber with 56.8% of the vote to Webber's 42.1%.[36][37] The election marked the largest partisan vote share swing in the 2018 cycle, with a 33-percentage-point swing from a 19-point Republican margin in 2016 to a 15-point Democratic one in 2018.[38] Sherril is the first Democrat to win this seat since 16-term incumbent Joseph Minish was defeated in 1984 after the district had been redrawn to be more Republican.[39] She was the first Democrat since Minish's defeat to win more than 40% of the district's vote. Sherrill is the only elected Democrat above the county level in much of the district's western portion—Frelinghuysen's former base. For example, in the district's share of Morris County, which accounts for most of its population, all but one state senator and two state assemblymen are Republicans.

Main Article: 2020 United States House of Representatives elections in New Jersey#District 11

Sherrill had a closer contest for reelection in 2020, defeating Republican Rosemary Becchi with 53 percent of the vote. She was likely helped by Joe Biden carrying the district with 53 percent of the vote, the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since the district assumed its present configuration in 1984.

Following her election, Sherrill joined the moderate New Democrat Coalition, the second-largest Democratic caucus in the House, and was named its freshman whip.[40] She also joined the Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of moderate and conservative House Democrats.[41] She joined two other female veterans in the Democratic freshman class, fellow Naval Academy graduate Elaine Luria and former Air Force officer Chrissy Houlahan.

Per a promise to her constituents, she did not vote for Nancy Pelosi to retake the Speakership, instead voting for Cheri Bustos of Illinois.[42] She voted "present", essentially an abstention, in her second Speakership vote.[43]

In 2019, Sherrill initially opposed exploring the first impeachment of President Donald Trump, but changed her mind in September after a whistle-blower alleged that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden.[44] According to one report, Sherrill was instrumental in motivating House speaker Nancy Pelosi to proceed with the impeachment inquiry and said her "grave concerns" about Trump's behavior were "rooted in self-sacrifice and principle."[45] An op-ed she co-wrote with six other freshman Democrats with national security backgrounds—Houlahan, Luria, Gil Cisneros, Jason Crow, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger—said that "everything we do harks back to our oaths to defend the country" and described the claims against Trump as "a threat to all we have sworn to protect."[46]

Sherrill indicated her support for a second impeachment of Trump after the January 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol.[47] She said she had seen some colleagues giving what she called "reconnaissance tours" of the building the day before the storming.[48][49][50]

• Committee on Armed Services[51]
  • Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces
  • Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces
• Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
  • Subcommittee on Environment (Chair)
  • Subcommittee on Research and Technology

• Blue Dog Coalition[52]
• Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues
• New Democrat Coalition[53]