Why Mikie Sherrill Thinks Vets Can Build Back Power For Democrats

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — If Democrats are searching for a figurehead to lead the party back from the brink, they may start looking more toward someone like New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill.

The former Navy helicopter pilot has enlisted for a new mission: to establish herself as an influential operator for the midterms, with an eye toward putting Democrats back on the right footing with voters as the 2028 presidential election looms. Just seven months into her tenure, she’s kicking off a fall of cross-country travel with a slate of endorsements in some of this cycle’s most competitive districts.

Following a summer primary season that’s pitted the insurgents against the establishment, Sherrill’s betting that a group of veterans with backgrounds rooted in public service like her, eschewing ideological identities or factions, could be the path back to power come November — and beyond.

“The fight isn't moderates versus DSA candidates,” Sherrill told POLITICO on the road this week. “The fight is if we are going to have strong people in the Democratic Party that are going to actually make change to make people's lives better, or people who you can just expect more of the same.”

Sherrill’s fixation on veterans as the way to rebuild power for the Democratic Party comes down to a universal truth she’s identified among voters across the political spectrum right now: a desperate desire for change.

“I can tell you of the three options: change for the better, change for the I don’t know, or the status quo — people are not picking status quo,” Sherrill said in an interview.

Veteran candidates, Sherrill says, can be the “change agents” who can actually produce results for voters who have found it lacking from the party.

Sherrill made that pitch at the To Share Brewing Company in Manchester last Wednesday — the fourth stop on her New England blitz. Standing by multicolor bookcases and speaking to over a hundred veterans gathered in the late afternoon to meet her, Sherrill was wired.

She listened to veterans rip open their old battle wounds at roundtables on wooden chairs at an American Legion outpost in Arlington, Massachusetts, at a craftsman league in Concord, New Hampshire and here at To Share in Manchester. Sherrill responded with reflections from her Naval Academy days and shares the disdain she developed for “strongly worded letters” as a four-term congresswoman.

“That’s not how us veterans operate,” she told the crowd. “Guess who knows how to get a mission accomplished? That’s right, veterans. And those are the people I work with.”

In stepping onto the midterms battlefield, Sherrill joins a growing crop of fellow Democratic public servants like Pete Buttigieg, Mark Kelly or her close friend Elissa Slotkin, who are testing the ground for building a coalition broad and sticky enough to retake the White House come 2028.

That’s her opening bid at the American Legion Post 39 for a veteran roundtable alongside Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), her longtime friend who’s running a change-centered campaign to unseat longtime Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

In this small safe space in the suburbs of Boston, she made the case for Moulton. The two laugh at the “full circle” nature of her trip: it was Moulton who just under a decade ago helped recruit Sherrill to run for Congress through his Serve America PAC.

Her backing of Moulton has put Sherrill on the opposite side from the party’s most formidable progressive players, setting up the latest test of her political prowess one week from now. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has backed Markey, and so has the discerning Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). This isn’t her first match-up against them either. In the Minnesota Senate primary, Sherrill supported Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), who lost to the Sanders-backed Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan.

Sherrill shrugs at the idea of being lumped in with the party’s centrist set, despite aligning closely with the likes of Slotkin and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, with whom she swept into the House alongside in 2018. Back then, they called themselves the “badass women,” and often clashed with the progressive “Squad” members.

“We were told that there were five badasses and five Squad members, and then the political narrative was it was us against them kind of a thing. And it never was,” said Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), one of the “badasses” and an Air Force veteran.

The “badass women” — prominently Sherrill, Spanberger and Slotkin — have steadily risen through the upper echelons of power. “I need to recruit new friends because all my friends have become governors and senators,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), one of the gang of nine members and a former Army Ranger.

So Sherrill, and her fellow House veterans, are cashing in on that slate. Her Mission to Deliver PAC announced endorsements this summer for candidates like retired Marine Corps drill instructor JoAnna Mendoza in Arizona, Navy veteran Zach Dembo of Kentucky, former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey and former active duty Army officer Cait Conley in New York. She’s also supporting Nancy Lacore, the retired Navy vice admiral who was recently fired, in South Carolina. And she appears to have her pulse on the candidates the party believes have promising paths — both Dembo and Lacore were added to the DCCC’s coveted “Red-to-Blue” program this week.

There’s even a new group of female veterans banding together with a punchy nickname, including Bennett and Conley, calling themselves the “hellcats.”

“There’s many, many candidates who look a hell of a lot like us in 2026, when you think about 2018,” Houlahan said.

Sherrilll’s pitch to voters is one that does harken back to the past. “I'm just like an old school Democrat. Like I'm for working people,” she said.

Sitting in a backroom library off the main street in Concord, New Hampshire, she recalled her grandfather, who enlisted and came back, got a union job and a pension and lifted their family to the middle class. He believed in the Democratic Party. But it’s a far cry from the party of today, which in the Trump era has hemorrhaged support from white, non-college educated working class voters across the Rust Belt.

Sherrill’s 2025 campaign aimed to change that — but it came alongside Zohran Mamdani’s electrifying victory in the New York City mayoral race that injected democratic socialism into the political bloodstream. The insurgent left has risen around Sherrill, in pockets of neighboring New York and Pennsylvania.

But she appears nonplussed about it, and isn’t shy in praising her successor for New Jersey’s 11th District, the progressive Rep. Analilia Mejia. “She has been really thoughtful as we've worked with the grassroots on some of the key issues around the state,” Sherrill said. “You know, what I’m looking for is talent.”

At the roundtable in Concord, flanked by first-term Rep. Maggie Goodlander and a large table of local candidates in the League of NH Craftsman, Sherrill spoke passionately about the cost of living crisis. Being a veteran, Sherrill argues, brings a disposition toward action — one that pushes them to, say, freeze utility costs in the middle of their inaugural address.

Goodlander said Sherrill brings “a completely mission-focused, can-do attitude” with her experience and credibility.

And that model could cut between the ideological venn diagram. There are veteran candidates like Maura Sullivan, who’s running in the Democratic primary for New Hampshire’s 1st District, who openly supports “Medicare for all who want it” and believes Democrats should push to “abolish Trump’s ICE.” Most of all, Sullivan won’t be afraid to buck leadership and push for accountability, Sherrill says.

If enough of Sherrill’s endorsed candidates can pull it off, Democrats will have built their numbers on some of the most closely split districts in the country. “I think she can build coalitions,” Sullivan said in an interview. “She's a friend. She's a role model.”

And Sherrill is unabashed about her desire for Democrats to wrest federal control. “What I am working on now is making sure that we are charting out that course. So we started with veterans,” she said.

Just six months into her tenure, Sherrill’s reception in New Hampshire is bigger than the moment. As she vents her frustrations to veterans about Trump’s rhetoric on the Iran war, her focus on the president’s role as commander-in-chief is evident.

“Here is where people are going to weigh in on the next president, and I want to make sure that anybody who is taking office federally, whether it's in Congress, whether it's in the House, the Senate, whether it's the president of the United States, are implementing policies that are going to drive down costs for people,” Sherrill said.

And her biggest allies — including potential 2028ers — are already saying they could see her on the Democratic ticket. Could they see Sherrill running for president? Absolutely, many said.

“People like women who have served,” Slotkin said in an interview. “The thing I appreciate about Mikie is she's an excellent leader and understands how to execute a strategic plan, how to think smartly about both her campaigns and what she's trying to accomplish, and you know, has also just a funny lightheartedness about her.”

She also could stand apart from the conventional wisdom the party seems to be embracing around 2028. “If I read one more headline that says somebody looks like Kennedy and talks like Obama, you know, I'm going to explode,” Houlahan said. “We have to recognize what an enormously talented bench we have.”

Sherrill’s next trek will take her west. She’s planning a stop in Las Vegas, Nevada, with more cross-country endorsements on the way. For her part, she says she’s focused on how to maximize her crusade — and how her perch in New Jersey can grow as a base for change.

“I think it is going to quickly become a model for how you take on entrenched interest and lead, and take on the status quo,” Sherrill said. “What I'm really focused on in ’28 is how we are going to implement change for this nation. We desperately need it.”