One of the Most Important Races This Year

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Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Jessica Tarlove.

My guest today is New Jersey Congresswoman and gubernatorial candidate Mikey Sherrill.

Before she took office in 2019, she spent nearly a decade serving in the Navy and also served as a federal prosecutor.

Representative Cheryl, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks so much for having me.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah, no, it's a pleasure.

I've been following your career and now your candidacy for governor.

And there are a few places where I think we could start, but I wanted to hone in on what I see as a new phase in how the Trump administration is doing business.

So firing prosecutors who won't go after their political enemies.

Trump admitted in a statement that he pushed out U.S.

Attorney Eric Siebert, calling him a, quote, woke rhino, because he refused to charge people like James Comey, Adam Schiff,

Letitia James as well.

Trump wrote, they're all guilty guilty as hell.

We can't delay any longer.

It's killing our credibility.

In any other era, obviously that would be open and shut, impeachable offense.

In this era, I feel like it was a bit of a shrug and got pushed off the page pretty quickly.

As a former prosecutor yourself, how do you see what's going on?

And do you think there's anything we can do about it?

You know, it's interesting because we've been dealing with this in New Jersey for quite some time.

We have Alina Haba at the U.S.

Attorney's Office.

She's now there illegally, having surpassed the time she should be there without receiving advice and consent to be there.

And so we went through the procedure to have somebody new appointed, and then they were fired by Bondi.

So she's sitting there illegally.

There have been certain cases that are ongoing right now.

And then she has gone after the governor, the attorney general, sitting member of Congress.

She tried to go after the mayor of our largest city, but the tapes proved that case to be false.

So again and again and again, we've seen her attempt to undermine the justice system.

And we're certainly seeing it at a federal level.

And I think what's remarkable, what's shocking to me is how at every level, this is the most corrupt administration working to move money into Trump's pockets and anyone who's working for him.

So we saw the 50K in cash that his border czar got and Trump killing any prosecution there.

We've seen numerous foreign entities pushing money into Trump's crypto company.

The UAE, for example, doing so with a huge payoff and then a couple of weeks later, getting the blocking of tech into the UAE and back and forth rescinded.

And so the payoff's going on.

I know we've seen Trump and his family members making billions.

And all at the same time, we're seeing so much money moving out of the pockets of working people.

So these tariffs are huge tax on all the working people.

As Trump uses them to enrich himself through his crypto companies, people in New Jersey are paying more from everything from grocery stores at Amazon.

I think everyone's Halloween costumes are going to be incredibly expensive.

Again and again, it's this huge tax on working people as Trump lines his pockets.

Yeah.

One of the people that you didn't list in the grifter set that I would like to add into the mix is Dr.

Oz.

So I'm sure you saw the Maha announcement about Tylenol, right?

That now the administration is declaring that it's not safe for pregnant women when it is the only medication that we can take safely, which has been proven out by science during a pregnancy.

And they are boosting another drug for FDA approval that lo and behold, Dr.

Oz's company sells that supplement, his company, iHERB.

So add him to the list.

And I wanted to get your take on what is going on with RFK Jr.

And also to highlight, I watched your debate from last weekend with Jack Chitterelli, your Republican opponent.

And you had this great moment where you called him out for embracing the far right fringes of the party and connecting it to endangering kids' health because this rollback of vaccines, you know, as we all know, and we're both moms, you know, you can have a conversation about the vaccine schedule.

No one is saying that we shouldn't be able to do that.

But when we have found cures for things like measles and mumps and we're going back on the science and that, we're heading in a very dark direction.

And this science is 50 years old.

I mean, we have been working to eradicate childhood diseases that killed millions of children.

It's kind of a modern day miracle if you think about it.

And then to have a state like New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country, and to have that threat, you know, school just has just gone back in session.

So we've seen an uptick in all kinds of colds and coughs.

Imagine if your kids coming home with measles or mumps or whooping cough.

Imagine if you have a baby at home.

We've seen babies across the the country now dying from whooping cough because of the lower vaccine rates.

Imagine if you have a baby at home and your kid comes home from elementary school with whooping cough.

This is the kind of danger we're putting our kids in.

And to receive your medical information like from TikTok influencers, I mean, he parents, RFK parents these weird things about mitochondria and stuff that, you know, anybody in science and medicine, I'll say that that's not even, that doesn't even make sense.

And so it is okay to question science.

That is part of the scientific method.

But to whole scale ignore how we keep people safe is just unacceptable.

And then, and you've raised so much.

I mean, yeah, I'm a mom of four kids and I just, I can tell you.

Being pregnant, I think a lot of people who've never been pregnant, and this was probably me before I thought of getting pregnant or was pregnant, you know, you just think it's like everybody does it.

It's natural.

I think about half the women women died in pregnancy before modern medicine.

So you get very nervous.

You start to hear from all of your friends and family members about horrific things that happened to them or to their friends during pregnancy.

And you're working so incredibly hard to protect yourself and your baby.

And you're relying on your doctor.

And there's always, I mean, each pregnancy, there was something new that I wasn't allowed to do, whether it was lettuce because of listeria, or whether it was sushi or cheese or like all kinds of different stuff.

I'd always go, and I'm always a nervous wreck.

And to not be able to say, our government is putting out good health advice based on research and to just have all this guesswork and then to have the president tell you to suck it up.

I mean, my God, I just, this is unacceptable.

It's why I'm running for governor because we need real leadership.

We need a champion of the people.

That's what leaders have to do right now is to fight whole scale for the people that they're serving and up to and including fighting against what we're seeing coming from Washington.

There was a lot in there and I could honestly just like talk to you mom to mom for the entire duration about, you know, how it feels to have a bunch of dudes, frankly, stand up there and tell us to tough it out or, you know, what's best for us or that the most important relationship that we have during pregnancy is not actually with our partner, but with our doctors who are working to keep us safe and actually know the science.

But I want to make sure that we talk about what's going on specifically in your race.

You know, New Jersey is blue, but it's gotten a bit redder.

And Kamala Harris performed about 10 points worse than Joe Biden did in 2020.

We know that Phil Murphy's reelection was much tighter than anyone expected it to be.

And I wanted to first touch on education because as an observer of what was going on in those races, I saw education as really the focal point of this.

Phil Murphy really suffered because of school closures during COVID and parents not feeling like the government was on their side and making sure that their kids were being taken care of and having access to a good education that frankly they pay huge property taxes to get.

So can you talk about your race and specifically how you're addressing education?

Yeah, I think too many parents, and I would include myself in this, feel like we have not centered our children

in how we ensure people are getting access to great education, great opportunities.

It's not been about our kids.

And so in too many cases, we haven't put our money into the programs that are going to actually make sure our kids have great outcomes.

So for example, third grade reading, we have got to get back to phonics-based reading.

That is what all the studies are showing is going to provide the best way our kids can read as well as possible.

And we know third grade reading is such an inflection point because that's where if you can't read at grade level by third grade, you are going to struggle in math and science and history because you're not going to be able to read your homework.

And we know we have a learning loss problem still left over from COVID.

We know our kids are facing severe mental health problems right now.

A lot of that related to online safety.

And so that's why as governor, kids are a huge platform of mine.

I have four of them.

I was saying I have four teenagers.

My oldest just turned 20.

I can't say that anymore, but

it is really at a crisis point.

And I think in too many ways, ways, it's because we are not focused on how we are doing best by our kids.

We're allowing all this to devolve into different entrenched interests or the politics of the day.

And again, we need leaders who are going to put our kids first.

So kids online safety, the Kids Online Safety Act passed with over 90 people in the Senate, went into the House where the Republicans were in the majority.

Big Tech put a ton of money in Steve Scalise office and they kill it.

And so we're not putting kids first.

And that's why, as governor, I'm going to make sure that I pass the Kids Online Safety Act.

So we are ensuring kids are safer online, that they have better mental health outcomes, and then pushing more mental health resources into our schools.

So, in all of these ways, in my administration, I'm going to make sure we're taking care of our kids.

I love that.

And, you know, we're in the back-to-school mode, as you talked about in Halloween.

I didn't even think about how much the Halloween costumes are going to be.

I have to get to that.

But affordability, obviously, front and center.

What are you hearing in terms of feedback with people that you're talking to out on the campaign trail?

And, you know, what are some of your ideas to address the affordability crisis as best you could from your governorship post if you are to win?

You know, we are one of only two statewide races in the entire nation.

And this race is the first to really come online because we had a really tough six-way primary here.

So almost immediately after 24, we were on the ground running hard.

And what that means is I've spoken to thousands and thousands of New Jerseans.

And that's where I always center my campaigns.

How am I going to best address the needs of the people of New Jersey?

And what I have heard is really kind of heartbreaking.

I've heard people say, I can't breathe right now.

You know, the pressure to try to make ends meet is overwhelming.

I can't get my head above water.

And this feels different from what I've heard in the past.

And it comes down to the fact that our housing prices in New Jersey have gone up by 50% over the last five years.

We have the highest property taxes in the nation.

Utility prices have gone up by 20% over this summer.

And at every turn, we're seeing costs go up.

Now we see with the tariff bills, grocery prices continuing to go up at every level.

We see Amazon, like I said, you're just going to

be able to see the So everywhere people are turning in New Jersey, they are seeing higher costs and they're seeing no relief in the future.

And they're frustrated with everyone.

And so that's why I've centered my focus on people here in New Jersey and how we drive down costs.

And

that is a two-fold problem because we've got to make Trenton deliver better, cutting through red tape.

and making sure small businesses don't have to pay a million different fees.

They say it's like death by a thousand paper cuts trying to open up a small business, ensuring that we have a bigger first-time home buyer's credit program so more people can get into that first-time home, but at the same time, using my attorney general to take this administration to court.

Because I'll tell you, for example, we just plot back $3 million for Patterson in Title I funding because it had been illegally withheld by the federal government and the Trump administration.

And my opponent has said he's never taking Trump to court, that it's his job to support the president.

Well, my job, as I see it, is to fight for the people of New Jersey.

And that's exactly what I'm going to do.

I didn't know he had said that, but that does sound remarkably on brand.

We're going to take a quick break.

Stay with us.

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There is a lot to talk about when we talk about Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel.

One big question I've got is why in 2025 are late night TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel's show still on TV?

Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks.

If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes, but what are you even anymore?

What even is your brand anymore?

I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, and that was James Ponowozek, the TV critic for the New York Times.

And this week we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now.

That's this week on channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Welcome back.

You mentioned that it's your race and your good friend Abigail Spanberger running in Virginia.

Those are the two marquee races of 2025 that everyone is focusing on.

And, you know, as a more moderate, you know, center left type person and in conversations that I've had, a lot of people, like I had James Carville on and he was like, I don't want to talk about mom, I can't do his accent, but he's like, I don't want to talk about mom Donnie.

I want to talk about Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger.

People are looking to win as many races as possible, but to also make the conversation about the fact that there are folks like you who are more centrists that are out there as, you know, representatives of the party.

How are you navigating the attacks that you're a radical leftist socialist communist?

I mean, they throw all the buzzwords at you.

But how are you kind of meandering through all of that to make sure that you can still connect with people as you're being pelted with kind of national culture war issues?

So this isn't my first race in New Jersey.

This is my fifth race in New Jersey.

And so I think many people here know my history, know my record.

I'm a former Navy helicopter pilot.

I'm a mom of four kids.

I'm a former federal prosecutor.

I'm a member of Congress.

People know that I have taken on a lot of fights for this state, up to including, you know, with members of my own party, because I have always centered my work in how I can best deliver, because I really believe, I deeply believe that well-run, efficient government can create opportunities for people in a way that, you know, if you don't do that, you just see all of the money flowing into the hands of a very few.

And you don't see education spread across the state.

You don't see people having access to jobs or having access to innovation at the highest level, like when we put money into some of the research and development in our state.

So all of that is really important to me.

And I'll tell you that

I used to live in New York.

You know, I love New York.

It's great.

It's not very representative of this country.

And New Jersey really is.

New Jersey is is a place where you can find almost every view in the world i mean we are the gateway to america we have the statue of liberty you know right off liberty state park it it is a state that is innovative that is diverse that is cutting edge that you know we are the most densely populated state and we kind of bump along with each other with all these different visions and views and so

We represent, I think, what it is to be an American here at New Jersey.

And I am telling you, and speaking to, again, thousands and thousands of people, what people here in New Jersey largely agree on is that we need to make government work better, that we need to deliver better government in Trenton, and we need to fight the corrupt government and the

self-interest.

coming from Washington and too many politicians in Washington that are really sucking all of the money out of our state and making it just hard for people to afford a middle-class lifestyle.

And I have fought for this country my entire life.

I care deeply about rights and freedoms.

I'm going to fight tooth and nail to protect them.

But part of what we're also fighting for and part of what the American dream entails is yes, protection of rights and freedoms, but also protection of opportunity, the protection of economic success.

The idea that we are not going to rig the system so that only certain people have access to opportunity, opportunity, but instead we are creating a strong, resilient middle class where your kid is going to have an opportunity to do great things.

That's what people in New Jersey envision.

And for a lot of people, it's simply saying, like, look, I want my kid to go to a great school.

I want to make sure that, you know, they can afford to stay here so I can watch my grandkids grow.

And then when I retire, I want to retire here.

And all of that, as simple as it sounds, is feeling largely out of reach to people.

Yeah, I mean, you hit me hard with the diversity point about New Jersey.

I married a South Orange boy and he's always saying, like, you want to see real diversity?

Like, let's go to New Jersey.

And then we went to the Liberty Science Center.

And I was like, touche, you win on this.

I'm not moving here, but I do understand what you're saying.

How are your voters or the voters feeling?

about Trump and the current climate.

Because, you know, there's a big distraction show going on.

You know, he wants to talk about everything really besides lowering costs because he hasn't been able to do that.

And are you like getting that?

Is there buyers remorse from those that shifted over to supporting Trump?

And how is the branding of your opponent as the Trump of Trenton resonating with people?

You know,

I think you're exactly right.

On one hand, you have what I call kind of the Trump show,

which which is almost this idea of look at this zany behavior here or this horrible behavior here or this attack I'm launching against something that you may feel really deeply about.

But what's going on under the hood is I'm going to make it impossible for your state to create opportunity and succeed, and I'm going to destroy the economy of the United States.

And so we are seeing jobs numbers, some of them the worst we've seen since COVID here in New Jersey in certain groups.

We are seeing a defunding of research and innovation.

We used to have

the most talented minds in the world that would come here to our colleges and universities in New Jersey.

And now we're very worried that we won't see some of that talent coming.

And

they paid full freight.

So they helped lower the cost of college and university for people here in New Jersey.

We are seeing the tariff attacks, as I said, which is raising costs on everything from a cup of coffee to a Halloween costume to your ability to build a home because of lumber coming from Canada, for example.

We are seeing our major companies slow down hiring because they can't navigate this chaotic environment.

The minute they make a decision, Trump reverses.

And then we're just seeing an outpouring of money to the federal government from New Jersey.

because we pay $70 billion more to the federal government in Texas than we get back.

And we are then seeing, unless we act, unless we take the Trump administration to court, we are seeing all that money being blocked from coming back to New Jersey.

And so at every turn, we are seeing money flow into Trump's pockets.

I mean, just think about the fact he and his family have made about $3 billion in the last nine months.

Imagine what it would take to make $3 billion.

Well, I can tell you what it would take.

It would take having the whole United States economy and market at your fingertips and at your beck and call and controlling that to such an extent that foreign governments start pouring money into your crypto companies so that you can kind of open your doors or close them at your will.

That's what it takes to enrich yourself to that degree.

And we're seeing it whole scale.

And so the fight is on.

The fight is on right now for rights and freedoms and for economic opportunity.

And can we as states band together to continue to open up and create opportunity to people before Trump just closes it off to all but a wealthy few and his family members.

So what's one thing that makes you rage and one thing you think we should all calm down about?

That is a great question.

I guess

one thing that makes me rage is people who are just constantly attacking New Jersey because I think what they're not seeing right now is how critically important New Jersey is to the future if you care about rights and freedoms, if you care about the economy, if you care about innovation, if you care about reproductive health, if you care about your kids, because this is the state right now that is going to stand in the breach.

So all the ways in which we can develop a movement forward, whether it's this Northeast coalition of states that are going to protect insurance for vaccines and protect medical health, or whether it's the innovation we're going to do on kids online safety and mental health, or whether it's just reproductive health we offer, which is now showing how different it is in states like New Jersey versus a state like Florida and Texas or Georgia, where we're seeing women literally dying of miscarriages in hospitals because doctors are afraid to give them decent health care.

In all of these ways, New Jersey is really standing at the forefront of how we move forward.

And we have great bagels and visa.

So I am a a staunch defender of how we are driving the state forward.

But, you know, something I think we all need to calm down about is branding, corporate branding.

I mean, look, if the M ⁇ Ms guys want to take stilettos off the M ⁇ M character, or if Cracker Barrel wants to like rebrand, not

everything

is a political drama.

Not everything has to devolve into a right versus left discussion over how dare they or they have to or, or what this means.

Sometimes corporate rebranding is really just to try to make you buy more corporate products.

And you can rage against that if you want, but to put it into that, I mean, we just all need some space to live our lives to go eat at a restaurant or to buy a candy and not feel like we're making a huge political decision when we do it.

Yeah, sometimes Sidney Sweeney is just wearing jeans.

Congresswoman Cheryl, it was great to have you and good luck in your race.

Well, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.