If You Read One Thing This Week:
New York Times: A Fan of ‘Ruthless Competence,’ She Wants to Be Governor of New Jersey
Ms. Sherrill, 53, first drew national attention after flipping a northern New Jersey congressional seat that for three decades had been held by Republicans.
She immediately began talking pragmatically about how to appeal to voters not necessarily inclined to support a Democrat, adopting a saying still quoted by former staff members. “She’d say, ‘We’re just going to win them over with ruthless competence,’” said Kellie Doucette, one of Ms. Sherrill’s former legislative directors.
“The point was that we couldn’t expect to just show up and have everybody love us. We had to show that we were going to work for them.”
In the general election, a central tenet of her neck-and-neck race against Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican endorsed by Mr. Trump, is that the president poses an existential threat to a nation she has taken oaths to defend — in the Navy, as a federal prosecutor and now as a member of Congress.
