Mikie Sherrill, the Democrat congresswoman and current candidate in New Jersey's high-stakes governor's race, was blocked from walking with her graduating class at the Naval Academy years ago because of her involvement in a cheating scandal, the New Jersey Globe reported.
A copy of the commencement program from the year Sherrill graduated does not list her name, the Globe reported.
She told the outlet that she was barred from walking because she did not turn in classmates who cheated on an electrical engineering exam.
"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,” Sherrill explained.
The scandal involved at least 125 students and grabbed significant publicity at the time as a betrayal of the academy's code of honor. It led to scrutiny from Congress and the Academy's superintendent resigning.
The news of Sherrill's involvement in the worst cheating scandal in the Naval Academy's history has rocked one of the biggest and most closely watched elections this fall.
Polls show Sherrill in a dead heat with Republican Jack Ciattarelli. Sherrill has put her time at the Academy and as a Navy pilot front and center in her campaign.
"Today’s admission by Congresswoman Sherrill that she was implicated in, and punished for, her involvement in the largest cheating and honor code scandal in the history of the United States Navy is both stunning and deeply disturbing,” Ciattarelli wrote in a post on X.
“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," the post continued.
Sherrill has not denied the substance of the reports, but she accuses Ciattarelli of "smearing" her by using a "widely reported incident" from the past.
"Now, his latest attempt is to go after a 30-year-old widely reported incident when I was an undergraduate at the Naval Academy,” Sherrill stated.
Sherrill has declined requests from the media to release her disciplinary records from her time at the academy.
While the cheating scandal was a big story at the time, Sherrill's involvement in it is definitely news.
A new poll from Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill found that Sherrill and Ciattarelli are in a dead heat.
