In October, Rutgers AAUP-AFT and the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union approved this statement endorsing US Rep. Mikie Sherrill to be the next governor of New Jersey.
The difficult reality is that what rights we can access in America now depends on which states we live in and who our governors are. The federal government is engaged in an autocratic attack on our civil liberties and Constitutional rights, including a project of mass deportation based on racial profiling that has led to the detention of citizens and legal residents, as well as the most significant attacks on free speech and academic freedom we have seen since at least the McCarthy era. We have also seen federal workers have their union rights stripped, grant funding for scientific research cut, and vital public programs eliminated. Though none of us are unaffected, the brunt of these attacks have fallen on minorities, LGBTQ+ people, and women. This is not what this nation is meant to be, and we cannot allow it to go unopposed.
While we continue to stand against these unconstitutional acts at the federal level, we must at the same time look to our state to offer additional defense for ourselves and our communities. In New Jersey, one of the most important ways we can do this is by ensuring that our governor will be someone who steadfastly opposes the federal attacks on our rights. With this in mind, the Rutgers AAUP-AFT Executive Council endorses US Rep. Mikie Sherrill as our next governor of New Jersey.
Representative Sherrill will defend access to reproductive rights and evidence-based medicine in our state. In her response to our candidate questionnaire, she committed to appointing an attorney general who will defend the rights of LGBTQ+ people and who will continue the state’s aggressive litigation against the actions of the Trump administration in targeting universities. She has committed to defending the rights of all residents of this state, no matter their citizenship status. Her higher ed platform commits to defending New Jersey’s higher education system from federal cuts.
Our unions have had productive discussions with Representative Sherrill on the issues, and we believe that with her as governor, we will be able to defend the scholarship, science, and academic freedom that has made our university and our state successful. Our coalition partners, who represent some of the individuals in our state most at risk from an unchecked Trump administration, have also made their preference clear, and we stand with them in their support of Representative Sherrill.
Sherrill’s Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, promises nothing beyond blind obedience to the whims of Donald Trump. Under his governorship, we could expect our state to obey in advance the demands of the White House. This would result in teachers and professors fired for exercising our free speech, our university turned over to anti-intellectuals who would control our curriculum and the composition of our student body, and New Jersey joining the ever-growing line of Republican-led states begging the president to send armed troops into our towns and cities. Despite the untold damage done by the smash-and-grab of private information perpetrated by Elon Musk’s DOGE, Ciattarelli has called for an “NJ DOGE” to do the same to our public workers and state services. In exchange for these losses of liberties and security, he will do nothing to address the rising cost of living and of housing in our state.
The choice is very clear. We encourage our members to vote for Mikie Sherrill and to support the campaign through canvasses and labor walks.