Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) is now Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill – and that means that the floodgates are open for ambitious local Democrats to run for her seat in Congress.
Passaic County Commissioner John Bartlett (D-Wayne) announced today that he will run in the special election for Sherrill’s 11th congressional district, a suburban, light-blue district that spans parts of Morris, Essex, and Passaic Counties. Bartlett has been in local politics for decades – he even briefly ran against Sherrill for the 11th district in 2018 – and he said he’s the right candidate for a troubled political era.
“Mikie Sherrill has been an excellent representative for the 11th district, and she’s going to be a great governor,” Bartlett told the New Jersey Globe. “And now it falls to the voters of the 11th district to select her successor, at a time when Washington D.C. is on fire and all the norms and all the bipartisan relationships that used to protect our democracy seem to be crumbling under the weight of the second Trump administration.”
“We need somebody who’s ready to step into this breach on Day One,” he added.
Bartlett isn’t the first Democrat to enter the race for the 11th district and he undoubtedly won’t be the last, making for a hectic and crowded special election. Its schedule remains unclear for now – it will depend on both the timing of Sherrill’s resignation from the House and on potential action in the state legislature to speed up New Jersey’s languid special election procedures – but the Democratic primary could arrive as soon as late January or early February.
A Harvard Law graduate and voting rights attorney who once wrote part-time for the Associated Press, Bartlett, 53, was first elected to what was then the Passaic County Board of Freeholders in 2012; he’s won re-election four times since then, albeit by narrow margins in both 2021 and 2024 in what has become a highly competitive county. Bartlett also holds the Passaic seat on the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, which manages $3 billion in transportation funds annually across North Jersey.
(Passaic County is home to around one-tenth of the 11th district’s voters; Wayne is split between two districts, but Bartlett lives on the 11th district side with his wife and son.)
In his many roles, Bartlett said that he’s fought against President Donald Trump’s attempts to add a citizenship question to the U.S. Census and against former Gov. Chris Christie’s efforts to delay infrastructure funding. He was also part of the Democratic National Committee’s legal team during a 2008 legal fight stemming from the 1981 gubernatorial election’s infamous voter suppression schemes.
After Donald Trump won the White House in 2016, Bartlett made his first stab at higher office, announcing that he would run to unseat Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Harding) in a district that hadn’t been on Democratic radars in decades. Bartlett made some allies across the district, but he found himself struggling to break out of the shadow cast by Sherrill, a political unknown whose profile as a Navy helicopter pilot and former federal prosecutor wowed Democrats; a few months after entering the race, Bartlett ended his campaign, and Sherrill went on to flip the seat.
“This is a moment of opportunity for change in Washington, but it does not appear to be my moment to be the agent of that change,” Bartlett said when he dropped out of the race.
Now, a little under eight years after that day, Bartlett says it is his moment to bring change to Washington. Looking at the controversial Big Beautiful Bill and at the Trump White House’s efforts to gerrymander the House map in their favor, Bartlett said that a twin focus on improving affordability and protecting democracy will resonate with 11th district voters.
“I’ve trained hundreds of lawyers to protect people’s rights on Election Day,” Bartlett said. “I’ve represented the Democratic Party, and communities of color, and people with disabilities, and individual candidates and voters to make sure that every eligible voter has equal access to the ballot box. I was on the ground in 2020 as part of the Biden-Harris legal team. All that experience really makes one of my top priorities, when I get to Washington next spring, to make sure that the elections of 2026 and 2028 are free and fair.”
Passaic County in particular has been ground zero for debates over election security and voter suppression in New Jersey this year; the Department of Justice announced last month that it would send election monitors into the county at the request of local Republicans, drawing pushback from many New Jersey Democrats.
Bartlett’s campaign is out of the gate running, but he’ll be joined by many other 11th district contenders soon. In the months since Sherrill won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in June, something of a shadow primary has been developing for the right to succeed her in Congress.
Two notable Democratic names, Obama administration alum Cammie Croft and Morris Township Committeeman/former Mayor Jeff Grayzel, have officially entered the race and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lots of others, among them former 7th district Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes), Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill (D-Montclair), and Maplewood Committeeman/former Mayor Dean Dafis have taken active steps towards running as well.
(One Republican, Randolph Mayor Joe Hathaway, has also launched a campaign, though he starts out as the underdog in a district that re-elected Sherrill by 15 points last year.)
It’s too early to say what the dividing lines and ideological stakes of the race will be, and who will have the inside track for crucial local endorsements – though perhaps less crucial than they used to be in an era where the influence of county parties is declining. Bartlett, who may end up being the only notable Passaic County candidate in the race, said he does intend to seek party backing wherever possible.
“I’ve got a great rapport with all three county chairs and leaders across the district,” he said. “I look forward to showing them why I deserve their support, and I look forward to the debate among the candidates.”
Asked whether he thinks that the Democratic Party more broadly needs a new direction or new leadership – something many Democratic voters seem increasingly interested in – Bartlett said he wants to instead make a pragmatic case for his ability to deliver concrete results.
“I think the strongest candidates are going to be the ones that can point to things they’ve accomplished, point to the ways in which they have stood up and are ready to stand up on the most salient issues for folks,” he said. “I’m not looking to turn up the heat, but I am also not looking to give up the fight.”
