Liberal veterans’ group invests $1 million between Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests

VoteVets, a liberal group that typically backs veterans running for office, is pouring $1 million into aggressive ad campaigns backing the Democratic candidates in Virginia’s and New Jersey’s gubernatorial contests with less than 30 days until Election Day.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey, is a former Navy helicopter pilot. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for the same job in Virginia, was a CIA operations officer before entering politics. 

The $500,000-apiece ad campaigns take direct aim at the Republican nominee for governor of New Jersey, Jack Ciattarelli, and the GOP candidate in Virginia, Winsome Earle-Sears. VoteVets says both ads feature veterans of the armed services discussing economic difficulties and alleging a GOP governor would make things worse for them.

“After a decade of Coast Guard rescues, I came home to make a go of it. But Jersey is so damn expensive right now,” a Coast Guard veteran says in the New Jersey ad. “And Jack Ciattarelli will make it worse. He already voted to raise property taxes and was even talking about a 10% sales tax.”

Ciattarelli has pushed back on allegations that he supports raising the state’s sales tax to 10%, a claim also made in ads paid for by his Democratic opponent’s campaign. He says his comments were taken out of context. 

In the Virginia ad, a Navy veteran attempts to connect Earle-Sears to President Trump’s economic policies, although she has not been endorsed by the president. 

“Instead of fighting for Virginia, Winsome Earle-Seals went right along with the Trump budget that’s raising our costs even higher,” the veteran says in the ad. “Health care. Housing. Electricity. And those tariffs, driving up prices on just about everything else.”

CBS News has reached out to Ciattarelli and Earle-Sears’ campaigns for comment and will update this story if they respond.

VoteVets placed a separate half-million-dollar ad campaign supporting Spanberger in August, and the group’s political action committee directly invested another $500,000 into her campaign earlier in the cycle.

VoteVets additionally transferred nearly $80,000 to the Democratic Party of New Jersey and launched a $100,000 cable ad buy in the contest for Virginia’s 64th state House district. 

Virginia and New Jersey are two of the only states to hold statewide elections a year after the presidential race, so their gubernatorial contests are typically closely watched — and are often treated as referenda on the newly elected president.

Both races have heated up significantly in recent weeks, with news stories threatening to upend the contests. 

In New Jersey, legal threats linger over the contest after CBS News reported that a branch of the National Archives admitted to releasing a mostly unredacted version of Sherrill’s military records to a Ciattarelli ally, including her Social Security number and other private information. Sherrill has alleged her records were released intentionally, which Ciatarelli’s campaign has denied. Sherrill has also faced attacks from the right seeking to link her to the 1994 Naval Academy cheating scandal — she was not accused of cheating, and she says her only involvement was her failure to inform on her classmates.

Meanwhile in Virginia, Spanberger has faced attacks after Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones admitted he sent text messages in 2022 that contained violent and inflammatory language about several Republicans.

Spanberger condemned Jones’s violent rhetoric, but she has faced criticism from the right for not calling on him to drop out of the race. Earle-Sears’s campaign also released an ad connecting Spanberger to Jones.