The summer is over, Labor Day
has come and gone, and New Jersey’s gubernatorial election is
here.
When all is said and done, the
race between Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) and former
Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R-Somerville) will likely only be
determined by the two or three million New Jerseyans, give or take,
who choose to cast a ballot. Many of those New Jerseyans will be
voting based on the kinds of local issues that always dominate
state campaigns: property taxes, energy prices, school funding
formulas.
The consequences of their vote,
however, will be felt far beyond just New Jersey. With only two
gubernatorial elections this year to gauge the political landscape,
all eyes will be on New Jersey and Virginia – and unlike prior
election cycles, when Virginia was seen as by far the more
competitive race, New Jersey may be this year’s marquee
contest.
“New Jersey and Virginia are the
first real tests of where things stand, and they’re important trial
balloons for messaging ahead of 2024,” said Matthew Klein, an
analyst at the Cook Political Report. “They’re really the big tests
of what we’ve got going on.”
National groups are expected to
spend tens of millions of dollars on the race this fall, far more
than what they’ve invested in past years. Sherrill and Ciattarelli,
recognizing the race’s stakes, are both leaning into national
issues in their campaigning, and making the case to voters that
their choice of term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy’s successor could
have dramatic consequences.
Whatever the results may be,
they’re sure to be interpreted as tea leaves for 2026, when control
of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives will be up for
grabs – turning what could otherwise be a parochial state contest
into something far bigger.
“People figuratively say, ‘The
eyes of the nation will be on us,’” said Mo Butler, a Democratic
strategist in New Jersey and a member of the Democratic National
Committee. “This actually is that election. The eyes of the
nation will
be on what happens in New Jersey.
This time it’s really real.”
National
investments
Earlier this summer, the
Democratic Governors Association (DGA) made a notable
announcement: it would
spend $20 million this fall on ads supporting Sherrill,
dramatically higher than its $2.3 million
investment behind Murphy
in 2021. “The DGA is committed to holding New Jersey’s governorship
and making sure that voters up and down the Garden State understand
the stakes of this election,” a DGA spokesperson said at the
time.
The meaning of the investment
was twofold: national Democrats are intensely interested in
securing a win in New Jersey, and they view the race as competitive
enough to warrant spending $20 million on it.
Their counterparts at the
Republican Governors Association (RGA) have not publicly announced
any investments in the race, though Klein said that the RGA
typically plays its cards close to its chest when it comes to
spending. In the Ciattarelli camp, that’s likely summoning some
flashbacks of 2021, when the RGA, convinced Ciattarelli was
destined to lose, largely backed out of the race and only spent
around $3.8 million; Ciattarelli ended up falling short just 51% to
48%.
RGA Chairman Brian Kemp,
however, was in New
Jersey last month to
fundraise for Ciattarelli, and Politico NJ reported this
morning that a
pro-Ciattarelli super PAC has been created with the apparent aim of
accepting RGA cash. And Republican National Committeewoman Janice
Fields, who’s also a local elected official in Somerset County,
said that her Republican friends from other states are constantly
offering to help the Ciattarelli campaign, far more than they had
in prior cycles.
“They want to help in any way
they can – ‘we want to take a bus to New Jersey and help you, we
want to do postcards, we want to make phone calls, whatever we can
do to help,’” Fields said. “Before, in other gubernatorial races,
you were asking them to help you. Now, nationally, everyone’s
asking us what they could do to help us, because this race is so
important to them.”
That kind of attention and
investment creates tremendous pressure on Sherrill and Ciattarelli
to perform well, especially if New Jersey emerges as the fall’s one
truly competitive race; Virginia has historically held that label
more often, but former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger
(Sherrill’s close friend and
roommate) seems to have
built a durable lead there, and most observers see the New Jersey
contest as tighter. (New Jersey also used to be a far bluer state
than Virginia, but the two states voted for Kamala Harris by nearly
the exact same margin last year.)
The candidates themselves know
the national stakes, and Sherrill in particular has built her
campaign around national issues accordingly. Not a day goes by that
the Sherrill campaign doesn’t remind voters of the fact that
Ciattarelli is endorsed by President Donald Trump, supported the Medicaid and food stamp cuts in Trump’s Big
Beautiful Bill, and has put little daylight between himself and the
controversial president.
“Mikie has sort of nationalized
the race,” Butler said. “She’s tying it back to Trump and what
Trump is doing in Washington, and what that would mean to New
Jersey if we have a Republican governor married up with a
Republican president.”
Ciattarelli has consciously
hewed closer to local issues, trying to make the election more of a
referendum on Murphy and Democrats in Trenton. But he, too, has not
been afraid to bring national politics in when it could benefit
him; he spent the final month of the primary constantly promoting
his endorsement from Trump, and he’s been willing to go toe-to-toe
with Sherrill on national issues like immigration
enforcement and detention.
Trump himself remains one of the
race’s biggest wild cards. Will the president, who spends much of
his time at his golf club in Bedminster, campaign with Ciattarelli
this fall? Ciattarelli has said he’d welcome Trump to New Jersey –
but given Trump’s underwater approval
ratings in the state,
would that really help him win?
National
intrigue
Most of these considerations are
ones that might be a factor in any gubernatorial election. But
what’s unique about New Jersey and Virginia is that, because of
their off-cycle elections, they get to be the only game in town
once every four years, and parties and politicians looking for tea
leaves about future elections will be laser-focused on the two
races (and little else).
In 2017, big Democratic wins in
both New Jersey and Virginia were an omen of a great Democratic
year in 2018 – especially in those two states in particular, where
Democrats flipped a combined seven House seats. And in 2021, a
Republican win in Virginia and a surprisingly narrow Democratic
victory in New Jersey heralded a much more Republican-leaning
environment in 2022, when Republicans flipped one House seat apiece
in each state.
A resounding Sherrill victory
this year, then, would give Democrats confidence heading into the
2026 midterms; a Ciattarelli victory, or even a narrow Sherrill
win, would be seen as an auspicious sign for Republicans. Butler
and Fields, fresh off national party meetings this summer, said
that both of their parties see New Jersey’s election as potentially
predictive of the 2026 elections and beyond.
“You have a Democratic Party
right now that is on the back of its heels,” Butler said. “Mikie’s
a great candidate, and if Mikie pulls this thing off in November,
that gives [Democrats] momentum going into what’s going to be a
very pivotal midterm election.”
“If we can pull this off, we’ve
got a great opportunity in the midterms,” Fields said. “If a blue
state can turn in the Northeast, so can those midterm seats. I
think that’s a gauge on where people are voting.”
Moreover, both parties will be
looking at what messaging works and doesn’t work; a Sherrill loss,
for example, may convince Democrats that a Trump-focused argument
isn’t as effective as it once was. And polling in the race is
likely to come under scrutiny as well: pollsters underestimated
Trump in all three of his presidential elections, but if polls
(which currently show Sherrill with a modest
lead) turn out to be
right this year, that may build confidence ahead of
2026.
“If the polls are only off by
one or two points in these races, then I think that probably means
we can feel a little bit more comfortable in the polling ahead of
the midterm elections,” Klein said. “And if they’re really off,
then it might speak to a real fundamental reshaping of the
electorate that could be challenging to portend in
2026.”
The two people who can learn the
most about their political futures from the results, though, are
New Jersey Reps. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) and Nellie Pou (D-North
Haledon). Both represent districts that voted for Trump by around
one percentage point last year, and both are likely to be top
targets in the fight for the House in 2026.
If Sherrill can carry Kean’s
district, which is demographically similar to the one she
represents in the House, that would bode well for the crowded field
of Democrats hoping to unseat him. Conversely, if Ciattarelli wins
Pou’s historically blue district based in Paterson, that would be a
strong sign that Trump’s shocking gains in the plurality-Hispanic
district weren’t a one-off.
More generally, Ciattarelli’s
campaign will be a test of how durable Trump’s New Jersey coalition
will be for Republicans going forward. Trump made enormous
strides with Garden
State voters, especially Hispanic voters; can Ciattarelli, who has
made a concerted (and, in some cases, criticized) effort to appeal to minority voters, prove
that those voters will keep voting Republican?
National
implications
Looking at the New Jersey
governor’s race exclusively as a crystal ball for how future
elections will go, one could argue that the actual identity of the
winner isn’t as important as how much they win by.
“Who wins isn’t necessarily as
telling as the margin by which they win,” Klein said. “If Sherrill
wins by two points, sure, she’ll get to be governor and Democrats
are going to claim victory, but national Republicans are going to
be much happier than national Democrats, because that’s an
indication that Trump isn’t going to be a big drag. If she wins by
nine, then it’s a very different story.”
But for New Jerseyans, of
course, it matters quite a bit who the next governor will be, and
that governor will inevitably have an impact on national political
and policy debates.
Nowhere is that clearer than in
the selection of the state’s attorney general, which in New Jersey
is an office appointed by the governor and confirmed by the State
Senate rather than separately elected. Current Attorney General
Matt Platkin, a Murphy appointee, has taken on a leading role in
the state-level legal fight against the Trump administration,
joining with other Democratic attorneys general around the country
to challenge Trump policies in court, often
successfully.
If she wins, Sherrill won’t
retain Platkin himself, but whoever she does choose as her attorney
general would almost certainly take a similar anti-Trump tack in
office. Ciattarelli, on the other hand, has specifically
pledged to name an
attorney general who “will not be suing the White House for
executive orders” like Platkin has done.
“It’d be nice if the attorney
general’s agenda was worrying about New Jersey and making people
from New Jersey do the right thing, rather than going after the
Trump administration,” Fields said.
The next governor will also have
the power to name at least one new state Supreme Court justice, and
perhaps more if they’re re-elected in 2029 or if a justice steps
down before the mandatory retirement age of 70. New Jersey has a
long tradition of bipartisanship when it comes to judicial
nominations, but Ciattarelli has indicated that he’d be willing
to break from that
norm.
Then again, even if Ciattarelli
wins in November, he’d be constrained by the fact that he’d have to
deal with a sizable Democratic majority in the State Senate, which
won’t face voters until 2027. (All 80 seats in the State Assembly
will be up this year, but Democrats are heavily favored to retain
their majority there, too.) A Governor Sherrill, on the other hand,
would likely have a Democratic trifecta to work with, though some
Democratic legislators privately prefer compromises with
Republicans to another consecutive Democratic
governorship.
But regardless of control of the
state legislature, governors alone have plenty of power, both
official and symbolic, when it comes to handling national issues
and the Trump administration. From cooperation with immigration
enforcement to addressing federal funding cuts to dealing with
executive orders related to transgender athletes and DEI, Sherrill
and Ciattarelli could each make very different marks on the
national conversation.
“What is federalism going to
look like for the next two years?” Rasmussen said. “Is it going to
be cooperative? Is it going to be competitive? Is it going to be
contentious?”
And inevitably, no matter who
wins or by how much, chatter about future presidential ambitions is
going to begin, though Rasmussen said he’s not convinced either
candidate will go down that path if they’re victorious.
“New Jersey politics is always
at the forefront of what’s going on in our national politics,”
Rasmussen said. “There’s a reason why every governor since Woodrow
Wilson has seen themselves as potential presidential
candidates.”
That type of speculation,
though, will have to wait until Sherrill or Ciattarelli actually
win. The two candidates will spend the next two months navigating a
minefield of a campaign season, with the country’s eyes on them
every step of the way. That kind of national attention could come
with a lot of peril – and a lot of opportunity.
“It’s a lot of pressure,” Fields
said. “We have a lot of pressure nationally to pull this out. But
we’re expecting a lot from them, too. We’re saying, ‘Okay,
nationally, this is important to you, you want to win – what are
you going to do for us?’”
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