In the final stretch of the New Jersey governor’s race, Republican Jack Ciattarelli is betting that a full-throated embrace of the fascist MAGA movement can overcome the state’s Democratic leanings, navigating a delicate balance between firing up the base and reassuring a broader electorate.
This high-wire act was on display over the weekend in Bergen County, where Ciattarelli, speaking in the twice-Murphy-voting town of Dumont, pledged to halt the state’s electrification push to roaring cheers, vowing, “I’m never telling you what car you have to buy, I’m not telling you how to heat your home.”
While the Democratic political establishment has failed to address global warming with the urgency necessary, Republicans are simply denying that the threat is real.
Scientists uniformly say that human industrial activity is upsetting a delicate balance required for Earth to sustain life, so Ciattarelli is essentially surrendering in the fight for survival, and advocating a more rapid demise instead of replacing appliances that contribute to catastrophe.
The New Jersey Republican nominee’s campaign has become a pivotal test of whether Trump-era political coalitions can be mobilized without the tyrannical president himself on the ballot.
To that end, Ciattarelli has headlined rallies featuring MAGA-world influencers like Jack Posobiec, a far-right commentator who last year characterized Trump’s criminal conviction as “an act of war.”
Ciattarelli pledged that his first act in office would be to rescind the state’s Immigrant Trust Directive—a move that would fundamentally alter the relationship between law enforcement and immigrant communities and undermine public safety.
Ciattarelli has also vowed to outlaw abortion and birth control in New Jersey, and shutter Planned Parenthood clinics that provide healthcare for women, earning him the endorsement of the New Jersey Family Policy Center—a puritanical religious organization waging war against comprehensive education, gender identity protections, and reproductive freedom.
Yet, in a telling sign of the balancing act required in a blue state, the one figure absent from these events has been President Donald Trump himself, whose double-digit unpopularity in New Jersey creates a complex landscape for his endorsed candidate.
Ciattarelli’s strategy is a calculated gamble. He has praised Trump’s performance as worthy of an “A” grade and asserted that the president is “right about everything that he’s doing.”
This represents a significant evolution for a candidate who once labeled Trump a “charlatan” but now fully aligns with the party’s MAGA wing.
The Republican campaign is counting on turning out the roughly 700,000 voters who supported Trump in 2024 but did not vote for Ciattarelli in his narrow 2021 loss, a bloc Republicans see as key to victory.
Trump got 1,968,215 votes last year, while only 1,255,185 people cast ballots for Ciattarelli, who lost to Governor Phil Murphy.
In 2021, the Democratic incumbent received 1,339,471 ballots, far short of the 2.2 million votes cast for Vice president Kamala Harris or the 2.6 million who supported President Joe Biden in 2020, when Trump got 1,883,313.
His embrace risks alienating the independent voters Ciattarelli might need, as Democrats work to paint him as a “right-wing extremist,” but even as the tyrannical president is absent, Trump’s tentacles could reach deep into the Garden State.
South Jersey political boss George Norcross — who changed his voter registration to Florida in 2021— belonged to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s members-only Palm Beach, Florida, .
Senator Cory Booker is sitting on more than $21 million in his campaign account, but he has not spent any of that promoting Democratic nominee Mikie Sherrill and he did not even attend any of the dozens of ‘No Kings’ demonstrations in New Jersey.
In 2013, Norcross and Booker supported Republican Governor Chris Christie, to various degrees, along with Essex County Executive Joseph Divincenzo.
Booker was the only Democrat in the US Senate who voted to confirm US ambassador to France Charles Kushner’s appointment. Kushner’s son is married to Trump’s daughter.
Kushner also made the maximum donation to disgraced former Governor Jim McGreevey, who is a candidate for mayor in Jersey City.
Jersey City is the center of power in Hudson County, where Ciattarelli has recently picked up endorsements from a slew of Democratic elected officials, including North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco; Anthony Vainieri, the former chairman of the Hudson County Democratic Organization; Commissioners Allen Pascual of North Bergen and Marcos Arroyo of West New York; former West New York Mayor Sal Vega; and former West New York Commissioner Alberto Rodriguez.
Other Democrats endorsing the Republican candidate for governor are Dover Mayor Jim Dodd, Garfield Mayor Everett E. Garnto, Jr., Branchville Mayor Anthony Frank, Branchville Councilman Jeffrey Lewis, former Assemblyman Jamel Holley, and former Newark Councilman Oscar James.
The outcome of this race carries profound implications that extend far beyond energy policy.
A Ciattarelli victory could instantly upend New Jersey’s political establishment and hand the Republican Party significant influence over the state’s judiciary.
Ciattarelli says he would abandon the “failed tradition of artificially providing partisan balance” by appointing judges from both parties, ending the bipartisan judiciary and inviting a more radical interpretation of the law.
As the GOP candidate himself has bragged to supporters, a win would grant him the power to appoint two members to the state’s Supreme Court, shaping the legal and social fabric of the state for a generation.
With early voting underway and Election Day approaching, New Jersey finds itself at a crossroads, deciding whether to follow a fascist national political trend or reassert its democratic-republican political identity.
With a lack of progressive enthusiasm for the moderate-to-conservative Blue Dog Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill and a strong flow of transactional betrayals from Democratic elected officials, the GOP might turn a blue state red, but the consequences for residents might be severe.
Discover more from NJTODAY.NET
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.