Responding to questions about her role in the 1994 U.S. Naval Academy cheating scandal, Democrat Mikie Sherrill uses a friend from Annapolis in a new digital ad defending her character in the New Jersey governor’s race.
In “Highest Traditions,” former U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Karsten DaPonte stops short of mentioning the cheating scandal, but validates Sherrill’s service in the Navy. DaPonte reads from a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal awarded to Sherrill, and adds that he “served alongside her.”
“Attacking her service record isn’t just wrong, it’s a blatant lie,” DaPonte said.
Script: “(DaPonte) Lieutenant Sherrill upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. I would know because I served alongside her. She was distinguished multiple times and honorably discharged. Attacking her service record isn’t just wrong, it’s a blatant lie.”
The ad identifies DaPonte only as Lt. Commander Karsten, leaving out his last name. The New Jersey Globe has identified him.
Ciattarelli also has a new digital ad related to the Naval Academy cheating scandal.
DaPonte entered the academy in 1993 and was a freshman during Sherrill’s senior year at Annapolis; he graduated in 1997. Sherrill remained on campus for 254 days after her May 1994 graduation and commission.
Records show that DaPonte, a resident of Bethesda, Maryland, has worked for a series of defense and federal government contractors whose work coincides with Sherrill’s service on the House Armed Services Committee; there is no indication that she helped DaPonte’s current employer, Nexight Group, obtain millions of dollars in government contracts.
He has contributed to Sherrill’s congressional campaigns, as well as to those of Joe Biden and Amy McGrath, a Navy veteran who challenged U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell in Kentucky five years ago. DaPonte’s sister, Karen Thornton, is also a Sherrill donor. She worked on the Armed Services Committee staff from 2020 to 2023.
Sherrill was prohibited from walking with her class at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994 as a punishment connected to the massive cheating scandal that implicated over 130 midshipmen in her class.
She claimed the action was punishment for not turning in her classmates. The Sherrill campaign declined a request to permit public inspection of any disciplinary records from her time at the academy. Only Sherrill may authorize the release of those sealed records.
Sherrill has made her military service as a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and helicopter pilot the centerpiece of her political identity, but has never publicly discussed her class’s cheating controversy in stump speeches or interviews. There were rumors that she was tied to the scandal in 2018 when she sought to flip a House seat in New Jersey’s 11th district, but it was suggested to the New Jersey Globe at the time that Sherrill was not involved.
The scandal revolved around electrical engineering exam answers that some midshipmen obtained and shared with their classmates in December 1992. Two dozen of Sherrill’s classmates were expelled, and one of those involved said in 2002 that he thought more than 400 out of the 663 midshipmen who took the exam had seen copies of it in advance.
