Standing outside Saturn Pizza, a food joint attached to a petrol station off Route 70 on the Jersey Shore, Republican Jack Ciattarelli made his case to be his state’s next governor.
“I have got a really simple idea: How about we elect a Jersey guy?” Ciattarelli said, drawing cheers from a crowd gathered on a crisp autumn evening. Three generations of his family had achieved their “American dream” in New Jersey, he said. “That is what this race is all about.”
The 63-year-old former state legislator had more: “I don’t want to be congressman. I don’t want to be a senator. I don’t want to be president . . . I just want to right the ship . . . and when this is all over, I am going to the beach in Surf City!”
This is Ciattarelli’s third bid to run the state, and it is his most closely watched campaign.
A year into Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency, voters will head to the polls in New Jersey on Tuesday to elect their next governor in a contest offering the clearest signal yet of the country’s political mood.
Ciattarelli is the underdog — but Republicans think they can pull off an upset that will hand Trump a prize heading into next year’s midterms.
“New Jersey really is the big one,” said Jim McLaughlin, one of Trump’s top pollsters. “If the Democrats win, it is kind of status quo. But if the Republicans win, that is a big deal.”
While Kamala Harris won New Jersey in last year’s presidential election by six points, the traditionally “blue” Democratic leaning Garden State had one of the largest swings to Trump in the country.
Ciattarelli, with a tight 15-minute stump speech about his local roots and the soaring cost of living, is trying to capitalise on that momentum.
His opponent, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, is a former Navy helicopter pilot who was elected to Congress in 2018 by winning an affluent US congressional district in the New York City suburbs, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.
Running for governor, Sherrill has hammered her Republican opponent by trying to tie him to Trump, trade wars and the government shutdown.
Ciattarelli has sought to centre the contest on the cost of living and more local issues like a ban on plastic bags in supermarkets, depicting Sherrill as an out-of-touch elite interloper.
“We are going to continue to remind people who my opponent really is,” Ciattarelli told the blue-collar crowd at Saturn Pizza.
He ribbed Sherrill for supposedly fumbling an interviewer’s question about a cherished local sandwich that is called either “Taylor ham” (northern New Jersey) or “pork roll” (southern).
“She wants you to think she is a Jersey girl. We already [dis]proved that,” Ciattarelli said to laughter.
The food-fight hit was misplaced — Ciattarelli had taken Sherrill’s comments out of context. But his strategy seems to be working.
With just days until the vote on November 4, polls show a dead heat — and national Republicans are optimistic about a come-from-behind victory for their candidate.
The president has endorsed Ciattarelli, and last week dialled into a “tele” town hall to support him. New Jersey is home to Trump’s Bedminster golf club, but the state had been “wrecked by radical left Democrats”, he claimed.
“People now, inside New Jersey and outside New Jersey, know we can win this race, and we’re going to,” Ciattarelli told the Financial Times this week as he criss-crossed the state on his campaign bus.
Democrats still have an edge. Trump’s national approval ratings are low. New Jersey has not backed a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, and while the governorship has flipped between the parties, there are roughly 850,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state.
But the current Democratic governor Phil Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive who cannot run again, is also unpopular in a densely populated state where independent-minded voters have shown they are willing to cross party lines in state and local elections.
New Jersey looms large in popular culture for its brash depiction in television shows like The Sopranos and Jersey Shore, or the working man anthems of singers like Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.
But the state’s electorate is diverse, covering not only leafy, moneyed suburbs of New York and Philadelphia, but also more working-class communities in both industrial towns and rural areas. Today, gripes about the high cost of living, especially energy costs, are rife.
Republicans argue Sherrill is in effect running for a third term of Murphy’s governorship. She is making a push to dispel that image.
“We have a lot of head winds here, but we have developed the largest field programme that New Jersey has ever seen,” Sherrill told supporters on Wednesday in a call organised by the Democratic National Committee.
“The message is cutting through: my desire to cut costs, to bring costs down for New Jerseyans and to fight Trump and the economic harm he is doing,” she said.
Sherrill and groups supporting her have out-raised and outspent Ciattarelli — roughly $45mn to Ciattarelli’s $36mn — according to FT analysis of state filings, and Democratic heavyweights are lending support.
Pete Buttigieg campaigned with the congresswoman on Thursday and Barack Obama rallied with her in Newark on Saturday.
But Democrats remain clear-eyed about how hard their Republican opponents are fighting to flip the state.
“New Jersey is the state where Republicans want to blunt Democrats’ momentum,” said Jim Kessler of the Democratic think-tank Third Way. “Democrats have over-performed in some of the early elections in 2025, and Republicans think that if they can flip New Jersey, this will change the zeitgeist heading into 2026.”
Sherrill and her allies maintain their best strategy remains to tie Ciattarelli as closely to Trump as possible.
“The biggest wind in Jack Ciattarelli’s face is the fact that the president can’t stop talking every day,” said Lou Greenwald, a Democratic state legislator.
Republicans acknowledge Ciattarelli has had to walk a political tightrope in the final stretch of his campaign.
Political veterans say he must embrace Trump to shore up his base of supporters, including those less likely to turn out in an off-year election than a White House race.
They showed up in droves during last year’s presidential contest, including tens of thousands who attended Trump’s rally on the Jersey Shore.
But Ciattarelli also needs to leave enough distance between his campaign and Trump to appeal to disaffected Democratic and independent voters already tired of the president.
“There are a lot of factors that line up for Ciattarelli. But it is still New Jersey. It is still a tough place,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist who was a top adviser to Chris Christie, New Jersey’s last Republican governor. “Sherrill is trying to nationalise the race. She is talking about Trump all of the time, because that is to her advantage.”
Ciattarelli told the FT he “welcomed” Trump’s “participation”. The White House had been “very co-operative in doing whatever it is that we think they can do to help us win”.
But on the trail, he has been careful to sidestep national politics, making no direct mention of Trump, focusing almost exclusively on local issues, from the high price of electricity to a ban on plastic bags.
“It’s amazing. I stand here for lower taxes, I get a nice round of applause,” he told the crowd at Saturn Pizza. “But I say bring back the plastic bags, and it brings down the house every time.”
The message is resonating on the Jersey Shore, where supporters — many wearing Trump’s famous red hats or holding signs reading “Make New Jersey Great Again” — were effusive.
“We are tired of these people coming in here,” said Mary Lou Powner, the chair of the Republican Freedom Caucus of New Jersey, a local grassroots group that champions the president’s “America First” message.
“Jack is really New Jersey. He is three generations here. He has run businesses here. He is what New Jersey needs.”
Joe, a 68-year-old retiree and life-long Republican who declined to give his surname, agreed. He blamed Democrats for failing to offer a positive alternative to Trump.
“Their agenda is just to blame him . . . They are blaming him every day,” he said. “People are getting tired of it. Tell us what you’re gonna do. Tell us how you’re going to make it better for Americans.”
Read the full article here
