‘Young Sperm’ Comment Sets Democratic New Jersey Governor Against Her Second-in-Command

Governor Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey went to war with her own hand-picked lieutenant governor Thursday night, demanding Pastor Dale Caldwell resign after a report commissioned by her administration found her second-in-command sexually harassed a female staffer.Mr. Caldwell denied the allegations, said through his attorney he was deprived of due process, and offered no sign he was intending to step down. Ms. Sherrill cannot fire the lieutenant governor, who was elected alongside her this past November.“These violations substantiated in the investigation reflect a pattern of behavior that does not meet the standards of this Administration,” the governor said in a statement Thursday. “The ethical lapses persisted despite multiple warnings and trainings. The substantiated finding of sexual harassment is extremely troubling.”Mr. Caldwell has been under investigation since May, less than four months after he and Ms. Sherrill were sworn into office.The investigation found that Mr. Caldwell, who is 66 years old and single, “made a romantic advance toward a female staffer’s friend.”“After his advance was rebuffed, the LG told the staffer, in reference to her and her friend, that ‘you young women are looking for young sperm,’” the report by the law firm Lowenstein Sandler reads. “The LG’s comment, sexual in nature, caused the staffer to change the way she interacted with the LG at work, to attempt to distance herself from him, and to avoid travel with him when possible.”Mr. Caldwell denied that allegation, but investigators “did not find his denial credible.”The report also found Mr. Caldwell twice violated state ethics rules by taking uninvited guests to six separate events and “attempted on multiple occasions to secure a promotion for a state employee with whom he had a romantic relationship.”These actions happened despite multiple warnings to Mr. Caldwell from Sherrill administration staff, the report says.An attorney for Mr. Caldwell, Thomas Calcagni, blasted the findings of the report, calling them “character assassination.” Mr. Calcagni said a state trooper who was driving Mr. Caldwell and the staffer when the “young sperm” conversation allegedly occurred did not hear the remark.“This unnecessarily protracted and one-sided process lacked the requisite due process that should be afforded every citizen of this state,” Mr. Calcagni said. “The Lieutenant Governor was not provided a meaningful opportunity to address each of these anonymous allegations or offer readily identifiable witnesses who possessed more pertinent, first-hand knowledge of the events in question.”In one case, Mr. Calcagni said, Mr. Caldwell reimbursed the organizers of an event $175 for bringing a guest with him.“The Lieutenant Governor participated in the investigative process faithfully to the limited extent permitted, expecting a genuine truth-seeking inquiry,” Mr. Calcagni said in a statement Thursday night. “Unfortunately, the report twists seemingly benign phrases, such as ‘executive presence,’ to imply improper motive; relies heavily and unduly on the anonymous complainant’s perceptions, characterizations, and multi-layered hearsay; and disregards the testimony of staffers who did not share those views, as well as the Lieutenant Governor’s own account.”Mr. Caldwell was a little-known president of a small liberal arts institution when he was picked as Ms. Sherrill’s running mate in July 2025. He serves as a pastor of a Methodist church and was the president of the New Brunswick Board of Education from 1998 to 2024.Mr. Caldwell’s father, Gilbert Caldwell, was also a pastor who marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights movement.A Democratic source said members of the Legislature have mixed feelings about the report and Mr. Caldwell’s future.“Most of them don’t want to deal with it, a good portion of them know that this is wrong and some of them just want it to go away,” the source said. “And then you got to figure there’s some that’s already trying to say ‘who’s gonna get the replacement right?’ So it’s like it’s mixed in a sense but overall people generally think that it’s (bogus).”A report on the New Jersey Globe politics website on September 8 said a Centenary University employee came forward to the Sherrill campaign three months before Election Day 2025 to allege Mr. Caldwell had created a hostile work environment as Centenary’s president.The report said a Sherill campaign staffer agreed to meet with the employee, then ghosted her. Ms. Sherrill and Mr. Caldwell went on to win a landslide election victory over Republican Jack Ciattarelli.The Democratic source said Ms. Sherill was never truly comfortable with Mr. Caldwell and wants him gone.“Because she needs to put in somebody there,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. “She never really wanted an African-American: she always wanted a Latino woman. And she wants him out of the way.”“When you look at the report and it says the repeated things that he did, it’s like they started to document and then it was almost like a hunt for when he would (mess) up.”Ms. Sherrill, who frequently mentions her time as a helicopter pilot in the US Navy, is a former congresswoman who has made opposing the Trump administration’s agenda a centerpiece of her policy in the Garden State.“The Lieutenant Governor’s resignation is necessary and in the best interest of New Jersey residents,” Ms. Sherrill said in her Thursday night statement. “The President continues to undermine confidence in public service at the federal level. In New Jersey, I will not accept a culture that sweeps misconduct under the rug. We have to be better than that — people expect and deserve better.”

‘Young Sperm’ Comment Sets Democratic New Jersey Governor Against Her Second-in-Command

‘Young Sperm’ Comment Sets Democratic New Jersey Governor Against Her Second-in-Command

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