Mikie Sherrill, the four-term congresswoman and former Navy helicopter pilot who forged her November election in New Jersey as a victory over President Donald Trump’s imaginative and prescient for the nation, was inaugurated Tuesday as the state’s 57th governor.
Sherrill, 54, is simply the second lady to guide the state of practically 9.5 million individuals and is the primary particular person from a significant political get together to be elected to a 3rd straight time period in greater than six many years, succeeding two-term Democrat Phil Murphy.
She swept to victory over her Trump-endorsed GOP rival in half by pinning blame for prime prices on the president’s tariffs and promising that her first motion as soon as in workplace could be to order a freeze on skyrocketing utility charges.
She took the oath of workplace on a replica of the Constitution owned by the state’s first governor in Newark, the state’s largest metropolis whose voters made up a key part of her profitable coalition.
It is a departure from earlier inaugurations, which have included navy artillery salutes alongside the Delaware River exterior the statehouse in Trenton. Tuesday’s ceremony included the same gun salute and a navy helicopter flyover.
She is being sworn in as her former congressional colleague Abigail Spanberger comes into workplace in as Virginia’s governor after the same double-digit victory over her Republican opponent and as the midterm elections begin to come into sharper focus. Democrats are hopeful the president shall be a drag on GOP candidates in key races throughout the nation.
Sherrill takes over from Murphy, a former Obama administration ambassador and Wall Street finance govt, who delivered on plenty of progressive guarantees over eight years, together with elevating taxes on revenue over $1 million, boosting the minimal wage, increasing early childhood schooling and absolutely funding the state employees’ pension, which was underfunded for years earlier than he took over.
Murphy mentioned Friday in his closing information convention that he has been in common contact with Sherrill concerning the transition. He summed up his two phrases as governor as having lived as much as guarantees he made on the marketing campaign path.
“We were who we said would be,” Murphy mentioned. “We didn’t campaign on my thesis and pull a fast one.”
He can also be passing alongside a state price range that has swelled over time, elevating the prospect of potential shortfalls if state revenues dip as properly as an unfunded promise to proceed a property tax reduction program begun in the governor’s second time period.
Sherrill can have a Democratic-led legislature to work with, one in all greater than a dozen the place the get together controls the legislature and governorship.
The first lady to be governor of New Jersey was Christine Todd Whitman, a two-term Republican who went on to serve as George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
New Jersey’s governorship has usually switched backwards and forwards between the events. The final time the identical get together prevailed in a 3rd straight gubernatorial election was in 1961.