Here’s what we’re watching in the N.J. governor’s race

Democratic and Republican voters across New Jersey will decide their party nominees for governor on Tuesday in a race that could provide early indications of voter sentiment ahead of the midterm elections.

This year’s contest is uniquely expensive and competitive, with voters already signaling greater interest than with recent primaries.

Across the country, observers view it as a test of the first year of President Donald Trump’s second administration. Virginia is the only other state with a governor’s race this year, and its primaries are uncontested.

On the Democratic side in New Jersey, all six contenders argue they’re the best suited to take on Trump’s administration, and they all have paths to victory in what political experts say could be the most competitive gubernatorial race in decades.

On the Republican side, four Trump loyalists are vying for their party’s nomination against one candidate who is openly critical of the president.

The primary also sets up a general election test for Democrats who hope to hold onto the governor’s office after two terms of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. The last time New Jersey elected a governor of the same party three terms in a row was in 1961.

Historically, after a two-term governor’s tenure, voters in the state have opted for a leader from the opposing party. But New Jersey gubernatorial races have also tended to favor whichever party is not in the White House, so voter backlash against Trump could mitigate fatigue with Democratic control in Trenton.

The state’s registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 827,000, though Republicans have narrowed the gap by about 100,000 votes in the last year. The state, which had been seen as reliably blue in presidential contests, gave Democrats a scare when Trump lost by only 6 percentage points in November, a 10-point slide from his loss there in 2020.

The combined spending in this year’s gubernatorial primary races appears to be the most expensive election in the state’s history at $122.5 million, with more unspent money in the bank as of May 27, according to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC). That includes $54.8 million from candidates’ campaigns and nearly $68 million from independent spending groups.

The previous record was set in 2005 between two self-financed gubernatorial candidates, which cost nearly $60 million or $98 million with inflation, according to ELEC.

A month ahead of the primary, candidates in both parties had already outspent the totals spent in the 2017 primaries, the last time the state had a contested Democratic primary.

A total of $37.5 million in public matching funds has been provided in total across eight candidates so far this year, the most who have qualified since 1989.

To learn about the candidates, check out The Inquirer’s voter guide. For the big-picture themes we’re looking at, read on.

Primaries typically bring out the most dedicated party members and New Jersey’s will be a test of how motivated the Democratic Party base is as its party grapples with myriad challenges after November’s presidential election defeats.

It’s a crowded field with multiple candidates vying for an open seat and millions being spent to draw attention to the race. Murphy cruised to victory in 2017. While he had five competitors, he was the early favorite with support from every Democratic county committee in the state and won 48% of the vote. Similar to this year, Murphy’s 2017 election also followed a presidential election that put Trump in the White House.

Based on early voting and mail voting numbers, New Jersey political experts predict turnout will surpass the more than 500,000 that showed up in 2017. Micah Rasmussen, the director of Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, said experts predict a turnout of between 600,000 and 700,000 in the Democratic primary, though he said he’s more inclined to estimate on the lower end of that spectrum.

Since the Democratic race is so competitive, the winner could get just 20% of the vote.

That could make the real challenge for Democrats navigating how to unite a fractured voting base once it has a nominee. All of the Democratic candidates vowed to support the primary winner.

There haven’t been so many viable candidates in a gubernatorial primary in New Jersey since 1981, experts say. Public election financing opened up to gubernatorial primaries that year and the county line was suspended, encouraging more top-tier candidates to run.

The crowded primary led to a historically close general election that year in which Republican Thomas Kean won the governorship by fewer than 1,700 votes.

This year, Republicans are still riding high after Trump made up significant ground in the state.

Unlike eight years ago, the front-runners vying for the GOP gubernatorial nomination aren’t criticizing Trump, they’ve fully embraced him and hope to appeal to his base. The onetime moderate New Jersey GOP has transformed into Trump’s party. Does that boost GOP turnout?

In 2017 about 242,000 votes were cast in the Republican primary for governor. In 2021, that number rose above 320,000. Political experts expect between 400,000 and 500,000 this year.

Trump’s coveted endorsement went to Jack Ciattarelli, a former Assembly member running for the office for the third time. Ciattarelli, the front-runner for the GOP nomination in most polls, lost the 2017 Republican primary and fell just about 3 points behind Murphy in the 2021 general election.

Looking toward November, inner-party fractures could potentially make trouble for the GOP. Bill Spadea, a former conservative radio host running for the nomination, has had a bitter rivalry with Ciattarelli throughout the primary. While Spadea once said he would support the Republican nominee as long as the nominee supports Trump, he has more recently declined to answer when asked whether he would make that commitment.

Trump said at a telerally for Ciattarelli last Monday night that the race is “being watched, actually, all over the world, because New Jersey is ready to pop out of that blue horror show.” The night before early voting at the polls began, Trump said he predicts people will vote, “I think, at levels that haven’t been seen before in New Jersey.”

“This year’s election for governor is critical for New Jersey’s future,” Trump said.

The national Democratic Party is in search of its next leader and at a bit of an ideological crossroads. The field of contenders in New Jersey mirrors some of the divergent paths forward.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka represents the true progressive wing of the party and has the support of a coalition of progressive unions and the Working Families Party.

Steven Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City, the state’s second-largest city after Newark, embraces a pragmatic, antiestablishment sentiment in a moment when the Democratic Party’s popularity is low.

Sean Spiller, a former Montclair mayor, presents himself as a progressive but has taken heat for a campaign that relied heavily on a super PAC funded by $40 million from the New Jersey Education Association public school teachers union. Spiller is the union’s current president.

Former State Senate President Steve Sweeney, the longest-serving lawmaker in that role who hails from South Jersey, and U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who represents the northernmost part of the state in Congress, have both appealed to more moderate voters in the state.

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot who also represents a swath of North Jersey, has run a campaign aimed at attracting different factions of the party, running both to the left and to the right of other candidates in the field.

Who wins will be something watched by national Democrats on the hunt for effective messaging in the 2026 midterms.

New Jersey’s primary ballots were set up for years in most counties in a way that favored the candidates endorsed by county party establishments, grouping endorsed candidates together and leaving other candidates off to the side. This left even accomplished and well-resourced candidates at an extreme disadvantage and often discouraged them from staying in the race if they didn’t get the coveted party endorsement.

This ballot design had a presence in the state dating back 100 years, according to Rasmussen.

But the state Legislature redesigned the ballot to organize candidates based on the office they’re seeking after a federal judge blocked the practice in the Democratic primaries last year after a lawsuit from Sen. Andy Kim, a South Jersey Democrat, and other candidates.

Fair ballot advocates still take some issues with the design, but they say it’s a big improvement.

Sherrill secured endorsements from 10 county parties — the most of anyone in the race. Sweeney secured the endorsement of most South Jersey county parties, and Gottheimer secured Bergen and Warren Counties.

County line endorsements are still noted as a slogan on the ballot, but their power has greatly diminished. Still, the machine endorsements bring a structured support system of engaged rank-and-file Democrats. Tuesday will be a good indication of how much power these apparatuses still have.

South Jerseyans tend to complain that they get forgotten in Trenton.

The last time New Jersey elected a governor from South Jersey was in 1989. Democrat James Florio successfully brought together South Jersey voters to support him while support for candidates in the north was split.

This year, Sweeney is the only South Jersey candidate in the six-person primary.

Sweeney was a voice for South Jersey during his long tenure leading the state Senate. But he was ousted in 2021 by Ed Durr, a Republican truck driver who was little known at the time and won a long-shot campaign. It was a blow to the South Jersey machine.

But the machine is taking a bet on Sweeney in the governor’s race. George E. Norcross III, the Democratic power broker and Sweeney’s friend and backer, said that he wanted Sweeney to run for governor days after his 2021 loss.

Meanwhile, Fulop, the Jersey City mayor, has tapped into a movement in South Jersey aimed at defeating the machine.

He’s been the most visible candidate on the ground in South Jersey other than Sweeney. According to his campaign, he’s come to the region for more than 30 campaign events since Jan. 1. Across the state, he recruited a slate of 40 anti-machine down-ballot candidates to run on a shared slogan with him, “Democrats for Change,” mimicking the machine’s tactics.

Other candidates have also swung through the south and made their case to voters that they won’t be forgotten.

Will South Jersey voters prioritize regional loyalty and give Sweeney another chance in hopes of having a South Jersey advocate in the governor’s mansion or has the longtime power broker’s political career sunset?

Sweeney’s ideological views will also draw and repel voters who care less about geography.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to glean from a primary which party is better positioned for the 2026 midterms.

But turnout for both parties and the candidates that ultimately succeed could indicate how party allegiances are shifting and whose messages resonate in 2026 and beyond.

And the matchup in November could tell us a lot about New Jersey’s political temperature — and the nation’s.

This article was updated to include more recent spending totals.