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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.
Trump's approval rating is underwater in New Jersey, which is not surprising in a state where registered Democrats substantially outnumber Republicans. So his endorsement and the social media benedictions he is showering on Ciattarelli are a mixed blessing at best.
But New Jerseyans have also soured on the term-limited Murphy and a state legislature that has been under Democratic control for more than two decades. A July survey conducted by Rutgers University's Eagleton Center found that 8 out of 10 people are dissatisfied with how Trenton is handling the cost of living and taxes. New Jersey's property taxes have long been the highest in the nation, and its electric bills, which jumped about 20 percent this summer, have become a more recent sore subject with voters.
Then there is its history of political restlessness to consider: Not since 1961 has either political party held the New Jersey governorship for three straight terms.
As they near the finish line, the candidates are hitting each other with ferocious attacks - the surest sign that both sense the race tightening. Total spending is expected to top $200 million, making it by far the most expensive contest in New Jersey history.
Sherrill, who easily defeated five male Democratic contenders in the June primary, is leaning heavily on her impressive biography as she attempts to convince voters that she would be an agent of change as governor.
She is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who piloted helicopters on missions in Europe and the Middle East and a former federal prosecutor. As a moderate first-time candidate in 2018, Sherrill flipped a congressional district held by Republicans for decades. She is also a mother of four, whose daughter and son followed in her footsteps by enrolling at Annapolis this year.
What she has done in her life, Sherrill said in an interview, "tells people not only who I fight for, but why I'm doing this. And I think people around New Jersey are looking for somebody they can trust to get their problems, and to be focused on that and fixing it."
As a candidate, Sherrill has been cautious and buttoned-up - so much so that progressives and some local journalists have taken to calling her "milquetoast" and a New York Post headline dubbed her "the Kamala Harris of New Jersey."
But lately, that has changed. In an Oct. 8 debate with Ciattarelli, Sherrill said the medical publication firm he owned until 2017 spread misinformation minimizing the danger of opioids, and made the startling accusation that her opponent was responsible for the deaths of "tens of thousands of people."
Ciattarelli has threatened to file a defamation suit, and his campaign insisted that his former firm's online tool known as "Living with Pain" - which was funded by a pharmaceutical company that manufactured opioids - merely educated patients on their treatment options. When I asked Sherrill how she came up with that death toll, she did not back down: "I think it was really clearly charted out, like, look, here's the platform, here's how many people died. This is what I'm talking about. And I think he has not actually addressed any of that."
Meanwhile, Sherrill has been crying foul over an improper release by the National Archives of her unredacted military records, which included personal information such as her Social Security number, to a political ally of Ciattarelli.
The archives apologized to Sherrill for giving her records to an "unauthorized requester." It happened as Ciattarelli has been attempting to implicate her in a 1994 cheating scandal at the Naval Academy, the year she graduated, in which two dozen midshipmen were expelled. Sherrill was not allowed to walk across the stage at her commencement ceremony; she has said the punishment was imposed because she refused to inform on her classmates.
While the back-and-forth between the two of them has taken a more bitter and personal turn, there are larger forces in this political environment that could determine how their race turns out.
Sherrill rarely misses an opportunity to tie her opponent to Trump. When Ciattarelli was asked at the debate to give his second term a grade, he said, "I'd certainly give the president an 'A.' I think he's right about everything that he's doing."
So it probably didn't help Ciattarelli's prospects when Trump announced that he plans to kill a $16 billion infrastructure project that would expand and rehabilitate train tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey beneath the Hudson River. An estimated 10 percent of the state's workforce goes into New York City for their jobs, and the amount of time they spend commuting is among the lengthiest in the country.
Ciattarelli has downplayed Trump's threat to kill the Gateway project as part of "hardball negotiations with the Democrats in the Congress who are not signing onto a continuing resolution to open up the government." (Both the House and Senate Democratic leaders are from New York City.)
But he has also posted on social media that "New Jersey needs a Governor who has the standing to work with, and when necessary disagree with, the President and advocate for New Jersey's fair share of federal tax dollars - including the Gateway Tunnel. This is a critical infrastructure project and I will fight to get it done."
For his part, Ciattarelli constantly refers to Sherrill as "Phil Murphy 2.0." and sometimes even "Phil Murphy 2.0 on steroids."
It is a delicate situation for Sherrill. In our interview, she did not criticize Murphy by name, but talked about how "there are so many issues that have just not been addressed here, and people have just kicked the can down the road."
"I guess something that you understand as a leader in the Navy is this idea that a leader does hard things, you know, or people suffer," she added. "You've got to make a choice. You can't be indecisive. You can't, in a time of crisis, stand still. It feels like in these times as a Democrat, you have to both take on the ways in which things have always been done, because we just have to deliver better, but you also have to then take on Trump and the ways in which he's both destroying the economy and attacking rights and freedoms."
Murphy, for his part, has bristled at one of Sherrill's biggest plans, which is to put a freeze on electric utility rates. "I'm not sure how you'd actually do that," the governor said in August. "These are private-sector players. I'm not sure if she got into the details as to how you do it, but we've been spending morning, noon, and night on energy, energy sources, energy affordability for years."
New Jersey's current governor has not been much of a visible presence in Sherrill's campaign, but she has brought in an array of nationally prominent Democratic surrogates, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota). Former president Barack Obama has endorsed her and has scheduled a Saturday rally with her in Newark, New Jersey's largest city, where more than 80 percent of the population is Black or Hispanic.
Energizing minority voters will be an important challenge for Sherrill and her party, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said. Apathy as much as energy explained Trump's surprising New Jersey surge last year, he said: "I think that in New Jersey, while some people voted for him, those numbers were not large enough to have a real impact. I think people stayed home more than anything."
Baraka had challenged Sherrill in the crowded June gubernatorial primary and was considered the favorite of progressives, but came in a distant second. Afterward, he complained that Sherrill had not been attentive enough to the needs of poor and minority voters. He did not endorse her until September, following conversations he described as "painful."
On Oct. 19, Baraka participated with Sherrill and Moore at a roundtable on how to create more opportunity in poor neighborhoods. In an interview afterward, the mayor said, "This discussion today about how we invest in communities, invest in neighborhoods and people that need it the most is what people want to hear. And I think these are the discussions that are going to excite people to come out to the polls."
Maybe so. Or maybe voters once considered essential to the Democratic coalition have begun to look for solutions to their problems elsewhere. Election Day in New Jersey could offer some hope that the party is beginning to regain its footing.
Or it could be a flashing red warning, in advance of next year's midterms, that the gains Trump made on Democratic territory in 2024 have taken hold.
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