Governor’s Race is Set
The 11-candidate field to be our state’s next Governor is now officially narrowed down to two names, and in both party primaries it was the frontrunner who was selected.
Jack Ciattarelli won the Republican nomination in a massive landslide, with 68% of the vote, ahead of Bill Spadea’s 22%. Jack won all 21 counties and won a majority of the vote in 20 of them. Interestingly, Spadea’s best performances were in the Central Jersey counties where the signal from 101.5 is strongest, and he did much worse in places like Bergen, Sussex, Cape May, and Atlantic counties in the northern and southernmost parts of the state where the signal is weakest.
Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill is the Democratic nominee, defeating a very divided field with just over a third of the votes cast (34%). Her next closest rival was Newark Mayor Ras Baraka with 20.5%, Jersey City Mayor (and $18 minimum wage advocate) Steve Fulop got just 16%, Congressman Josh Gottheimer received 12%, NJEA President Sean Spiller won 10.7%, and former Senate President (and self-serve opponent) Steve Sweeney won 7%. The state teachers union spent about $45 million of teachers’ funds to try and elect their leader as governor, and in the end he came in 5th place. One analysis calculated they paid about $500 per actual vote.
Now we head on to the main event, November 4th, when our next governor will be elected. As we discussed at our event yesterday, Mikie’s case for victory is basically just that NJ is a blue state that generally prefers Democrats. Chris Christie is the only Republican to win a statewide race in NJ in the last 25 years. Kamala Harris did win 52% of the vote last November, and Trump lost by double digits the other two times he ran. Sherrill also hopes that Trump will only get less popular over the coming months, and that Democratic voters will be desperate for the chance to vote against anyone aligned with Trump.
Jack’s case is that Republicans are closing the gap. Trump did 10 points better in NJ in 2024 than in 2020 without really campaigning in the state. When Jack lost to Murphy in 2021, he still did 11 points better than in the previous governor’s race. Two years ago there were 1 million more registered Democrats than Republicans, now it’s down to 800,000. Governors McGreevey, Whitman, and Florio all lost a statewide race once before coming back and winning. The closeness of the last elections is due to just how expensive it is to live in this state, and now we’ve had 8 years of unified Democratic control in Trenton to blame it on, and 25 years of Democratic control of the state Legislature. Voters in much bluer states have elected Republican governors, and voters in ruby red states have elected Democratic governors because they want checks-and-balances, they want someone to control the Legislature and use their veto pen.
For the Assembly races, almost all incumbents with party backing won their races, though a few turned out much closer than expected. We’ll have to see how legislators react to this going forward. It does mean they will need to work to keep their seats, in a way many of them haven’t had to before. One long-term concern we have is that if contested primaries become more common, will legislators respond by moving further to the left and trying to overly regulate businesses of all sizes?
NJGCA’s political action committee (PAC) is doing its part to help reasonable legislators stay in office–and it looks like we can now say that after engaging in most of the contested legislative primaries, every single candidate that we supported won their election. Several were close calls, which also means our support really did have an impact.
Thank you to those who have supported our PAC efforts over the years, if you can contribute to our efforts, it is deeply appreciated and does have a real impact for the industry. Many candidates are asking for $500 per event now, so any contribution you can make is appreciated. Click HERE to download our contributor form so you can mail us a contribution.
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