Trump not on ballot, but president front and center in New Jersey’s primary for governor
Today is primary day in New Jersey, one of only two states in the nation, along with Virginia, that hold elections for governor this year.
And in the spotlight in the races for both the Republican and Democrat gubernatorial nominations is the nation’s most powerful and polarizing figure: President Donald Trump.
In the GOP primary showdown, which for months has been a battle for Trump’s support, frontrunner Jack Ciattarelli landed the president’s endorsement a couple of weeks ago.
“I’m asking you to get out and vote for a true champion for the people of your state: Jack Ciattarelli. He’s been a friend of mine, and he’s been a real success story,” Trump told supporters a week ago as he dialed into a tele-rally on the eve of the kickoff of early voting in New Jersey.
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Ciattarelli told Fox News Digital after meeting with local GOP leaders at Trump National Golf Club-Philadelphia that the president’s endorsement was “a really big deal” and “The president’s doing very, very well in New Jersey.”
Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker, is making his third bid for governor. He ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 2017. Four years later, in 2021, Ciattarelli overperformed as the Republican nominee and came close to ousting the Democrat incumbent, Gov. Phil Murphy, losing by just three points.
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In the contest to succeed Murphy, who is term-limited, surveys suggest Ciattarelli is the frontrunner in a five-person Republican field that includes two other prominent candidates: former businessman and popular conservative talk radio host Bill Spadea and state Sen. Jon Bramnick, a lawyer who served for a decade as state Assembly GOP leader.
Ciattarelli and Spadea spent months trading fire over which of them was a bigger Trump supporter.
“It was certainly disappointing,” Spadea said of Trump’s endorsement of Ciattarelli. “I mean, we made no bones about this. We absolutely wanted the president’s endorsement. Unfortunately, the president endorsed a poll and not a plan.”
Spadea highlighted in a Fox News Digital interview last week that “I have been a supporter of President Trump since he came down the escalator,” in reference to Trump’s announcement of his first presidential campaign in 2015.
“There is no question that I am the commonsense conservative. I am the actual Republican in this primary,” Spadea said.
And Spadea questioned Ciattarelli’s support for Trump, arguing that his rival “has disrespected him (Trump) for the better part of the last eight years. … We thought that that endorsement would have been better served with me.”
After he won the GOP gubernatorial nomination four years ago, Ciattarelli said when asked if he was seeking the then-former president’s endorsement, “There’s only one endorsement I seek, and that’s the endorsement of the voters of New Jersey. That’s the only one that matters.”
WHAT JACK CIATTARELLI TOLD FOX NEWS DIGITAL
Fast-forward to 2025, and Ciattarelli said “people really appreciate what he (Trump) is doing for New Jerseyans. He’s put a temporary hold on the wind farms off the Jersey Shore. He’s beating up on the New York Democrats over congestion pricing. He supports a quadrupling of the SALT [state and local tax] deduction on our federal tax returns. Those are big deals to New Jersey, and that’s why he’s got so much great support here. And I’m honored to have his endorsement.”
While he lost out on Trump’s endorsement, Spadea said there’s been a silver lining.
“Our supporters are galvanized. Matter of fact, the Tuesday and Wednesday after Trump endorsed Jack, we had a surge, our two best days ever in low-dollar fundraising,” Spadea said. “So it actually has had the opposite effect – our low-dollar surge, our volunteer surge. We’re now knocking on more than 3,000 doors a week, and we’re getting an unbelievable response from the grassroots.”
Spadea said “almost every Trump supporter that we’ve talked to face-to-face on the ground thinks that Donald Trump made a huge mistake” in endorsing Ciattarelli.
Asked why Trump endorsed him rather than Spadea, Ciattarelli said “the president wants to win. He knows that I provide the best opportunity to win in November.”
“He knows we’re going to raise the necessary money. We’ve raised more money than the other five Republican gubernatorial candidates combined.”
Ciattarelli is a certified public accountant who started a medical publishing company before getting into politics. His fundraising has allowed him to dominate the GOP primary ad wars.
But Spadea, pointing to his media career, said he would be the more electable Republican candidate in November in blue-leaning New Jersey.
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“I built the largest audience in the state: a third Democrat, a third independent, a third Republican. So my appeal is not just that conservative base in the Republican Party. I’m the only candidate running for the Republican nomination that can pull in Democrats and independents,” he said.
The Democratic Governors Association, pointing to the rush by the top two candidates to embrace Trump, has long described the 2025 Republican showdown as a “MAGA battle” and that there’s “extremism in the GOP primary.”
The Democrats have their own primary battle, with six major contenders facing off for the nomination.
They are Reps. Mikie Sherrill and Josh Gottheimer, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney.
The primary is one of the first ballot-box opportunities for Democrats to weigh in as the party aims to rebound after last November’s election setbacks, when Republicans won the White House, the Senate majority and successfully defended their fragile control of the House.
Pundits see Tuesday’s primary as a “bellwether” for how the party should push back against Trump’s sweeping and controversial moves since returning to the White House in January.
Like Murphy, who they’re aiming to succeed, the Democrat candidates have heavily criticized some of Trump’s crackdowns on illegal immigration and federal workforce cuts by the recently created Department of Government Efficiency.
But the candidates have also carefully walked a fine line between building on Murphy’s legacy as governor while also calling for change to the status quo at the state capitol in Trenton.
The Republican Governors Association, taking aim at Murphy and his party, has argued that “Democrat rule in Trenton has been a disaster, leading to skyrocketing costs, failed schools, and New Jersey families getting the short end of the stick.”
While New Jersey has long leaned toward the Democrats, Republicans have had success in gubernatorial elections.
“It’s not a blue state when it comes to governor races. Republicans have won six of the last 11. That’s better than 50%,” Ciattarelli said.
Trump, who for years has spent summer weekends at his golf club in Bedminster, held a large campaign rally last year in Wildwood. And he improved from a 16-point loss in the state in the 2020 election to a six-point deficit last November.
Ciattarelli, looking ahead to the general election campaign, said he’s “really looking forward” to Trump’s “active participation … I think New Jerseyans are anxious to have him on the campaign trail with me and help deliver a win for us in November.”
Meanwhile, the Garden State has frequently made national headlines this year. Newark Liberty International Airport saw multiple FAA system outages this spring, causing travel delays.
Meanwhile, a New Jersey transit strike created more travel mayhem when commuter trains briefly sat sidelined.
And protests by prominent Democrat politicians at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark also put the state in the spotlight. Among those arrested was one of the candidates: Newark’s Baraka.
In-person early voting ran from June 3 through Sunday. And vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and received by the county Board of Elections on or before the sixth day after the close of the polls.
Polls open for in-person voting on primary day at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.
Fox News’ Remy Numa contributed to this report.
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