Virginia elected its first female governor Tuesday, but another race also had ties to our region. Mikie Sherrill was elected to be New Jersey’s next governor, and she was born right in Northern Virginia.
Sherrill, a Democrat, defeated Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli to succeed current New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy.
Sherrill was born in Alexandria in 1972 and grew up in NoVA. She graduated from South Lakes High School in Reston in 1990. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy and spending nearly 10 years as a helicopter pilot for the Navy, she returned to the DMV area in 2003 to attend Georgetown University.
Sherrill was elected to Congress in 2018 to represent New Jersey’s 11th District, in the northern part of the state. While working in Congress, she was close friends with Virginia’s new governor-elect, Abigail Spanberger.
Spanberger (who was born in Sherrill’s home state of New Jersey) was elected to Congress the same year as Sherrill. The pair shared an apartment on Capitol Hill for four years, sharing the space on weekdays when Congress was in session, The Washington Post reported last year.
There, the two shared a “stained 20-year-old living room couch that Spanberger dragged out of storage,” ate off of Sherrill’s wedding china, and drank a lot of coffee, according to The Post.
Now, Sherrill and Spanberger are each making history in their own states. Spanberger will become Virginia’s first female governor, while Sherrill will be the second female governor of New Jersey.
Feature image of Mikie Sherrill, MediaPunch Inc/Alamy Stock Photo
