ELIZABETH, N.J. — To understand why Democrats are so nervous about New Jersey’s gubernatorial race this year, one place to look is this heavily Hispanic, working-class city, long considered their stronghold. On a recent Friday night, an ethnically diverse crowd of about 150 people, a few in MAGA regalia, turned up at a downtown nightclub to hear Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli make his pitch. They burst into applause as he declared: “I know what the hell is going on. I know what’s broken, and I know just how to fix it.”
Communities such as this were a big part of the reason New Jersey swung hard to the right in 2024. Donald Trump came within six points of winning a state he had lost by 16 points to Joe Biden four years earlier. In Elizabeth, where he had received less than 29 percent of the vote in 2020, Trump got almost 43 percent. And it was more than twice what he had done eight years before.
BarCode club owner Edwin Gomez, who hosted Ciattarelli, told me he used to be a Democrat, as was everyone else in his family when he was growing up in Queens. What changed? “I love Trump,” he said. “The guy had a message. He wanted to go against the power.”
Jamel Holley, formerly a state assembly member and mayor of neighboring Roselle, is supporting Ciattarelli, though Holley is still a leader in his local Democratic organization. He was there in a blue MAGA-style cap that read: MAKE AMERICA KIND AGAIN.
“I think that a lot of individuals in urban communities have awakened to the fact that the party politics no longer works, and they’re looking for options,” Holley told me. “The Democratic Party forced Democrats to look at other options because of the inactivity and inaction on the things that they care about most.”
Not even his own campaign believes Ciattarelli can win urban centers like Elizabeth outright in the Nov. 4 election. But by showing up where Republicans don’t usually go, he is hoping to cut into the margin of votes that the Democratic candidate, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, receives in those areas.
Most polls have Sherrill ahead statewide by single digits, which for Democrats is too close for comfort. Four years ago, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) was thought to be cruising to a second term. But Ciattarelli, a businessman and former state legislator, dramatically outperformed the pre-election polls and fell just three points short of winning.
In his third try for governor, “we go out each and every day, and I will tell you, the reception is off the charts,” Ciattarelli told reporters here. “I really thought we were going to win in ’21, but there’s something very different this time about the energy. It’s electric.”
New Jersey’s and Virginia’s gubernatorial contests, coming as they do in the off-year following a presidential election, are always scrutinized as a signal of what lies ahead for the rest of the country. In the Virginia governor’s race, Democrat Abigail Spanberger has a 12-point lead over Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, according a Washington Post-Schar School poll released Thursday.
In the Garden State, however, the political crosscurrents make the governor’s race much harder to read.
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