Asking the New Jersey gubernatorial candidates about Zohran Mamdani, Venezuela, "misinformation," and Epstein

This Wednesday, October 8, I intrepidly voyaged to New Brunswick, NJ for the final New Jersey gubernatorial debate of the 2025 election cycle. Now, you may be asking yourself: Why should I care about the New Jersey gubernatorial race? Even if you live in New Jersey, you may find yourself asking this question. And I’m not claiming you should care deeply or passionately. But there are some interesting dynamics perhaps worth keeping an eye on.

First is that if Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, the Democrat, wins, it’s likely she’ll eventually be courted to run for president. There has only ever been one female governor of New Jersey, and it was a Republican (Christine Todd Whitman). So we’ll probably hear a lot about Mikie’s “history-making” triumph as the first female Democratic governor of the state. Her political career was assiduously cultivated by Party chieftains, beginning when she won her election to the House in 2018, as one of the estimable “Dem National Security Women” who swept to power that year, along with Elissa Slotkin (CIA) who is now Senator from Michigan, and Abigail Spanberger (CIA) who now appears to be a shoo-in for the next Governor of Virginia. (NJ’s off-year race, at least per conventional wisdom, seems more competitive than the VA race.) Mikie wasn’t CIA, but she’s a former Naval Aviator and Federal Prosecutor — so close enough. And she’s always running around declaring that her vaunted public service is “rooted in the defense of our country on the front lines of national security.”

So, basically, Mikie Sherrill is poised to become a major national figure. And as such, it’s worth interrogating her ideological profile and inclinations. Some of those inclinations include: constantly calling contested political claims “misinformation,” promoting censorship-friendly “Online Safety” initiatives, being extremely over-rehearsed and boring, etc. At the post-debate press conference, I was able to ask Mikie about her “misinformation” verbal tick, as you can see in the video above.

Joining me for this New Jerseyean adventure was Meagan O’Rourke, whose YouTube channel you should also take a look at. She’s mainly been covering the NYC mayoral race, and asked Mikie whether she reciprocates the apparently unsolicited endorsement that Zohran Mamdani (somewhat strangely) gave Mikie in August. Zohran is diligently trying to “moderate,” while Mikie is already seen as a thoroughly “moderate Dem,” and is therefore trying to fend off any accusations that she may be emboldening the “radical socialist” element of the party. These divergent incentives have made for a confounding situation where Mikie simply refuses to weigh in on the NYC mayoral election, even as there are a raft of issues on which the NJ governor and the NYC mayor would manifestly have to work together. As you’ll see, she unconvincingly evades Meagan’s question.

I also mixed things up a bit by asking Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican, about the Trump Administration seemingly marching toward imposing regime change in Venezuela. While admittedly not the most obvious New Jersey-focused issue, NJ does have one of the largest populations of Venezuelan-born residents — therefore it’s conceivable that if the Venezuelan government gets further crippled and/or overthrown, there could be a surge in migratory inflows to the state. Jack, probably truthfully, said he didn’t know enough about the issue to comment. At the same time, he did say he gave the Second Trump Administration an “A” rating, so he should perhaps consider brushing up a bit on what it’s doing abroad.

Finally, I managed to raise my absolute favorite subject in the world — Jeffrey Epstein. But it was not my doing that Epstein bizarrely became an issue in the New Jersey gubernatorial race! Mikie Sherrill, still a sitting member of Congress, joined with every other Democrat and a handful of Republicans to sign the Khanna/Massie discharge petition, purportedly to compel release of the “Epstein Files.” And she put out a statement trying to claim that Jack Ciatterelli is too afraid of “his boss,” Trump, to join her heroic efforts to demand Epstein-related tran