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SPRING LAKE, NJ — Maybe the third time is the charm.
New Jersey gubernatorial hopeful Jack Ciattarelli exuded confidence that his third campaign for governor is the one to propel him to Drumthwacket and downplayed concerns about President Trump’s impact on his prospects in an exclusive interview with The Post.
“It’s not really lessons as much as it is the landscape is very different,” Ciattarelli reflected, when asked about what he learned from his 2021 bid in which he came within about 3 percentage points of Gov. Phil Murphy (D).
Ciattarelli spoke to The Post after wrapping up an energetic rally at the swanky Spring Lake Manor on Thursday that had been forced indoors due to torrential rain earlier in the day.
The rally was part of a swing through Monmouth County, which Ciattarelli is hoping to make redder on Election Day.
“We’re not competing with a pandemic this time around or a shelter-in-place order. So I can go anywhere and everywhere, and that’s exactly what I love to do,” he continued. “The other thing that is different this time around is we’re not running against an incumbent.”
“And the third thing is that there’s a lot less indifference. The closeness of my race in ’21 was a real eye-opener for people inside and outside the state. And you just feel a lot more energy this time around because people know we can win.”
The former three-term New Jersey state General Assembly rep. had vied unsuccessfully for the GOP gubernatorial nominee in 2017, before winning the nod in 2021 and running a surprisingly close race against Murphy.
“We’re winning this race,” he stressed when asked if he’d try again if he loses next Tuesday.
Ciattarelli, during a Thursday night Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, touted stronger internal poll numbers than four years ago and a record number of Republicans returning vote-by-mail ballots as reasons why New Jersey will be GOP-led in 2026.
“Our internal polling in 2021 said that we had a real shot,” he explained to voters at the Crystal Point Yacht Club in Point Pleasant. “This time the internal polling says a whole lot better.”
“We’ve seen the greatest number of Republicans return vote-by-mail ballots – that’s a very, very good sign,” Ciattarelli said, adding, “We’re matching [Democrats] voter-for-voter here in the six days of early voting,” which ends Sunday.
Ciattarelli also teased: “If we go into Election Day within a certain number of points, we’re going to win this thing,” noting that his in-person vote totals in 2021 topped Murphy.
The GOP hopeful’s very competitive 2021 campaign has proven to be a double-edged sword, attracting extra resources from groups like the Republican National Committee, but also prompting Democrats to tread more cautiously as well.
Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) has enlisted A-listers from her party, such as former President Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and others, to stump with her and help gin up the base.
“The candidate has to go out and win the race,” Ciattarelli stressed. “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.”
Ciattarelli has campaigned with a comparatively smaller coterie of his party’s big names. The GOP’s biggest star, President Trump, has refrained from stumping with him in person and instead has done a tele-rally.
Sherrill has used Trump as a bogeyman, hoping to capitalize on the president’s unpopularity among New Jersey Democrats to bog down Ciattarelli.
“If Trump wasn’t in the White House, Ciattarelli would be up by 12 points,” Sherrill’s former Democratic primary foe, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop told reporter David Cruz on his “Hold That Thought …” podcast earlier this month.
For his part, Ciattarelli doesn’t see Trump as a drag on his chances of winning. Instead, he believes Murphy’s failures as governor are a drag on Sherrill.
“The motivating factor here is the failure of the current administration. To make no mistake, it’s been a failure across the board,” he countered, when asked about Fulop’s assessment.
“Not one bit,” he insisted when pressed about whether Trump was hurting him at all. “And by the way, he improved by over ten points in New Jersey ’20 compared to ’24. And he’s done some really good things for New Jersey.”
He pointed to Trump’s fight against New York’s congestion pricing and signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to increase the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap.
Trump has publicly urged New Jerseyans to vote for Ciattarelli, blasting Sherrill as a “fake and corrupt radical left Democrat” who’d push the Garden State into a “death spiral.”
At the moment, Sherrill has a 3.6 percentage point edge over him in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, which underestimated him by about 5 points in 2021.
“Have you seen the latest polls?” Ciattarelli beamed to his supporters at the Wednesday rally, referring to a raft of recent surveys that had him neck and neck with Sherrill.
“This is a state where Republicans are typically underpolled because there are so many more Democrats,” he reminded the crowd. “We are right where we need to be.”
