‘Elect the Jersey guy’: How Jack Ciattarelli is trying to erase Democrats’ advantage in a crucial governor’s race

By Eric Bradner, CNN

East Brunswick, New Jersey (CNN) — Jack Ciattarelli ticked through the states where New Jersey’s most recent Democratic governors grew up as he kicked off a rally Wednesday night.

“They brought Jon Corzine here from Illinois — that didn’t work out so well. They brought Phil Murphy from Massachusetts — this isn’t working out so well. My opponent’s not from New Jersey,” the former state assemblyman and Republican nominee for governor told hundreds of people packed into the Brunswick Grove bar.

“So I got a really simple idea,” he said. “How about we elect the Jersey guy?”

Ciattarelli, born and raised in the central part of the state, faces Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who was raised in Virginia before becoming a Navy helicopter pilot and later settling in New Jersey, in one of the most important contests on this year’s political calendar.

Republicans face a massive voter registration disadvantage, and Sherrill’s allies have spent months tying Ciattarelli to President Donald Trump and seeking to nationalize the race. The “Jersey guy” message is Ciattarelli’s bet that authenticity is a more valuable political currency than party affiliation.

It’s also how Ciattarelli connects his own background — with a family that’s called New Jersey home for 100 years — to what he calls crises of affordability (particularly energy costs and property taxes), safety and education that he says are gripping the Garden State under its Democratic leadership.

“There’s a New Jersey I want to get back to,” Ciattarelli said. “I grew up in a time when my parents didn’t have to worry about me walking to the bus stop. My parents didn’t have to worry about what I was learning at school that day.”

“My parents knew that through their hard work, their middle-class family is going to get ahead, and their children will have a better life than they did,” he said. “We got to get back to that day.”

Ciattarelli’s message aims to tap into the same simmering discontent that is showing up across the political map — including on both sides of the Hudson River, with Ciattarelli seeking to counter full Democratic control of New Jersey’s state government and Zohran Mamdani taking on establishment Democrats in the New York City mayor’s race.

If he succeeds, he could represent a new model for Republicans running in blue states in a political era dominated by Trump.

It’s the third consecutive election cycle in which Ciattarelli has run for governor — he fell short in the GOP primary in 2017 and lost a surprisingly close general election contest in 2021. This time, he tells crowds he senses something has changed. Aides say the audiences he is drawing to events like the one in East Brunswick, where hundreds of people packed into a bar’s outdoor dining room, lined its walls and spilled down its back staircase into the parking lot, would have been among the biggest he’d seen in previous elections — but now are normal.

Corie Bruder, a practice manager for a primary care medical office, said after Ciattarelli’s East Brunswick rally that property taxes have soared and “everybody’s moving out of the state.”

“I was an independent. Now I’m a Republican,” she said. “I think the Democrats are trying to hold on to whatever they got left. I think they’ve lost their damn minds.”

The Trump factor

In-person early voting in New Jersey kicked off Saturday. Multiple polls in October showed Sherrill with a single-digit lead, hovering around 50 percent support while Ciattarelli was at or near the 45% mark.

But off-year elections with lower voter turnout can be less predictable, and Ciattarelli’s campaign is banking on a more enthusiastic mix of Republicans who eagerly back Trump; independents and Democrats who are disenchanted with taxes, the cost of living and progressive positions on transgender issues; and non-White voters, particularly Latinos, who swung sharply to Trump in last year’s presidential race.

Ads from pro-Sherrill groups, Sherrill’s debate comments and her speeches have labeled Ciattarelli as a strident Trump ally, and it’s no secret why: The state has more than 800,000 more registered Democrats (nearly 39% of the electorate) than Republicans (more than 25%). A Rutgers-Eagleton poll found that 52% of likely voters — including 78% of Democrats — say Trump is a “major factor” in their choice in the governor’s race.

Sherrill called Ciattarelli “100% MAGA” in their final debate; a Democratic Governors Association-backed super PAC labeled him the “Trump of Trenton” in ads.

She has repeatedly accused him of failing to stand up for New Jersey’s interests when doing so would require confronting Trump. Sherrill points to Trump’s suspension of $18 billion in funding for the Gateway Tunnel project, which would have connected New York City to New Jersey via two new tunnels under the Hudson River.

Sherrill has vowed to sue Trump over his move; Ciattarelli has argued that because he’d have a better relationship with Trump, he’d be in better position to advocate for the state’s interests. He said on social media last week that the state needs a governor “who has the standing to work with, and when necessary disagree with, the president.”

Ciattarelli himself has evolved on Trump. In 2015, he called the then-first-time candidate a “charlatan.” In a 2015 statement released while he was a state legislator, he said: “Sitting silently and allowing him to embarrass our country is unacceptable. He is not fit to be president of the United States.”

But by 2020, Ciattarelli attended a “Stop the Steal” rally fueled by Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in his loss to Joe Biden. When Democrats seized on that attendance in 2021, during Ciattarelli’s second run for governor, he said he thought the event was to back Republican legislative candidates, and acknowledged Trump’s role surrounding the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.

This year, though, Ciattarelli has more fully embraced Trump, saying during a debate he would “certainly give the president an A” for his performance in office so far in his second term. Trump has responded in kind, endorsing the GOP nominee and holding a telephone rally for him Friday night.

Ciattarelli explained his personal shift by comparing himself to another Trump ally — the eventual running mate who once compared the president to Adolf Hitler.

“JD Vance said things a whole lot worse. And today he’s the vice president,” he told CNN. “The president’s first term was very successful. I think the president has done a whole lot in his 10 months in office, particularly things have been very good for New Jersey.”

Sherrill communications director Sean Higgins said in a statement that Ciattarelli “will always choose Trump over New Jersey” and cited the Gateway Tunnel as an example.

“Ciattarelli even said we have to live with the pain of Trump’s tariffs,” Higgins said. “That’s the core difference in this race: Mikie Sherrill is a leader who will put New Jersey first, and Jack is nothing more than a Trump lackey.”

In a tight, 15-minute stump speech, Ciattarelli has picked up on several of Trump’s most effective themes. He lambasts sanctuary cities, emphasizes his support for law enforcement and warns about transgender athletes in girls’ sports.

And, picking up on themes that helped Republican Glenn Youngkin win the Virginia governor’s race four years ago, he calls for more parental involvement in schools.

But Ciattarelli also said the race isn’t about Trump.

“What does the president have to do with our property taxes?” he said. “What does he have to do with the overdevelopment of our communities? What does he have to do with the failure of our public school system? What does he have to do with your monthly electric bill? What does he have to do with the lack of public safety because we’ve handcuffed our police?”

Ciattarelli added: “The president doesn’t have anything to do with any of those things. Our governor does.”

Sherrill has also focused on affordability, proposing the consolidation of school districts, new regulations of pharmacy benefit managers intended to lower prescription drug costs, simplifying permit approvals for small businesses, and freezing utility rates for a year.

Sherrill rallied supporters on a recent night in the city of Garwood, declaring: “I’m going to be accountable to all of you. You should demand nothing less.”

Anjali Mehrotra was among those in the crowd applauding the Democratic ticket. She said she believed Sherrill’s message on affordability would resonate with voters across the ideological spectrum of the party.

“I don’t think the Democratic Party is a monolith,” Mehrotra said. “We always talk about it being the big tent. As an immigrant, that’s what attracted me to the Democratic Party. I think we have all different types of voices and the party has to be ready for them.”

A son of Central Jersey

To win, Ciattarelli needs to persuade significant shares of Democrats and independents — many of whom might have voted against him in 2021. His pitch to voters starts with his upbringing in Raritan, the Central Jersey borough to which his grandparents had immigrated from Italy in the early 1900s. His parents owned a restaurant and bar there — a side job for his father, who laid power lines, and his mother, a factory line worker for Johnson & Johnson.

Ciattarelli, after graduating from Seton Hall University with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a Master of Business Administration, became a certified public accountant and owner of a medical publishing company.

Ciattarelli’s political career began with stints on the Raritan Borough Council and then the Somerset County board. He was elected to the state’s Assembly in 2011 — a tenure that lasted until the beginning of 2018, after he passed on a reelection run to make a failed bid for the GOP’s 2017 gubernatorial nomination.

Trenton is where Ciattarelli met Jamel Holley, a Democratic staffer and later an Assembly member from Roselle who has endorsed Ciattarelli for governor.

He said in Trenton, Ciattarelli helped him wrangle a handful of Republican votes for Holley’s own legislative priorities several times.

“Jack Ciattarelli is a Jersey guy for me. He is a solid individual for me, who I’ve seen over 10 years work this state, talk about these issues,” he said. “He’s got a plan. He’s got the experience. He can go in on Day 1.”

Holley pointed to high utility costs, in particular, as a problem that requires urgent action from the state’s next governor.

“He’s not radical. He’s not an extremist. The guy is a homegrown, Jersey, regular Italian guy who served the community, worked his way up, built a business, raised his family, and is looking to serve,” Holley said. “And I know that, because I know Jack personally. He is a rational, common-sense, everyday guy.”

Winning over Democrats

Four years ago, Ciattarelli narrowly lost the governor’s race, with Murphy winning by a little more than 3 percentage points in a state Biden had won by 16 points just one year earlier. The state’s presidential election results were much closer in 2024, with Trump slashing Kamala Harris’ margin of victory there to 6 points.

Closing the polling gap and defeating Sherrill will require Ciattarelli to strike a delicate balance between energizing Trump supporters and winning over large shares of Democrats like Holley.

North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco, a Democrat who opposed Ciattarelli in his two prior runs for governor, endorsed him this year. He said it’s because when he reached out to both Ciattarelli’s campaign and Sherrill’s campaign to discuss how state policies have left his city with a budget hole, only Ciattarelli responded.

He dismissed the Trump factor in the race, saying he’s asked around about Ciattarelli and heard from other Democrats, including state lawmakers, that “he can be very bipartisan.” He said Ciattarelli has visited North Bergen three times.

Jim Dodd, the Democratic mayor of Dover — a heavily Latino town northwest of Newark — has also endorsed Ciattarelli. He told CNN he has “never seen a candidate work as hard as he is to win this election.” Ciattarelli visited him personally twice, Dodd said. In those meetings, Dodd said he emphasized how a budget provision Murphy signed into law has allowed for significant tax hikes to fund schools — a pinch he said residents are feeling to the tune of nearly $1,000 per year.

“People just can’t afford that type of increase,” Dodd said.

Rich DiMatteo, who is self-employed and 63, said after Ciattarelli’s East Brunswick rally that he previously was a Democrat but now considers himself a Republican. He said Ciattarelli comes across as much more moderate than Trump.

But he praised Ciattarelli for picking up on some parts of Trump’s agenda — including transgender issues. “Nobody hates transgenders, they just can’t play in women’s sports, that’s all,” he said.

DiMatteo also pointed to Trump’s closer-than-expected finish in New Jersey in last year’s presidential race.

“It’s a blue state,” he said, “but it’s getting purple.”

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CNN’s Jeff Zeleny and Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.