Dem candidate for NJ Governor was barred from walking with Navy Academy graduate class over CHEATING scandal

Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Rep. Mikie Sherrill built her political career on her record as a Naval Academy graduate and Navy helicopter pilot despite newly surfaced records reveal she was punished in 1994 for failing to report classmates in one of the biggest cheating scandals in the academy’s history and was barred from walking with her class at graduation, a report by the New Jersey Globe has revealed.

A commencement program from May 25, 1994, obtained by the Globe, confirms Sherrill’s name was absent. She later admitted, “I didn’t turn in some of my classmates, so I didn’t walk, but graduated and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving for nearly ten years with the highest level of distinction and honor.”

The cheating scandal centered on stolen answers to an electrical engineering exam. More than 130 midshipmen were implicated, with dozens expelled. Congressional hearings followed, and the academy’s superintendent resigned.

Officials later estimated that as many as 400 midshipmen may have seen the stolen test, leading to sweeping reforms of the academy’s honor system.

Sherrill’s campaign has refused requests to release her sealed disciplinary file. The decision has fueled criticism, especially as her military credentials remain central to her political image. In 2018, when she flipped a House seat in New Jersey, rumors swirled about her ties to the cheating scandal, but she dismissed them as irrelevant.

Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli’s campaign said voters deserve answers. Manager Eric Arpert blasted Sherrill’s acknowledgment as “stunning and deeply disturbing,”

“For eight years, Mikie Sherrill has built her entire political brand around her time at the Naval Academy and in the Navy, all the while concealing her involvement in the scandal and her punishment. The people of New Jersey deserve complete and total transparency.”

Sherrill has dismissed the the criticism, accusing Ciattarelli of “using the MAGA playbook of smearing military service.” But with the governor’s race tightening — a new Emerson/PIX 11/The Hill poll shows the two tied at 43 percent — questions about her integrity are likely to shadow her campaign until Election Day.