Mikie Sherrill won 2025, Save Jerseyans, and she did it riding a national wave and promising – unconvincingly, for anyone paying close attention – that she would crusade for affordability. Her big promise: freezing our state’s sky-high electric bills.
But electric bills typically spike in the warmer months when AC units are humming. Right now, the challenge is heating costs which are expected to rise by more than 9% (on average) this winter. New Jersey in an especially vulnerable position as a net importer of energy, a trend that began during the now almost concluded Murphy years.
It gets worse.
The New Jersey gas tax is set to rise by 4.2-cent-per-gallon effective January 1, 2026. At 49.1 cents-per-gallon for regular unleaded, New Jersey will continue to have one of the nation’s highest gas taxes.
A rising gas tax is separate and apart from a 3% toll hike for New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway commuters who can now expect to pay, on average, an extra 16-cents at the booth.
What do these taxes – both real and de facto – have in common?
They’re regressive! They’ll disproportionately hurt the poor, the Middle Class, and small businesses both directly and when increased shipping fuels higher prices at the store.
What is Mikie Sherrill going to do to help? Well, as we’ve reported, she’s rumored to have spent her December pushing the Democrat legislature to raise the sales tax BEFORE Phil Murphy leaves office so that she could reap the increased revenue but wouldn’t be blamed for it. Again, there’s nothing PROgressive about a higher sales tax. Regressive.
It’s likely to get worse before it gets better, but THIS is the time to make the right arguments so that a movement is organized, informed, and ready to turn the tide on the other side of the coming Sherrill nightmare.
