A Republican governor in NJ could ‘alter reality’ for ‘parental rights’ advocates, so they’ve formed a coalition for the governor’s race

A new coalition of conservative groups pushing for more parental oversight of schools has its eye on this year’s elections in New Jersey, and they’re starting with the Republican gubernatorial primary.

The new coalition, N.J. Parental Rights Coalition, identifies as nonpartisan but its views align with conservative talking points espoused by President Donald Trump and his allies that have emerged as part of what is called the “parental rights” movement.

The movement has largely focused on culture wars playing out in public schools since the COVID-19 pandemic, starting with a focus on mask and vaccine mandates and since honing in on race, gender, and sexuality. Parental rights advocates accuse schools of ideological overreach while opponents of the movement say they’re attacking LGBTQ students and putting public health at risk.

The New Jersey coalition formed late last year when five Jersey-based conservative advocacy groups and parental rights advocate Kristen Cobo became a unified front for the state’s gubernatorial election, which is being closely watched across the country as an opportunity to take voters’ temperature during the first year of Trump’s second term.

While the groups – N.J. Stands Up, Jersey 1st, NJ Public Health Innovation PAC, NJ Family Policy Center, and Innovative Parenting NJ – have varied priorities, they joined forces around a broad mission to support what they call “parental rights” and “medical freedom” for this year’s gubernatorial and Assembly races.

“The governor can really alter reality here in New Jersey when it comes to the experience of many families,” said Shawn Hyland, the director of advocacy for the NJ Family Policy Center. “So we’re putting a lot of hope and a lot of effort in getting a governor who will work with families instead of fighting them every step of the way.”

Medical freedom is a term used by opponents of vaccine mandates that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic and is embraced by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., raising alarm in the medical community.

GOP conservatives feel hopeful this year with Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy term-limited and a wide-open governor’s race in a state that has elected both Republicans and Democrats to its executive office.

The new coalition earlier this month released video interviews with Republican gubernatorial candidates Jack Ciattarelli, a former Assembly member who ran for governor in the 2017 Republican primary and 2021 general election, former radio host Bill Spadea, and State Sen. Jon Bramnick. In the roughly half-hour videos, Fernando Uribe of Real Talk with Fernando interviewed each candidate about the coalition’s agenda.

Hyland, 48, said the coalition only interviewed Republican candidates because the Democratic candidates for governor don’t align with their mission. The Democratic National Committee has criticized parental rights efforts to ban books as “anti-freedom” and “history erasing.”

Hyland, an Ocean County advocate with a background in ministry, is currently visiting churches to talk about the election, parental rights, and pregnancy resource centers, which are meant to persuade against abortions. (Republicans have accused Attorney General Matt Platkin of targeting these centers.)

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Hyland’s NJ Family Policy Center describes marriage as “God’s design for uniting male and female” and shares a guide on its website sponsored by organizations like Project 2025’s Heritage Foundation that says “radical transgender ideology” is harming families and “devastating lives.” The group believes parents should be notified before their children speak to any school staff about physical or mental health issues, which ties into a common theme among parental rights advocates: They don’t want anyone at school playing a role they believe belongs to a parent.

Advocates in this coalition, like Hyland, want parents to be notified if their children identify as transgender at school, and don’t want transgender kids accommodated based on their gender identity, such as in sports, bathrooms, and health class. They want parents to have more control over school curriculum and what books are allowed in libraries. They’re against vaccine requirements and they support school choice. They believe parents should be able to opt their kids out of learning about gender identity and diversity, equity, and inclusion, or remove those themes from the curriculum altogether.

The coalition plans to develop and provide training for Assembly candidates who want to talk about its agenda and policies, but Hyland recognized that only one of the Democrat-controlled legislative chambers is up for election this year and it would be “quite a tall order” for Republicans to flip the Assembly.

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The governor’s office feels more within reach, and the executive in New Jersey has the rare authority to appoint both the attorney general and education commissioner, who these advocates see as being able to maneuver state laws for or against their agenda.

Hyland said that Ciattarelli and Spadea both stood out among the three GOP gubernatorial candidates but the coalition is not making a primary endorsement.

Here are some of the policies the coalition is focused on and the candidates’ responses in the videos:

Teachers are required to accept a student’s gender identity in New Jersey as part of the state’s policies to create a safe and nondiscriminatory environment for transgender students. Parental consent is not required, and schools should be “mindful of disputes” between students and their parents or guardians regarding their gender identity, according to state guidance provided to schools.

All three of the Republican candidates said they support parents being notified if their children identify as transgender at school, however. They also all support separation by sex assigned at birth, not gender identity, for sports and health class. Bramnick and Spadea noted that they support exceptions in the case of child abuse at which point authorities would be notified.

“You hide nothing from them unless there’s a threat of violence,” Bramnick said.

Ciattarelli said the state’s current policy is “really, really, offensive.”

“If anybody’s son named Nick was going to school and wanted to be called Nicolette while at school, parents need to know,” said Ciattarelli.

Spadea says he does not believe that transgender identity is legitimate, a position that is at odds with major medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics.

New Jersey K-12 schools require vaccines for diseases like measles and polio, but do not require other recommended vaccines like the seasonal flu and COVID-19 shots.

Spadea and Ciattarelli said they are against mandated vaccines, and both said they want to expand the existing religious and medical exemptions in what Ciattarelli called a “philosophical exemption.”

“We are going to have the ‘because I said so, exemption,’ ” Spadea said. “If mom wants to exempt a kid from a vaccine, they will have the power to do that.”

Bramnick said he supports the religious exemption and generally believes vaccines should be a choice but did not rule out requiring a vaccine if there was a crisis that seriously threatened public health.

“Religious exemption, choice, all good, unless we saw a situation that got out of control and it called for some sort of executive action,” he said.

Ciattarelli said the “my body, my choice” slogan describing reproductive rights should also apply to “medical freedom” for vaccines.

One impact of lower vaccination rates is playing out across the country, with measles outbreaks becoming more common as vaccination rates dip. The disease had previously been essentially eradicated in the United States, where the vast majority of children were routinely vaccinated as part of school immunization requirements.

The current book ban movement rose in 2021, particularly when parental rights group Moms for Liberty was born. These advocates have sought to censor books they believe inappropriately discuss LGBTQ themes and diversity, equity, and inclusion, leading to a national debate about free speech and inclusivity.

Murphy signed the Freedom to Read Act into law in December to create a guide for dealing with these debates in New Jersey. The law requires school boards and public library governing bodies to establish policies for library materials in an effort to prevent arbitrary book bans, including a system to review concerns about books.

The law allows books to be banned if the material is considered developmentally inappropriate but not over the author’s views. It also protects librarians from criminal and civil liability related to their “good faith” actions following the policies.

Ciattarelli takes particular issue with that part of the law, and argued that the only public employees who should get immunity are law enforcement officers, “for many very obvious reasons.”

Bramnick, who was the only Republican in the state Senate to vote for it, said that before this law, the state had “the Wild West” over which books go into school libraries.

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“This bill finally set up a standard where the Board of Education would have to stick their neck out and set up a real policy,” Bramnick said.

Hyland, who advocated against an earlier version of the bill, said he and fellow activists took a neutral stance on the version that became law because it was an improvement in their view.

Spadea criticized Republicans who supported the bill for believing they “somehow have a compromise with the dark side” and said that as governor he would remove any material he interprets as “sexualizing children.”

Spadea said he wants to fire most of the state’s Department of Education employees and replace the department’s leaders with parents, teachers, and advocates in the Moms for Liberty, parental rights, and medical freedom movement.