‘Blue tsunami’ leaves more questions to what it means to New Jersey

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Even before Tuesday’s general election, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill believed that Zack Mullock would defeat Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District.

As she was campaigning for Mullock in the days leading up to the vote, Sherrill said she heard something from voters that she had heard when she ran for governor last year: they felt they didn’t have a voice.

“They wanted a voice in Washington and they weren’t feeling that Van Drew was representing them,” she said. “That came through to me loud and clear.”

While Van Drew conceded the race Tuesday night, the vote count remained close enough as of Thursday afternoon that the Associated Press had yet to declare a winner. Mullock was holding  a 3-percentage-point lead over Van Drew in the latest count.

It is one of two New Jersey races that played a part in what many have called a “blue tsunami” as Democratic candidates outperformed their GOP opponents throughout the nation. Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Thomas H. Kean Jr. was defeated by Democratic challenger Rebecca Bennett in the 7th District.

Sherrill said the election results were “such a repudiation of everything [President Donald] Trump stands for.”

“This president has acted in a way that is so far outside the values that I hold dear in this country,” she said. “He has been so outside of what I think it is to serve the people of America and this great country.”

Trump said he “look forward to working with [Democrats]” in a phone interview with The New York Times late Tuesday. But he has not been consistent on that pledge. The president also has vowed to veto legislation passed by Democrats.

When asked if she’ll take Trump at his word that he would work with her party in Washington, D.C., Sherrill said, “No, I don’t.”

“There’s no handshake deal. There’s no honor. There’s no sense that you can trust him and he never follows through on his word,” she said. “His word does not mean a thing.”

Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said he thought it is “completely fair” for Sherrill to say “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

The governor cited the court battle her administration waged when Trump froze federal funding for the Gateway Tunnel Project in North Jersey. In addition, Trump overrode his own agencies when he denied disaster aid for New Jersey and four other Democratic-led states, after a blizzard in February. Sherrill has a separate request pending in response to the Nor’easter in September for Monmouth, Atlantic and Cape May counties.

“It’s also about standing up and stopping the worst impulses of the president,” Rasmussen said. “That may be contentious, but that is apparently what voters have voted for.”