September 29, 2025 • 7 mins
Mike Kelly joins Mendte in the Morning to talk about the latest news in the NJ Gubernatorial race as a big scandal has hit Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's get to Mike Kelly, award winning columnists for North
Jersey dot Com and The Record. He's with us every Monday.
At this time, things really got interesting in New Jersey.
Mike all you think, wow, man, what a week between
the polls, between the scandals that break it all down
(00:24):
for us.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, good morning, Larry, Yes, welcome to Monday, Another Monday
from the People's Republic. Well, I mean, where do we begin.
I mean, you know, the news about Congresswoman Mikey Cheryl
is in my opinion, stunning, and she's trying to brush
it under the under the covers. In case listeners haven't heard,
(00:48):
Mikey Cheryl was who is who has really kind of
framed her entire career around the fact that she graduated
from the United States Naval Academy and served in the
Navy for almost a decade flying helicopters. It turns out
now that Mikey Cheryl was not allowed to walk at
graduation at the Naval Academy because she was somehow implicated
(01:13):
in a cheating scandal down there. It was the largest
cheating scandal ever in the history of the Naval Academy.
Over one hundred cadets were dismissed. Mikey Cheryl wasn't dismissed.
She explains that she did not turn in fellow classmates
who cheated, and so she was punished with not being
(01:35):
allowed to walk in the graduation. Let me explain how
seriousness is. Walking in the graduation at any college is
sometimes an option. People you know, they graduated and they say, oh,
I don't feel like, you know, going to the graduation.
But at the Naval Academy it is often required unless
(01:57):
you're sick or something. You dress up in your dress uniform.
The cadets march in, they throw their hats. At the end,
they get their diplomas by marching across the stage, and
in this case, the President of the United States at
the time, Bill Clinton, was there and gave them their diplomas.
So being told that you can't do that is serious punishment.
(02:17):
She didn't get kicked out, though, so it's really not
clear yet exactly what she was implicating, how she was
implicated here. And I think she's got to hold some
sort of no holds barred press conference and just lay
the whole story out. And the question is, I guess
whether does this resonate with voters yet I'm not sure.
(02:38):
There's a lot of a lot of the political errors
being taken out of the room by the President and
what's going on in Washington, and now we've got the
New York City craziness with the mayor's ray. So I
don't know how how how much this is going to
resonate with New Jersey voters. Yet, let's just keep an
eye on it though.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It is the worst case scenario though for her, because
you're there's a whole lot going on, and so most
people just go, oh, another scandal. They don't dig into it,
they just hear what's on the surface. And I don't know,
I think this is killing her.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
This is yeah, this is really serious, Larry. I can
speak as the son of a career officer in the
Marine Corps. The military. United States military has very very
different standards than public life for how people are supposed
to behave when it comes to matters of reporting wrongdoing.
(03:36):
There is an honor code at not only the Naval Academy,
but also at West Point and the other military academies
that say, if you know of some wrongdoing and you
do not report it, you are as culpable as the
person doing the wrongdoing. So think about that for a second.
(03:57):
That kind of honor code does not necessarily apply to
the corporate world, if you imagine if that apply to
Wall Street. But in the military, it's very serious and
there are reasons for doing that because listen, we put
we put these young men and women. They in situations
where they represent the United States, and if they are
(04:19):
doing something wrong, the world should know about it. And
and and the fact that we have these on our
codes has made our military really really terrific, I think
over the years. So the fact that she was implicated
in something like this is in my opinion, very serious,
and I just think she needs to explain herself what's
(04:40):
going on here.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I think people of a certain age I certainly remember
the Joanchez Amarge story and how much it captivated New Jersey.
It was the biggest story. I didn't know you went
down to Cuba to try to find her. Tell us
about that.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I did. Yeah, So switching to the other New Jersey story.
Julian Cheesemard is probably a name that a lot of
people have forgotten. Back in the nineteen seventies, she was
a member of the Black Liberation Army, which was a
revolutionary group that, along with the Weather Underground and a
(05:17):
number of other violent leftist groups, were actually committing acts
of violence here in the United States, setting off bombs,
murdering police officers, that sort of thing. Chesimard was convicted
for murdering a New Jersey State trooper in a gunfight
on the New Jersey Turnpike not far from Exit nine
(05:41):
Rutgers University, and she was captured. She was convicted of murder,
sentenced to jail, and several years later she managed to
break out of jail and with the help of a
kind of underground of revolutionaries here in the United States,
she made her way to Cuba, where Fidel Castro gave
(06:02):
her political asylum and she lived down there since the
early nineteen eighties. I went down there in twenty fifteen
with the assignment of finding her and several other violent
fugitives from the United States. There was about five fugitives
from the United States with real blood on their hands.
(06:24):
One of them is a guy named Guiermo Morales, who
was a Puerto Rican revolutionary who made the bomb that
blew up France's tavern and killed four people back in
nineteen seventy five. So I found Morales actually knocked on
his door and told him I wanted to talk to him,
at which point he said he was going to call
(06:44):
the cops if I didn't leave it. I said, well,
are you going to call NYPD, because they'd be happy
to come down and talk.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah. No, it's amazing. Your whole story is amazing. Can
we find that somewhere?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Sure, I'll try to send it to you.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, let's post it because it's his story worth knowing.
And by the way, the offshoot about this is that
she has now died in prison, at least according to
the Cuban regime. Thanks a Lot. Mike Kelly is an
award winning columnist from North Jersey dot Com and The
Record with us every Monday at seven o five. An
important warning from a woman about putting anything valuable in
(07:21):
the overhead bins on an airplane. What she lost is priceless.
The story after a break
Let's get to Mike Kelly, award winning columnists for North
Jersey dot Com and The Record. He's with us every Monday.
At this time, things really got interesting in New Jersey.
Mike all you think, wow, man, what a week between
the polls, between the scandals that break it all down
(00:24):
for us.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, good morning, Larry, Yes, welcome to Monday, Another Monday
from the People's Republic. Well, I mean, where do we begin.
I mean, you know, the news about Congresswoman Mikey Cheryl
is in my opinion, stunning, and she's trying to brush
it under the under the covers. In case listeners haven't heard,
(00:48):
Mikey Cheryl was who is who has really kind of
framed her entire career around the fact that she graduated
from the United States Naval Academy and served in the
Navy for almost a decade flying helicopters. It turns out
now that Mikey Cheryl was not allowed to walk at
graduation at the Naval Academy because she was somehow implicated
(01:13):
in a cheating scandal down there. It was the largest
cheating scandal ever in the history of the Naval Academy.
Over one hundred cadets were dismissed. Mikey Cheryl wasn't dismissed.
She explains that she did not turn in fellow classmates
who cheated, and so she was punished with not being
(01:35):
allowed to walk in the graduation. Let me explain how
seriousness is. Walking in the graduation at any college is
sometimes an option. People you know, they graduated and they say, oh,
I don't feel like, you know, going to the graduation.
But at the Naval Academy it is often required unless
(01:57):
you're sick or something. You dress up in your dress uniform.
The cadets march in, they throw their hats. At the end,
they get their diplomas by marching across the stage, and
in this case, the President of the United States at
the time, Bill Clinton, was there and gave them their diplomas.
So being told that you can't do that is serious punishment.
(02:17):
She didn't get kicked out, though, so it's really not
clear yet exactly what she was implicating, how she was
implicated here. And I think she's got to hold some
sort of no holds barred press conference and just lay
the whole story out. And the question is, I guess
whether does this resonate with voters yet I'm not sure.
(02:38):
There's a lot of a lot of the political errors
being taken out of the room by the President and
what's going on in Washington, and now we've got the
New York City craziness with the mayor's ray. So I
don't know how how how much this is going to
resonate with New Jersey voters. Yet, let's just keep an
eye on it though.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It is the worst case scenario though for her, because
you're there's a whole lot going on, and so most
people just go, oh, another scandal. They don't dig into it,
they just hear what's on the surface. And I don't know,
I think this is killing her.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
This is yeah, this is really serious, Larry. I can
speak as the son of a career officer in the
Marine Corps. The military. United States military has very very
different standards than public life for how people are supposed
to behave when it comes to matters of reporting wrongdoing.
(03:36):
There is an honor code at not only the Naval Academy,
but also at West Point and the other military academies
that say, if you know of some wrongdoing and you
do not report it, you are as culpable as the
person doing the wrongdoing. So think about that for a second.
(03:57):
That kind of honor code does not necessarily apply to
the corporate world, if you imagine if that apply to
Wall Street. But in the military, it's very serious and
there are reasons for doing that because listen, we put
we put these young men and women. They in situations
where they represent the United States, and if they are
(04:19):
doing something wrong, the world should know about it. And
and and the fact that we have these on our
codes has made our military really really terrific, I think
over the years. So the fact that she was implicated
in something like this is in my opinion, very serious,
and I just think she needs to explain herself what's
(04:40):
going on here.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I think people of a certain age I certainly remember
the Joanchez Amarge story and how much it captivated New Jersey.
It was the biggest story. I didn't know you went
down to Cuba to try to find her. Tell us
about that.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I did. Yeah, So switching to the other New Jersey story.
Julian Cheesemard is probably a name that a lot of
people have forgotten. Back in the nineteen seventies, she was
a member of the Black Liberation Army, which was a
revolutionary group that, along with the Weather Underground and a
(05:17):
number of other violent leftist groups, were actually committing acts
of violence here in the United States, setting off bombs,
murdering police officers, that sort of thing. Chesimard was convicted
for murdering a New Jersey State trooper in a gunfight
on the New Jersey Turnpike not far from Exit nine
(05:41):
Rutgers University, and she was captured. She was convicted of murder,
sentenced to jail, and several years later she managed to
break out of jail and with the help of a
kind of underground of revolutionaries here in the United States,
she made her way to Cuba, where Fidel Castro gave
(06:02):
her political asylum and she lived down there since the
early nineteen eighties. I went down there in twenty fifteen
with the assignment of finding her and several other violent
fugitives from the United States. There was about five fugitives
from the United States with real blood on their hands.
(06:24):
One of them is a guy named Guiermo Morales, who
was a Puerto Rican revolutionary who made the bomb that
blew up France's tavern and killed four people back in
nineteen seventy five. So I found Morales actually knocked on
his door and told him I wanted to talk to him,
at which point he said he was going to call
(06:44):
the cops if I didn't leave it. I said, well,
are you going to call NYPD, because they'd be happy
to come down and talk.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah. No, it's amazing. Your whole story is amazing. Can
we find that somewhere?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Sure, I'll try to send it to you.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, let's post it because it's his story worth knowing.
And by the way, the offshoot about this is that
she has now died in prison, at least according to
the Cuban regime. Thanks a Lot. Mike Kelly is an
award winning columnist from North Jersey dot Com and The
Record with us every Monday at seven o five. An
important warning from a woman about putting anything valuable in
(07:21):
the overhead bins on an airplane. What she lost is priceless.
The story after a break
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