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The New Jersey gubernatorial race is heating up with less than six weeks to go until Election Day. Former Navy pilot and Democratic hopeful Mikie Sherrill’s people are livid at the improper release of her military records, which indicate she did not walk in her graduation from Annapolis in 1994 in the wake of a cheating scandal at the Naval Academy. Sherrill did not participate in the scandal, in which someone stole a copy of a final exam, but did not disclose whether she knew anyone who saw the test before it was given. Sherrill’s camp is also upset that some of her personal information, such as her Social Security number, wasn’t redacted from the record.
Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli, meanwhile, insists his camp did nothing wrong. Speaking on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program, the GOP hopeful says the bottom line is that Sherrill violated the Navy’s Code of Honor by not speaking up.
Ciattarelli told host Ken Rosato, sitting in for Larry Mendte, that the bigger picture of poor judgement on Sherrill’s part is more troubling than the report itself: “The fact that she didn’t want to turn in classmates that she knew were cheating- what is she going to do when she’s governor, and she finds out that there are people that are gaming the system in the administration… A citizen at large put in an open public records act request, and the archives provided the information. The archives has already apologized for screwing up… but nobody else did anything wrong.”
Ciattarelli also addressed recent polling numbers that indicate the race is either a dead heat or have him up by one point: “Traditionally, historically, Republicans under-poll in polls… hey, listen, some of these polls had me down by twelve points with two weeks to go last time around. We knew that wasn’t right. We know these polls are correct, and we’re right where we need to be.”
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