New Jersey GOP gubernatorial hopeful Jack Ciattarelli is banking on bread-and-butter Garden State issues such as taxes and housing to win Tuesday, while Dem foe Rep. Mikie Sherrill is turning to a parade of national Democratic heavy-hitters to jolt her lackluster campaign.
As the latest polls show the highly watched governor’s race could go down to the wire Tuesday, Sherrill, 53, is courting Democratic stars to raise her cache with voters while trying to frame the election as a referendum on Republican President Trump.
“My fight doesn’t and can’t end at the border of New Jersey,’’ she declared during a rousing rally with Democratic former President Barack Obama on Saturday in Newark.
“We’ve got to take on all those hits coming from Trump and Washington, DC,” Sherrill said.
Ciattarelli, 63, has meanwhile been largely dismissive of the need to bring in outside talent to boost his standing with the base.
“The candidate has to go out and win the race,” he told The Post last week. “I know my opponent’s bringing in this person, that person. She could bring in the ghost of FDR. It’s not going to matter.
“At the end of the day, here in New Jersey, the candidate has to go out and win the race. That’s exactly what I do each and every day.”
Sherrill, describing New Jersey as a “gateway to America” at the Newark rally, declared that her campaign is “waging a battle in this very moment for the future of our nation.”
Earlier in the day, she dramatically called New Jersey the “epicenter of our democracy.”
To punctuate the national focus of her campaign, Sherrill has stumped with everyone from Obama to fellow Dems former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut during the election homestretch.
Notably, she’s largely spurned luminaries from the far-left faction of her party’s base, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who remain deeply popular figures in lefty Democratic circles but could give fodder to Ciattarelli.
The recruitment of big Democratic names is a recognition of tight polling in the governor’s race and concerns over Ciattarelli’s better-than-expected performance in the 2021 gubernatorial contest.
Many of the top Democrats who have swung through New Jersey have similarly harped on the national politics, with Obama bemoaning that “our country and our politics are in a pretty dark place right now.”
For Ciattarelli’s part, he has stumped with a handful of prominent Republicans such as Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy and Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida.
Ciattarelli also hosted a tele-rally with Trump last month in which the president blasted Sherrill as “fake and corrupt” while also poking at her “unusual name.”
Trump, who is an unpopular figure in New Jersey and a source of ammunition for Sherrill, has refrained from doing an in-person rally with Ciattarelli during the campaign crunch time.
Given Trump’s unpopularity in New Jersey — something that Ciattarelli publicly downplays — the GOP candidate has walked a fine line of trying to excite the Republican base without alienating the Garden State’s Democratic voters, who still far outnumber the Grand Old Party.
This go-around, he has found that discussion of cultural issues, such as sanctuary states and protecting girls’ sports, has proven to be effective at resonating with New Jerseyans.
“I say that I’m going to lower taxes, I get a nice little round of applause. I say that I’m going to bring back plastic bags, it brings down the house every single time,” Ciattarelli told rallygoers at a parking lot in an Old Bridge municipal complex.
It was true. During his rallies and bus stops, Ciattarelli’s line about bringing back plastic bags at store check-outs generally got the loudest applause.
Ciattarelli’s pledge to end New Jersey’s status as a migrant-friendly sanctuary state has also proven to be popular with the Republican base he’s worked to gin up.
Many attendees of his rallies also frequently pointed to concerns about social issues such as protecting girls’ sports from trans athletes as strong motivating factors in their decision to vote for him.
“Boys and girls, men and women, we are built differently. We have different strengths,” a woman named Debbie from Old Bridge told The Post after Ciattarelli’s rally there Wednesday, when discussing some of the reasons she is backing Ciattarelli.
Ciattarelli has also taken swipes at the Democrats’ fixation on other identity and woke politics.
“[Sherrill’s] gonna remind you every single day that she’s a woman. That’s OK. But I’m here to tell you,” he said, pausing during the Old Bridge rally.
“I am a man. I just want you all to know,” he quipped to laughter and cheers.
Despite mixing some controversial social issues into his messaging and drawing strong cheers for that in some cases, Ciattarelli believes the themes are not the main priority for voters.
“There are four main issues across the state. There’s an affordability crisis because of taxes, electricity rates [and] housing. There’s a public safety crisis because of what we’ve done to our local police,” he told The Post.
“There’s a public education crisis because the Democrats have watered down the public school curriculum,” he continued during an interview in Spring Lake. “And there’s an overdevelopment crisis in suburban communities just like this one. Those are the issues.”
Counting in-person early voting and mail-in ballots, New Jersey is already close to half of the voter turnout it enjoyed in the 2021 gubernatorial race, according to data from VoteHub.
The 2021 election only had about 60% of the voter turnout as the 2024 presidential election in New Jersey.
