Last week New Jersey’s two contenders for governor — Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli — announced their picks for Lieutenant Governor. The two candidates’ platforms are as different as chalk and cheese, including within education policy. For instance, Ciattarelli is outspoken about his support for private school vouchers and his intention to opt into the new federal program (a $1,700 federal tax credit to support tuition at private and faith-based schools). Sherrill is adamantly opposed to vouchers or Education Savings Accounts, hewing closely to Phil Murphy’s platform.

But what about public school choice? The word on the street was she was a Murphy clone, although her campaign website is silent on public charters.

Then last week she choose Dale Caldwell as her running mate and all bets are off, giving pause to those who assume she would be an obsequious servant to NJ’s primary teacher union, NJEA.

Caldwell is a longtime educator and historically has been an advocate for both traditional and alternative public schools. Currently president of Centenary University, his resume includes long-time membership of the New Brunswick Board of Education (in 2009 he was voted NJ School Board member of the Year) and the Educational Services Commission of New Jersey. In 2013 Caldwell was appointed Head of School and Chief Executive Officer for Village Charter School in Trenton; in 2015 he was named New Jersey’s Charter School Administrator of the Year. Now he is Board Chair of College Achieve Greater Asbury Charter School in Asbury Park, where student outcomes far exceed schools with similar demographics (despite craven impulses by certain staffers).

In an article for CharterFolk, Caldwell explains one reason students there experienced “massive gains” while students in other schools stagnated:

“At our CAPS Asbury schools where we experienced our greatest growth, we stayed open more days during the pandemic than any of the traditional public schools in our region – 143 days. We also kept expectations high, safely keeping our doors open for learning  all day, for all students. On most days when traditional public schools had shuttered their doors, our schools were open.”

Not quite NJEA’s model, where teachers went on strike rather than safely return to school.

Now, it’s true that the role of Lieutenant Governor is similar to that of vice president, which FDR’s VP John Nance Garner described as “a bucket of warm spit.” And if Sherrill follows in Murphy’s footsteps, she’ll choose an Education Commissioner who denies expansion requests, let alone approvals for new charters, for even the highest-performing schools with long wait lists in our neediest communities, a trend noted by traditional media outlets like the Star-Ledger, the NJ Monitor, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

Yet, if Sherrill shows she is open to expanding parents’ educational options for their children, she’ll be able to court the increasing number of minority parents in NJ. (From EdChoice: “Educational choice policies like charter schools, vouchers, and education savings accounts (ESAs) garner support from more than two-thirds of Hispanic parents, based on nearly 30 nationally representative surveys conducted since September 2020.” The percentages are even higher for Black parents.)

Does Sherrill have it in her to give the back of the hand to NJEA which whole-heartedly opposes both public and private school choice? Does she have the truly progressive instincts to side with the most educationally-disenfranchised families in the state? Can she get out of the rut the Democratic Party is stuck in?

Adam Nagourney, in an excellent article last week for the NY Times, links to a memo from prominent Democrat Seth London right after President Trump won in November. Addressed to “Discouraged Democrats,” the memo notes that since 2012 the Party has prioritized “core party activists over the common voters we claim to represent,” including in the realm of education, a shift from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who, in different ways, were willing to embrace school choice and break with teacher unions. But now Democrats are “too captured by its own special interests to reliably win.” The 2025 gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, London says, are an opportunity to start the process of rebuilding the Party.

Is Mikie Sherrill willing to start the process of reinvigorating the Democratic Party? If she is, she’ll break from the vacuous model posed by Murphy and get real about what New Jersey parents want from their school system.