On the eve of the New Jersey Governor’s election, Dale Caldwell ’82, the running mate of candidate Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), is feeling optimistic.
“We have some amazing statisticians. We’ve looked at the early voting. It looks very favorable for us,” Caldwell said in an interview. “But it’s not over ’til it’s over.”
Caldwell and Sherrill are going head-to-head with two-time Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli and Lt. Gov. candidate Jim Gannon. He and Sherrill currently lead the election polls, although the campaign has appeared to lose ground in recent weeks. In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Caldwell discussed what is at stake for New Jerseyans in this election and reflected on how his time at Princeton has led him to this moment.
At Princeton, Caldwell was an Economics major who found his niche amongst the Ivy League intelligentsia — leadership. To him, Princeton is the place where you, surrounded by the best, “start to really find your niche.” He recalled two anecdotes from his time at Princeton that shaped his political path.
The first was his work at the now-extinct Commons in Madison Hall. Before the residential college system, Princeton dining was housed in a five-hall cluster with a central kitchen. This amalgam was known as the Commons.
Students would do “everything but cook the food” there, Caldwell said. He began by mopping the floors of the Graduate School, before working his way through the ranks from crew Captain to student manager to finally CEO of the dining hall — a position with 400 people under his leadership, including former Maryland U.S. Representative John Sarbanes ’84 (D-Md.).
As one of the few African American leaders on campus, this position would have a life-long impact, inspiring him with the confidence to be a leader — a confidence he is going to “take into Trenton with Mikie,” Caldwell said. He called this job “my greatest experience.”
Caldwell also said that he was heavily influenced by the work of Lawrence Hamm ’78 and his advocacy against South African Apartheid. Hamm is a New Jersey civil rights activist and recently endorsed Sherrill and Caldwell. At Princeton, he had led the People’s Front for the Liberation of Southern Africa — a student organization which protested the apartheid — and led a 210-student sit-in advocating for Princeton’s divestment from corporations associated with South Africa.
Caldwell came to Princeton the fall after Hamm’s sit-in, but the remnants of the event sparked Caldwell’s determination to fight “for people who don’t have a voice” — a sentiment which “helped [him] at Princeton” and is the drive behind his and Sherrill’s campaign.
Now, Caldwell holds an extensive resume. Two of his proudest moments are serving as the current president of Centenary University in Hackettstown and the current pastor of Covenant United Methodist Church in Plainfield. This dedication to leadership and the human condition, he said, is the exact thing Sherrill was looking for while developing her campaign.
“I love what I do — being a college president, being a pastor of a church,” Caldwell said. “We really hit it off because she really is focused on being a voice for people who are struggling in life and for making New Jersey more affordable.”
Caldwell’s role as a pastor, he said, is helping him fight for their goal of ensuring that “the [local] communities are going to have a voice.” He brings to Sherrill’s campaign the added support of faith-based communities that he’s built strong relationships with over his years as a pastor.
He is working to unite these faith-based communities to strengthen them financially in the wake of “losing money because of the federal government” — a conversation he had just the other day in Princeton, at the Princeton Theological Seminary, with the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens.
Caldwell and Sherrill’s work will also include fighting the federal government for university funding back.
“Donald Trump has targeted the Harvards, the Yales, the Princetons, the Columbias of the world for our research dollars,” he said. “They’re trying to pull out billions of dollars out of Ivy League institutions, so they can’t do research.”
Some of the research stopped, Caldwell said, has been for Alzheimer’s and cancer — two medical concerns that are deeply important to Caldwell, who has recovered from prostate cancer and whose mother recently passed away due to Alzheimer’s.
Their solution is to appoint “a strong attorney general” who will fight “these unconstitutional abuses.”
He added that should Ciattarelli win the election, his administration would further the federal pressures that “places like Princeton” are under, which he said have no support from the Republican Congress and Supreme Court. Ciattarelli has previously criticized Princeton’s partnership with New Jersey’s AI Hub, a flagship state initiative.
“If there were a Jack administration, New Jersey would abdicate their responsibility, and it’d be a nightmare for places like Princeton. It would just give Trump full carte blanche to really come in and destroy the state through Jack,” Caldwell said.
And for Caldwell, this journey to protect the middle class and local communities — “the people that the Trump administration are assaulting, taking away their benefits, the SNAP benefits, taking away Medicaid and Medicare” from — all began at Princeton.
“At Princeton, I really felt this call to say, ‘Hey, you have privilege: To whom much is given, much is expected. You gotta use it to really make a difference in the world,’” he told the ‘Prince.’ “I’m really excited. I can’t wait to get the election over so we can begin to transform New Jersey.”
Election results will be announced later today.
Luke Grippo is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince.’ He is from South Jersey, and typically covers University and town politics, on a national, regional, and local scale. He can be reached at lg5452[at]princeton.edu.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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