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So, That's Why NJ's Dem Gubernatorial Candidate Didn't Walk With Her Graduating Class at Annapolis

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  September 26, 2025 6:30 AM

Are Democrats in trouble in New Jersey? It’s a deep blue bastion where Kamala Harris performed terribly in 2024. She won the state but only by 5 points—the lowest margin of victory for a Democrat in the Garden State since 2004. Is Mikie Sherrill going to come up short? Maybe, she’s by all accounts another terrible candidate. And now we’ve learned more about why she wasn’t allowed to walk with her graduating class from the Naval Academy: she was engulfed in a cheating scandal. Why does this matter—Sherill has made her military career the backbone for her career in public life (via NJ Globe):

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey, was barred from walking with her class at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994 as a punishment connected to the massive cheating scandal that implicated over 130 midshipmen in her class. 

A copy of the commencement program from May 25, 1994, obtained by the New Jersey Globe, does not include Sherrill’s name.  Sherrill said that her absence from the ceremony was a consequence of failing to report classmates who had been involved in the scandal. 

“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 said.   

However, the Sherrill campaign rejected a request that she permit public inspection of any disciplinary records from her time at the academy.  Only Sherrill could authorize the release of those sealed records. 

Sherrill has made her military service as a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and helicopter pilot the centerpiece of her political identity, but has never publicly discussed her class’s cheating controversy in stump speeches or interviews.  There were rumors that she was tied to the scandal in 2018 when she sought to flip a House seat in New Jersey’s 11th district, but it was suggested to the New Jersey Globe at the time that Sherrill was not involved.

 Of course, she claims this is from the page of the MAGA playbook, which is to denigrate her military service. She made it fair game, however. Is this an early October surprise? I don’t think so, not because it isn’t newsworthy or damning for Sherill, but Jersey voters appear to be fed up with Democrats and don’t seem convinced by her. She tripped over herself answering questions about her net worth, and why it’s increased by $7 million since she was elected to Congress: 

The race is a virtual dead heat, with every little movement now benefiting Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli, who came very close to unseating Phil Murphy in the last gubernatorial election. We have Democrat mayors mulling endorsing Jack. 

Will there be an upset this year? The ground is fertile in New Jersey, which was previously thought to be impossible. Things are different in the Trump era, though.