Morris Township’s Republican organization on Monday chose a political newcomer who marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6 as its candidate for a seat on the governing body.
“I sort of felt it was time for me to put up or shut up,” Sherry Nardolillo said after decisively out-polling Township GOP Chairman Joe Calvanelli Jr. as the party’s pick to run for Township Committee in November.
It’s a special election to replace Democratic Committeewoman Tara Olivo-Moore, who stepped down after just seven months in office to move to Massachusetts.
The Township’s Democratic organization will meet on Wednesday to select three candidates to recommend to the Township Committee. The Committee, which has a 4-1 Democratic majority, will choose one of them to serve this year and run against Nardolillo for the remaining two years of Olivo-Moore’s term.
Thirty-six members of the local GOP organization participated on Monday, either in-person or virtually, and two-thirds of them went for Nardolillo, according to party secretary Linda K. Murphy.
Calvanelli, who served a brief stint as a Committeeman and ran unsuccessfully during the past two elections, praised members for their “tremendous energy and enthusiasm for the process.”
“As chairman, I couldn’t be prouder. It’s our finest moment as an organization…this is an enormous opportunity for Republicans,” Calvanelli said. About a third of the party leadership has changed over the last year, he said.
“The bottom line is, I’m an old ballplayer. She won. And I understand that and I respect that.”
‘I CERTAINLY DON’T THINK JOE BIDEN WON’
This is the first campaign for Nardolillo, a 19-year resident of the Township who is married to a financial planner and has three teenagers.
She lobbied party officials by phone and email and “convinced them it’s time for a fresh face. You can’t keep running the same old, same old,” she said.
Republicans dominated the governing body until a few years ago. Now, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about 1,000 votes.
Nardolillo said she wants to restore balance to the Committee, and explore why the Township pays more than Morristown for the regional Morris School District, where she has been active in parent groups over the years. One son is a junior at Morristown High; another just graduated from the private Delbarton School. Her youngest child attends a Catholic school in Union County.
Nardolillo graduated from Rutgers in 1991 with an English literature degree and has worked in the apparel industry and for a pharmaceutical company, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Now she serves as secretary for the Morris County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative nonprofit founded in Florida last year.
The chapter is “dedicated to the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government,” according to its website.
Nationally, Moms for Liberty has opposed COVID-19 mask- and vaccine mandates in schools, advocated for banning books at school libraries, and campaigned against curriculums that discuss critical race theory, discrimination and gender issues.
Nardolillo said she spends lots of time with moms, and at country clubs, and represents a younger demographic than Calvanelli.
“A lot of us feel that we’re just not represented,” she said. “And I don’t know necessarily that anybody thinks there’s something wrong with the Township. But we just feel like we want to make sure that we’re represented, because there’s a lot of things going on, both at the state, the national and even the county level, that we want to make sure that we’re prepared for.”
Prepared for what things, she was asked.
“Like the rising crime, the Sanctuary City status of Morristown,” Nardolillo said.
Responding to President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, Morristown’s Democratic council in 2017 proclaimed the town a “Fair and Welcoming Community” that would not cooperate with federal immigration officers. Neighboring Morris Township, led by Republicans at the time, declined to adopt that designation.
Nardolillo echoed Trump’s false assertions about a stolen election in 2020.
“I certainly don’t think Joe Biden won,” she said.
‘SO PATRIOTIC AND UNBELIEVABLE’
As evidence, she cited claims by the Texas organization True the Vote and the film 2000 Mules, claims that Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, refuted in a deposition to the House committee investigating Jan. 6. A parade of Republican officials, many of them longtime Trump loyalists, has testified about the former president’s scheme to overturn the election.
Nardolillo said she has not watched the televised hearings about the Capitol attack–which she witnessed first-hand.
“I don’t think those hearings are really representative of what happened at all. I think it’s theater. I think they need ratings.
“I have no idea what happened. But it certainly is not being presented the way it happened. I mean, I was there. I was in the capital Jan. 6, I was at the rally” at the White House Ellipse, Nardolillo said.
That’s where Trump exhorted supporters to march to the Capitol, where Congress was poised to certify Biden’s victory. He knew the crowd was armed, a White House staffer testified before the House committee.
Nardolillo called it “one of the most peaceful experiences I’ve ever been through, since the day after 9/11 when I lived in New York City. It was so patriotic and it was unbelievable. And by the time we got to the Capitol, the people that were climbing the buildings were not representative of who was in that crowd.”
As she described it, “we were all just kind of walking down the road and to be outside and make some noise and just let people know that, you know, there were some issues and we would like them re-looked at….certainly from everybody I was there with, there was never an intention to storm the Capitol. Never.”
Democracy is not in jeopardy and there’s nothing wrong with being branded a “crazy right-wing Trump supporter,” Nardolillo said, contending conservatives should not feel ashamed or afraid for having “a different opinion.”
Her opinion of Morris Township Democrats actually is favorable.
“They’ve done a lot of great stuff. They’re very communicative. They tell everybody what’s going on. And I think we need that from our side, from the Republican side,” Nardolillo said.
“My take locally is just simply that I’m excited because there’s a lot of people that would like to be represented, and I think I’m one of them,” she said. “And I think I can win.”
Side-stepping the usual vitriol, Linda Carrington gets right down to what matters: the basics of governing the municipality, a subject that appeared to be of little concern of this candidate for the Morris Township Council. Ms. Carrington raised governance questions; the voters deserve answers. Defending or attacking Ms. Nardolillo based on her participation in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol would seem to have little to do with her capacity for, or, frankly, her interest in, governing, but it’s fair to say her participation—and celebration of it—does raise questions of judgment and character. On another point, raising questions about Kevin Coughlin’s neutrality in reporting, Ms. Nardolilo is the source of the words Kevin Coughlin simply repeats here. Don’t accuse him of bias for reporting her words. She is the only one responsible for them.
Since this is a very biased piece of reporting, N.B. the into….”who marched on the capitol Jan 6″…..and? Scores of people participated in that march, most peace loving patriots who were exercising first amendment rights. It is not a crime to suspect the 2020 presidential election results and gather to project that view. She clearly was not rioting or doing anything warranting rebuke, deflecting from your attempt to tag her as some kind of crazed revolutionary charging the capitol. The drama is reprehensible.
The senate itself is/was introducing a bi-partisan bill to establish unequivocally the vice president’s role in the certifying process is only ministerial. I saw Susan Collins introduce the legislation on TV. Obviously, per our senate leaders, both parties do not believe the present law governing certification of the process is axiomatic concerning the vice president’s limited authority. And, that is the crux that that should be observed in monitoring and evaluating all this Jan 6b outcry and the committee hearing that permits no balance on testimony, just hears what supports its agenda purpose.
Not to get into the weeds, which apparently this reporter found necessary for a local committee member’s candidacy, there is no legitimacy to this effort to paint this credible woman as an extremist, a MAGA person heaven forbid. Give me a break. Her responses to questions (to include Jan 6 participation) were well thought and substantive on issues covered absent any indication of extremism.
Message to Mr. Couglin, simple, be fair in your coverage. Your prejudice is coming through loud and clear. Please conform to a journalistic ethic of objectivity addressing the pivotal and immediate issues of concern to Morris Township residents, like what is being taught in our schools; how will we stem the tide of over development; how is the border crisis spillover of illegals to our community affecting our quality of life, to name a few. You know the basics enveloping our every day existence vs. a U.S. citizen demonstrating with decorum her constitutional privilege. I look forward to hearing more from this impressive lady, hopefully not through your filter. Sherry, Thanks for throwing your hat in the ring.
That’s how this old man sees it.
It is terrible to see people supporting Ms. Nardolillo just because she’s a “nice person”. According to the article, she’s a member of Mom’s for Liberty who has: opposed COVID-19 mask- and vaccine mandates in schools, advocated for banning books at school libraries, and campaigned against curriculum that discuss critical race theory, discrimination and gender issues. How are any of these positions good for society? If she’s such a “patriot”, why is she shielding books from children? Why does she believe she “knows” more about vaccine safety than the many many scientists who have dedicated their lives to learning the nuances of human biology? I would bet she doesn’t know the difference between DNA and RNA but she feels confident enough to oppose vaccines because of her beliefs. Beliefs are not facts and she’s just another conservative who uses her emotional beliefs to support her position rather than reasoned thoughts. She may be “nice” but so is a non-English speaking housecleaner.
Great to see people running for public office. Hopefully there will be good honest debates . Heaven knows we need to start listing to and helping each other.
Praying that people remain civil and respectful. There is no other way to conduct our affairs. It is wise to consider the innocent and the honorable. We will aspire to the best ways of liberty by being: literate ,sober, caring and kind.
Time to find common ground and solutions. It is easy, and maybe joyful for some to attack others ,but in order to preserve our ideals we need to show maturity and wisdom.
Lent a hand if you can, criticize if you must, but please help our great community in any way that you can. We all count, we can all offer something good ,lets find it!
Thank you for reading.
I’ve known Sherry since high school. She is talented, smart, and loves her family, America and her community. She has a demonstrated ability to get involved and she can clearly be persuasive as evidenced by her working within the GOP to get on the ballot and win the support of the party for this special election.
I’ve read many of the comments in this thread and as anyone with half a brain can see, the negative and derogatory comments are more demonstrative of the character of those posting than of Sherry Nardolillo. The keyboard warriors hiding in their living rooms should be ashamed of themselves. How many of them have taken the initiative to get involved? I have no doubts that Sherry will represent the interests of all in Morris Township.
Ah, yes, won’t somebody think of the country club people? What a joke.
“I have no idea what happened. But it certainly is not being presented the way it happened. I mean, I was there. I was in the capital Jan. 6, I was at the rally”
Which is it? I will vote for someone who can string together words in a coherent, intelligible sentence. Sad for them that they chose this person. Can’t wait for a debate, which she will probably choose not to participate in.
“True the Vote” and “2000 Mules” have been widely discredited. Ms. Nardolillo “has no idea what happened” at the Jan. 6 march she attended and apparently does not want to find out. No worries about who she will represent though, she spends her time talking with other mothers at country clubs.
If it looks like an insurrectionist and walks like an insurrectionist, there’s a good chance it’s an insurrectionist.
Morris Township has several thousand registered Republican voters, and exactly 36 of them participated in choosing this candidate, who undoubtedly does not represent the mainstream of the Township Republicans. It is an object lesson in what can happen when people can’t be bothered to pay attention to the electoral process.
She needs to move with her family to Texas and run for office. We all should boycott her husband’s business who is feeding this woman who is attempted a coup.
https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/unmasking-moms-liberty
Ms. Sherry Nardolillo, regarding your candidacy, I did not learn anything about your plans for governing Morris Township.
What is your platform? Your duties as a committee member are to decide on ordinances, pay bills, approve resolutions and talk with the residents of the township.
What are your jurisdictional duties? You mention actions you took regarding results of the 2020 election. You have commented on the school budget formula. You have commented on a resolution passed by the Town Council of the Town of Morristown. None of these activities are part of the duties of a Morris Township committee member.
Voters will want to know your opinions on traffic, development, and open space, just to name three areas over which you will have control. Be prepared to address these quotidian issues that affect everyone.
Scary that the local party has swung so far to the right! And anyone who says that Jan. 6th was just a peaceful walk in the park is delusional.
Agreed ^ . She better never win anything
“Marched”. That’s an awfully generous headline. You mean she participated in a riot/ insurrection.
How low can the Republican party go? This woman was directly involved in the Capitol riot, falsely believes that Trump won the election (he didn’t), and wants to burn books she doesn’t like. And most Republicans apparently are fine with all of this. It’s revolting.