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There's a new sheriff in town.

Governor Mikie Sherrill was sworn in on Tuesday as New Jersey's 57th governor, the second woman and the first female Democrat to ever lead the state, also the first female veteran elected as a governor in American history.

How about that fact?

Hi, everyone.

I'm Joanna Gagis, and this is Reporters Roundtable, the show where we round up a panel of journalists who talk all about the latest week of New Jersey news.

We've got a lot to talk about today, so let me start by introducing our panel.

Joining us today is Aliya Schneider, political reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dustin Racioppi, editor for Politico NJ, and Brent Johnson, politics reporter for NJ Advanced Media.

Now, from Go, Gov.

Mikie Sherrill made it clear she's doing things her way.

She started by changing the location of her inauguration ceremony and her inaugural ball.

She kept much of the pomp and circumstance, but I think could be a clear signal to this legislature, she's marching to the beat of her own drum.

Aliya, we heard a pretty fiery speech, too, during the inauguration.

What stood out to you from Gov.

Mikie Sherrill?

What did you hear?

Yeah, Governor Sherrill likes leaning into American history a lot in her speeches, I've noticed.

And she did that by comparing the King of England at America's founding to Donald Trump.

She did have a mention of Philadelphia in there, which we always like, and did make a joke about it being in the greater Camden metro area.

So we always love a South Jersey reference at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

But yeah, a lot of it was really mentioning her campaign promises of affordability.

She came out hard against Trump.

And I will say, it wasn't just in the speech, but we've seen her on national politics through the week, really coming out with an aggressive tone against the Trump administration overall.

Aliya, does that feel different than what we saw from the Murphy administration?

I think Mikie Sherrill, Governor Sherrill, I should say, definitely she focused so much on fighting Trump in her campaign that I think she has a particular duty in a way, but also that's her messaging to keep following through on that.

I do think she is kind of trying to set the tone that she's going to fight as much as the last administration, if not more.

I think taking the tone that the former attorney general took towards the Trump administration, even though she chose a new AG.

As we saw when Trump recently said that he wants to assess the funding going towards certain Democratic states, including New Jersey, she wasn't afraid to really criticize that.

And I do think that her messaging is continuing of criticizing Donald Trump, saying she's going to fight Donald Trump.

I think what we need to see now is how exactly she's going to do that and how she's going to deal with any potential repercussions.

Yeah.

And I think that's the point that a lot of people are going to be watching is, like you said, Phil Murphy, Governor Murphy did let his attorney general kind of be the bad guy there and play bad cop where he hung back.

We're not seeing that at least in this first week from Governor Sherrill.

Dustin, but what we did see again, breaking with norms, she signed two executive orders right there during her inaugural speech.

That's unusual.

But she, I will say, at least attempted to fulfill a campaign promise to day one, sign an executive order to create a state of emergency on energy costs.

Can you just help us understand what she's hoping to accomplish with those two executive orders?

Well, one's political, I think, and one is practical.

The political part of it, I would say, is making that dramatic point by pausing the speech and going over and signing the order to signal to people, ratepayers, that she's very serious about this and that she wants to tackle affordability.

She keeps hammering on that word and on that point.

And then the practical part of the order is, you know, what's in black and white, which is effectively taking money and to offset rates for people who are paying these skyrocketing energy bills.

And she's also in a separate order, promoting the use of more forms of energy, like, you know, solar, for example.

So I think it was clearly trying to send a signal to the public that she's very serious about affordability and Trump.

And like to Aliya's point, those were things that she really focused intensely on during the campaign.

So she's just carrying that on into the administration.

When you read the fine print on some of those executive orders, I noticed that she's in a way kind of appealing to two different bases.

She's having a reevaluation of RGGI, which is something we heard a lot from Jack Ciattarelli on the campaign trail.

Why is New Jersey spending all this money on RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative?

She's also asking the BPU, the Board of Public Utilities, to assess the societal benefits charge, which is a tax that everyone pays that helps offset energy for low-income individuals.

Now, she doesn't want that to go away, but Dustin, do you think that there's a maybe a more moderate approach, even as she's calling for more solar and clean energy?

But she's also reassessing some of these these taxes and fees that customers have been paying.

I, I agree that those seem like a more moderate approach.

Another one of the executive orders that she signed was different ways to try to cut red tape, which is, you know, lots of candidates talk about that kind of stuff, but it's usually more of like a right of center sort of thing, Republican thing, cutting red tape, reducing inefficiencies in government, the Reggie issue.

Yeah, I mean, if it wasn't a D next to her name, you could easily be mistaken for a Republican governor being in there.

That's not to say she's going full conservative, but she is displaying a more probably pragmatic and more moderate sort of streak.

Yeah, which is interesting when you put it in context, right?

On the one hand, she's coming out swinging with the right hand at the Trump administration in the left, taking on some issues that might not necessarily appeal to some of the progressives in her base and might actually appeal to more moderates.

Brent, she got to have a little fun on her first day.

She had an inaugural ball in the mall.

You were there.

Let's first just take a look at this clip that you posted on your social media from the ball in the mall.

Mikie Sherrill was just sworn in as New Jersey's 57th governor, and she's having her inaugural ball at one of the most Jersey places imaginable, the American Dream Mega Mall in East Rutherford of the Meadowlands.

Yes, it's black tie.

And yes, I rented a tuxedo for the occasion.

You got to have a little fun there.

What was it like?

Just give us a sense of the feeling in the room and what everyone was experiencing.

It was a surreal scene.

You know, people walking in tuxedos past shoppers at, you know, the It Sugar candy store on the way to the ice rink that was covered where they had the ball itself.

So it was unusual.

You know, certainly was, you know, she keeps saying she wants to break the status quo.

Apparently that also means her balls will be different.

And so she also had "Naughty by Nature" on stage at the end, and she was rapping along to "OPP," which also you might not expect from a governor.

But, you know, she's 54.

She's Gen X. So she's showing her Gen X cred a lot.

I had two different reactions to that I saw on social media that I saw people were like, "Oh, wow, you know, that's cool of the governor," and the other people being like, "Do people know what those lyrics mean?"

"So it was an unusual event, but it was very celebratory and it definitely was another sign that Sherrill's going to do things her way."

Yeah, for sure.

One of the things that she did her way was sign six total executive orders on day one.

That's up from Governor Phil Murphy's three on his day one.

Brent, sticking with you, obviously accountability and transparency, another campaign issue that now she is trying to fulfill on day one.

She did create this office of the chief operating officer within the office of the governor.

That sounds wonky.

Doesn't sound like it has any real meat, except that under that, she's going to create new offices, as Dustin was saying, to create some oversight.

Does this really create accountability, Brent, with the COA position?

That remains to be seen.

You could argue that, you know, you're adding more layers to the red tape by doing something like that.

But, you know, she had - that was one of the more underrated parts of her campaign, the government transparency part.

She held a news conference early on in the general election saying that she really wanted to make life smoother for people dealing with state government, you know, the DMV and things of that nature, state agencies.

And so that's something she's trying to fulfill there.

So she did do a lot of things on day one trying to fulfill campaign promises.

And, you know, one thing that's interesting about the Murphy administration, early on, he really did take a lot of swings at Donald Trump.

His inauguration speech went hard after Trump, too.

And what changed was COVID.

And when I sat down with him at the end of his term, he talked about how his relationship with Trump changed because they had to work together during COVID.

And so he became a little more hands-off, a little less aggressive with Trump by the time he was done.

And Sherrill, I guess, is going to turn that around and say, you know, it may not meet.

She told me, and we just did an interview the other day, about how you may not be able to work with Donald Trump.

He showed that he's not someone who can find common ground.

So I think it's going to be a lot more combative with Sherrill and Trump.

It's a great point and something we even saw from Governor Christie, right?

There was that embrace with President Obama when he came in after Superstorm Sandy.

Look, it's a reality that governors have to work with the sitting president.

And so she says maybe right now you can't work with him, but there is going to have to be that moment, right?

Where at some point we rely on the federal government here in New Jersey.

Yes, Brent.

Yeah, that's something they're going to have to figure out.

I mean, he's going to be president for the next three years.

I mean, you know, unless something happens.

But, you know, he will be there and they'll have to figure out a way to work together because it's just the way it goes.

States have to work with the federal government.

And so she's going to have to figure out how to continue to be progressive and continue to work with them.

But she said that she's going to try and claw back federal dollars.

The Gateway Tunnel Project is another thing she talked about.

You know, you would think that she figured out a way to work with him.

And she told me that, no, they they made an agreement already on and Trump is the one who reneged.

So it's going to be fascinating to watch how this unfolds.

Yeah.

And we're going to have to see the role of Congress plays in the spending bill that's up for for a vote.

It's moving through the House, at least right now.

Aliya, when we look at the red tape and the cutting of permits and approval processes here in New Jersey, we've heard a lot about that from the business community.

She spoke about it a lot on the campaign trail.

By the way, so did a lot of the Republican candidates.

Under the COO, do you see this being a signal that there's going to be this new approval processing team dedicated to shortening those wait times?

Do you see this as a signal to the business community here in New Jersey that she is hearing them?

It is a signal.

I will say that there's already been efforts to speed up permitting processes for businesses and the digital innovation team, which was recently codified as a cabinet-level position, they have been doing work on this already.

And, you know, not all agencies are up and running with the sped-up permitting process.

A lot of it is digitizing it.

A lot of it is kind of what happens online.

And that's something that when I asked Governor Sherrill on the campaign trail, you know, what do you mean when you talk about, you know, getting rid of red tape?

She said a lot of it is putting stuff online.

And a lot of it has been put online, not all of it.

And when I talked to Dave Cole, who has been overseeing these digital innovation efforts, he said that he believes the governor making this a priority might push some of these other agencies that just haven't really prioritized doing this to go forward and do it.

So she's kind of taking something that already exists and really putting a focus on it that will likely potentially put pressure on agencies.

So it's it's not a completely new thing, but it definitely sends a message to the business community that she's looking to make things easier for them and also just overall address some of the redundancies and the processes that people have to go through when dealing with government in New Jersey.

You raise an interesting point because beyond the chief operating officer and this new permitting approvals team, like you said, Governor Murphy had started this AI initiative that one of his last acts, one of the last laws he signed was turning this into an actual department.

It's going to be an authority under the Department of the Treasury.

And just quickly, Aliya, stay on that.

Why is that piece of AI as its own authority now important for New Jersey?

Yeah, so they do work with AI.

They also do just kind of web design, digitizing things.

So AI is a tool that they've been using more than in the past.

And I think they're using it more quicker than they expected just because of how quickly AI is becoming a thing in society.

But it's not all AI.

Some of it is just making websites look less archaic.

They're using AI to do things like improving communication.

And part of why it's so important is communication.

And the Internet is a huge thing when communicating and trying to reach residents.

And so, you know, if they want to speed up permitting processes, part of that is having a user-friendly interface to do so.

If they want to be reaching people with certain programs or they, unemployment or anything like that, you know, if the email looks like something that's from 100 years ago, then people might not open it, it might not respond.

Government websites being archaic, websites that look old and are hard to navigate in government, you don't say.

Yeah, I think everyone who tries to navigate some of those sites could use an upgrade.

Dustin, speaking of online, I know that the last executive order that she signed is meant to protect kids online, and part of this is holding companies accountable that have been known to use practices that addict kids.

She wants other protections in place, too, including AI.

This is an executive order, but it doesn't seem like this is a legislature that wouldn't support her in legislation.

Do you expect to see a lot more on this when it comes to working with the legislature to actually pass meaningful bills, codified bills into law?

I wouldn't be surprised by it.

Obviously, we're at the beginning of the legislative session in her term, so we haven't seen or and I haven't heard of any plans.

But as since she's laid this out as a priority, a lot of it does seem to make sense.

She is a mother of four.

A couple of them, at least, are teenagers.

As far as I know, a lot of these lawmakers have kids and they see the effects of, you know, doom scrolling and Italian brain rot and whatever the hell else is out there.

So a lot of this stuff really does need to be addressed as a society.

And you think the legislature will work?

Do you see the legislature working with her on that?

I think it's something that a lot of people can find common ground on.

I couldn't see any reason unless there's like worries about legal challenges to whatever they want to pass.

But her executive order doesn't lay out a whole lot in terms of specifics that you could see translated into legislation.

So a lot of that is TBD.

Yeah.

Brent, we know one of Governor Murphy's last moves was to not sign the Immigrant Trust Directive that would have codified it into law, as well as the Digital Data Privacy Act.

Progressives are pretty mad, some saying that this leaves a major mark on the governor's legacy.

How do you see it, Brent, in terms of his leaving this to Governor Sherrill?

Do you think that she will take this up?

I know your colleague Jelani Gibson said that sponsors of the bill, for example, Brittany Timberlake, Assemblywoman Brittany Timberlake, have said they're going to try to get these bills through the legislature again.

How do you see the governor handling this?

Yeah, I know this is one of a few moves Murphy made in his second term and now at the end of his term that upset progressive allies who were with him from the start.

It was also the Open Public Records Act and the Election Transparency Act, and this was like a third strike.

They did not.

They were not happy with him as he left office.

He's saying that he said that he wants this to hold up in court, and he's afraid that signing this law might jeopardize that.

She made similar comments on the campaign trail that the immigrant trust directive is something she supports and she thinks it's good, but writing it into law might jeopardize it and draw some legal attention to it.

And the question is now that if lawmakers do pass this again, and I believe there is momentum for that to happen, would she sign that or would she look for changes?

Would she veto it and ask for alterations?

I don't think these laws appear like it's 100 percent.

They'll be signed as is, that they might need some changes and there might be some battle with the legislature on that.

But this is an issue that it's going to be brought up again in the coming weeks.

Aliya, in the words of our friends, the band Outkast, you can pack a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather.

One of the true tests of a governor is how they handle storms.

We've got one coming for Governor Sherrill fast and hard this weekend.

What does she need to be prepared for?

- Well, I think a big thing is messaging.

And I think that that's something that her team has really been working on from the campaign.

I noticed she posted two different videos on her social media, one in English and one in Spanish, which she's been trying to learn.

And that was part of their whole messaging strategy for reaching more Latino voters.

You know, they posted photos of them meeting with emergency responders.

I did see some people kind of making fun of her on X for having like a certain jacket on over her blazer.

So I think messaging is a big thing that they're focusing on.

And in terms of emergency operations, right, I don't think people typically are campaigning on, oh, I'm going to take care of the snow.

And I think that it's going to be a test of how she handles things that just kind of come up that weren't part of her plan to, you know, write an executive order, sign an executive order on stage.

Brent, very quickly, you did speak to the governor about this.

She says she's already got a plan in place.

Just quickly, what is she doing and how does that compare to what we saw early on from Murphy and Christie?

It's similar to what we see from other governors.

She said she visited The Rock, which is the state police command center in West Trenton.

She spoke to local officials, county, municipal.

She said, you know, they have the salt ready and they're all ready to go.

And it's the thing is because even if you don't follow politics, if you are one of the 9.5 million residents in this state and you don't follow Mikie Sherrill, you will definitely get to know her quickly because you look to the governor in these type of times and weather disaster events.

So she'll get her first test right away.

Yeah.

And those can make or break people's perception of the governor.

Dustin, quickly, people need to get their bread and milk.

Is there any left?

I hope so because I have to make a trip myself.

So hopefully I can get out at a decent hour, get done with work today.

I'll find out.

I can report back to you.

We will let you go right now so you can go to the store.

That's all the time we've got for this week's Reporters Roundtable.

Thank you so much to our panel for being with us today.

You can follow me on Instagram @joannagagisnj and go ahead and scan that QR code on your screen to see more episodes of Roundtable.

For all of the crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, I'm Joanna Gagis.

Thanks for being with us and stay safe this weekend.

Major funding for Reporters Roundtable is provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let's be healthy together.

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