Mikie Sherrill

Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill (born January 19, 1972) is an American politician, former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, attorney, and former federal prosecutor serving as the U.S. representative for NJ's 11th congressional district since 2019.

The district includes a swath of suburban and exurban areas west of New York City.

Sherrill 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.

She was the first Democrat since Minish's defeat to win more than 40% of the district's vote.

In 1994, she earned her B.S. from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.

After graduation from the Naval Academy in 1994, Sherrill became a U.S. Navy H-3 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, the final five as a lieutenant.

In 2003, Sherrill received an MSc in international and world history from the London School of Economics.

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.

In 2004, she received a certificate in Arabic language from the American University in Cairo.

In 2007, Sherrill earned a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center.

Inspired by her grandfather who served as a pilot in World War II, Sherrill wanted to be a pilot from a young age.

She was among the flight school graduates in the first class of women eligible for combat.

In the summer of 2007, while earning her Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University Law Center, Sherrill was a summer associate at Kirkland & Ellis.

After graduation from Georgetown University Law Center, Sherrill returned to Kirkland & Ellis's New York City office, where she worked in the litigation department from 2008 to 2011.

After leaving Kirkland & Ellis, Sherrill joined the United States Attorneys' Office as an outreach and reentry coordinator.

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.

At the time, she planned on going into the field of criminal justice reform.

Frelinghuysen had been reelected three more times from this redrawn district without serious difficulty, but was thought to be vulnerable after Donald Trump carried it by just a single point in 2016.

On May 11, 2017, Sherrill launched her campaign for New Jersey's 11th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives.

In November 2017, comedian Chelsea Handler, who is from Livingston, went 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.

A member of the Democratic Party, Sherrill was elected on November 6, 2018.

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.

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.

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.

She was reelected in 2020 by a slightly narrower margin and reelected in 2022 by a wide margin.

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 is a graduate of South Lakes High School in Reston, Virginia.

Sherrill had a closer contest for reelection in 2020, defeating Republican tax lawyer Rosemary Becchi with 53.3% of the vote to 46.7%.