Mikie Sherrill


Rebecca Michelle Sherrill is an American politician, former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, and former federal prosecutor serving as the U.S. Representative for since 2019. The district includes a swath of exurban and rural areas west of New York City. A member of the Democratic Party, Sherrill was elected on November 6, 2018, defeating Republican Jay Webber.

Early life and education

Sherrill was born in Alexandria, Virginia. She grew up in various locations along the East Coast of the United States due to her father's job.
Sherrill graduated from South Lakes High School in Reston, Virginia. In 1994, she graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis with a B.S. In 2003, Sherrill received a M.Sc. in economic history from the London School of Economics. In 2004, she received a certificate in Arabic language from The American University in Cairo. In 2007, Sherrill earned a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Military career

Sherrill graduated from flight school in the first class of women eligible for combat. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1994, Sherrill became a U.S. Navy H3 Sea King helicopter pilot and a Russian policy officer. Sherrill flew missions throughout Europe and in the Middle East. In 2000, she was based at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi.
Sherrill was a Russian policy officer when she worked at the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy, Europe.
Sherrill served in the United States Navy for nine years as a Lieutenant. In 2003 Sherrill was nominated for promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. She left the Navy in 2003 before obtaining a permanent promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

Law career

In the summer of 2007, after receiving her J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center, Sherrill was a summer associate at Kirkland & Ellis. From 2008 to 2011 she worked as an associate in the litigation department at Kirkland & Ellis's New York City office.

Assistant U.S. Attorney

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. She left that office in the spring of 2016. She had planned on going into the field of criminal justice reform.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2018 general election

On May 11, 2017, Sherrill launched her campaign for New Jersey's 11th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. 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. It had been considered a Republican stronghold, but Frelinghuysen was thought to be vulnerable after Donald Trump only carried it by a single point in 2016. The district had been made slightly more Democratic on paper when redistricting after the 2010 census pushed it further into Essex County, including the northern portion of Montclair around Sherrill's home. However, Frelinghuysen had been reelected three times from this redrawn district against only nominal Democratic opposition.
In November 2017 comedian Chelsea Handler, who is from Livingston, came to Montclair to show her support for Sherrill's campaign. Sherrill was endorsed by the political action committee organization VoteVets.org, the pro-choice Democratic PAC EMILY's List, the editorial board of The New York Times, and the New Jersey chapter of Clean Water Action.
In June 2018 Sherrill won the Democratic primary with 77% of the vote, beating social worker and entrepreneur Tamara Harris.
Sherrill raised $2.8 million during the primary election, placing her among the top House fundraisers in the country. 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. On November 6 Sherrill defeated Republican Jay Webber with 56.8% of the vote to Webber's 42.1%. 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.

Tenure

When she took office in January 2019, Sherrill became the first Democrat to hold the seat since 16-term incumbent Joseph Minish was defeated in 1984 after the district was redrawn to be more Republican. She was the first Democrat since Minish's defeat to garner more than 40 percent of the vote in the district. Sherrill is the only elected Democrat above the county level in much of the western portion of the district—Frelinghuysen's former base. For instance, 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.
Following her election, Sherrill joined the moderate New Democrat Coalition, the largest Democratic caucus in the House, and was named its freshman whip. She also joined the Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of moderate and conservative House Democrats.
Per a promise to her constituents, she did not vote for Nancy Pelosi to retake the Speakership, instead voting for Cheri Bustos of Illinois.
In 2019, Sherrill initially opposed exploring the impeachment of President Trump, but changed her mind in September after a whistle-blower alleged that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden. 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." An op-ed she co-wrote with six other freshman Democrats with national security backgrounds—Gil Cisneros, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Elaine Luria, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger—said, "everything we do harks back to our oaths to defend the country" and "these new allegations are a threat to all we have sworn to protect."

Committee assignments

Personal life

Sherrill is married to Jason Hedberg, a classmate and graduate of the United States Naval Academy who served as a U.S. Navy intelligence officer. The couple has lived in Montclair with their four children since 2010.
Sherrill wanted to be a pilot from a young age, inspired by her grandfather who served as a pilot in World War II.