How Jack Ciattarelli could flip New Jersey red in November

Jack Ciattarelli won the GOP primary in a landslide. Now he’s hoping that nearly a decade of practice running in the state will help him flip it in November.

“All gas, no brakes,” Ciattarelli declared on election night.

Ciattarelli swept all 21 counties and secured his party’s nomination with a commanding 66% of the vote, or more than 300,000 ballots, despite his competitors spending millions. It’s his third time running for governor, losing the nomination in 2017 before winning it in 2021 and falling just three points behind incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in the general election.

Now, as he transitions to his second general election campaign, Republicans in New Jersey and nationally will be watching closely. Ciattarelli will have to overcome Democrats’ large registration advantage in the state, but he’s got the backing of a motivated Republican base, national party resources, and the familiarity of running before. He also has the support of President Donald Trump — which could cut both ways.

To some, Ciattarelli’s 2021 showing made him a two-time loser. To others, it made him the guy who almost beat Murphy.

“Obviously, it was a race that stung a lot for all of us coming so close, when a lot of people doubted that New Jersey was going to flip,” Kennith Gonzalez, the executive director of the New Jersey GOP, said of Ciattarelli’s close call in 2021. “And it didn’t sting for Jack. The next day, Jack was out there.”

The former Assembly member from Central Jersey hasn’t stopped campaigning since, visiting diners, Republican clubs, businesses, train stations, town halls, pancake breakfasts, and conventions throughout the state. He also didn’t take the time to rest after winning the nomination Tuesday night.

Ciattarelli started his day Wednesday at a bakery in his Democratic opponent U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s district, which was one of two dozen events he’s held in the few days since his win, according to his campaign manager, Eric Arpert. He’s building on more than 700 public events since officially launching his bid in 2024, Arpert told The Inquirer.

“It’s a real opportunity,” said Matt Mowers, a GOP strategist who worked on Trump’s campaign and on former Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s past campaigns. “Ciattarelli proved four years ago he could run a competent campaign on the verge of winning and had he had more money, he might have won that race. I don’t think you’ll see that mistake again.”

Most New Jersey political observers expected Ciattarelli to win, but even his close allies were surprised by just how large his margin was in a GOP primary that drew more than 100,000 more voters than 2021.

And there’s some correlation between Trump’s strong performance in the state and Ciattarelli’s in the primary. The five counties — four of them in South Jersey — that gave Ciattarelli his highest shares of the vote all voted for Trump in 2024. Three of those counties, Passaic, Atlantic, and Cumberland, flipped to Trump from President Joe Biden in 2020.

Ciattarelli got 72.4% of the vote in the four counties across the state that flipped from Biden to Trump, compared with 66.8% in the other counties, a 5.6 percentage-point difference.

One of Ciattarelli’s most serious primary opponents, radio host Bill Spadea, ran an anti-establishment campaign. Former State Sen. Jon Bramnick was the lone anti-Trump candidate. Ciattarelli, meanwhile, embraced support from the state’s party organizations and fought for the coveted endorsement of Trump during a bitter rivalry with Spadea.

Ciattarelli was vehemently against Trump prior to his first gubernatorial run during the president’s political rise in 2015. Then he tried to court both moderates and the MAGA base during his 2021 run, and largely avoided talking about the president. (Trump went on to criticize Ciattarelli for not seeking out his support on Spadea’s radio show last year.)

When Ciattarelli secured Trump’s endorsement last month, it bolstered a campaign that was already supported by the state party establishment. And many observers think it squashed Spadea’s chances.

Some insiders were concerned about the inner party nastiness that developed between Spadea and Ciattarelli but are hopeful Ciattarelli’s hefty win allows a unified party to move on.

“There’s definitely a very small divide right now in the Republican Party in New Jersey, and knowing the kind of guy that Jack is, he’s going to do whatever it takes to make sure that he unifies the party the same way he did in 2021 — where it was actually a bigger divide than what we saw in these election results,” said Gonzalez, the state GOP director.

Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 800,000 registrations in the state, but that number was more than 1 million when Ciattarelli came within three points of winning in 2021. He fell 84,286 votes behind Murphy, and that was after Trump lost the presidency, so motivation in the party was likely lower compared with this year.

Ciattarelli’s path to victory in November will require turning out the base that came out for Trump, who improved his performance in the majority-blue state by 10 points last year compared with 2020. He will also need to reach independents — and maybe also moderate Democrats — who his team plans to appeal to with state-specific issues surrounding cost of living and quality of life.

GOP operatives in New Jersey and nationally say there’s plenty working in the former Assembly member’s favor. He’s got name recognition from running three times and an expected infusion of national cash that wasn’t there in 2021.

Republicans are hopeful that in a state Trump only lost by six points, voters will be motivated. There was some evidence of that in the GOP primary. The total number of Republican votes cast increased 88% from the 2017 GOP primary to 2025. Democratic turnout was also up considerably.

Trump can help crank the turnout machine, especially among working-class voters who’ve shown a willingness to cross the aisle. More educated suburban areas might be pockets where the president is less helpful.

Some of Ciattarelli’s views could concern voters, like an abortion ban after 20 weeks or parental control in schools, but he more broadly argues for an affordable New Jersey that prioritizes safety and respects law enforcement.

“Jack’s gonna have to try and change a little bit of the rhetoric — and maybe back away” from Trump, argued former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican governor of the state from 1994 to 2001 who now cochairs the Forward Party and endorsed Sherrill. “I know [Trump] came closer than he has but this is not a Trump state. We have compassion for people. We embrace migrants.”

Like other Republicans running in traditionally blue states, Mowers said the key for Ciattarelli will be using Trump’s support strategically.

“Every Republican is going to own the president whether they want to or not,” Mowers said. “Smart campaigns know how to utilize it to their advantage.”

Sherrill and the Democratic Party were attacking Ciattarelli’s allyship with the president even before she won the primary. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to flip the script by accusing her of focusing too much on the president.

During his victory speech on Tuesday, Ciattarelli joked about a drinking game for every time Sherrill mentions Trump. His campaign will try to portray Sherrill as a D.C. insider and “Murphy 2.0.” and Ciattarelli as the candidate focused on New Jersey issues.

“At the end of the day, President Trump has nothing to do with New Jersey property taxes,” Gonzalez said. “President Trump has nothing to do with crime in New Jersey. He has nothing to do with the failed school funding formula that the Democrats have concocted.”

Sherrill will have to navigate messaging that she’s a new kind of leader while also convincing voters to continue its Democratic leadership.

Ciattarelli has never served in Washington so he may avoid some of the national attacks aimed at Republicans. He hasn’t served in the Assembly since 2018, so his voting record to defend is more distant than Sherrill’s.

“He didn’t vote for any of the stuff you would want to hang on Republicans,” said Nachama Soloveichik, a GOP strategist at the Pittsburgh-based firm ColdSpark, who has worked on congressional races in New Jersey. “Cutting Medicaid or this or that. He will be able to say I’m my own person. I support this, and that, and I wasn’t there casting votes.“

And despite the large registration gap, the party has made gains in a way the Democratic Party hasn’t.

The 2024 election showed a fracturing of traditional Democratic constituencies, particularly Latino men. Trump tripled his support in some heavily Latino parts of the state and he won Passaic County, which is about 43% Latino.

Ciattarelli and the state GOP have already been strategizing how to do that, with a panel dedicated to the subject at a statewide Republican convention earlier this year in Atlantic City.

A challenge for Ciattarelli will be turning out voters who tend to vote in presidential elections but not odd-year elections.

They’ll also look to turn out moderate Republicans who opted to embrace Trump in the last election.

“If Jack can go into these communities, ones that voted for Christie in 2014 and voted for Trump in 2024, and make them Ciattarelli voters, he’s got a good shot,” Mowers said.

His familiarity with voters, having run three times, may make that appeal easier.

And Gonzalez believes Ciattarelli won’t have to fight as much for the spotlight as he did in 2021 as the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed traditional campaigning and Murphy appeared in frequent TV news briefings as governor.

Spadea mocked Ciattarelli during the primary for being a two-time loser, and Sherrill has already picked up that script, calling him a “ghost of elections past” and a “rerun” in her victory speech on Tuesday.

But Ciattarelli’s perennial campaigning has resulted in a massive network of support in the state, and it’s part of why he’s been so successful.

“There are 564 towns in New Jersey, and Jack Ciattarelli has tried to find Republicans in every one of them,” said Benjamin Dworkin, the founding director of the bipartisan Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.

As much as Ciattarelli tries to focus on New Jersey, the state of the economy and Trump’s approval rating in November, which is currently slumping, will also likely have an impact on his chances. History could be on Ciattarelli’s side, though. The state tends to ping-pong between parties in the governor’s mansion. If Sherrill wins it will be the first time the same party has been elected to three consecutive terms since 1961.

“The improved environment for Republicans in the state, the complete implosion of the national Democratic Party, that kind of stuff creates an aura of optimism and I think it gives him momentum,” Soloveichik said.

“Politics, like anything in life, is practice — candidates get better with practice.”

Graphics editor John Duchneskie contributed to this article.