Five takeaways from New Jersey's primaries for governor: How the candidates are handling Trump and more

NBC News

a day ago

The matchup in New Jersey's race for governor is officially set — and Tuesday's primaries also laid down big indicators about the state of both political parties after the first major intraparty contests since the 2024 election.
Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former state legislator, easily won his party's primary with President Donald Trump's endorsement, underscoring Trump's significant sway over the GOP electorate.
U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill won the crowded Democratic primary, pitching herself as the candidate with the best shot at holding on to the governorship and steering past ideological and antiestablishment sentiment simmering in her party. She defeated candidates who were to her left and to her right.
The race to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, one of two governor's races this year, is expected to be competitive. Trump lost the state by 6 percentage points in November, a 10-point swing in his direction compared with his 2020 margin.
Here are five takeaways from Tuesday's primaries:
Democrats revive 2018 playbook
Sherrill won as many Democratic voters were weighing which candidate would be most electable and as each Democratic candidate pitched a different path forward for the party.
Sherrill's victory suggests some Democratic voters want to dust off the party's successful playbook from the 2018 midterm elections, when she flipped a longtime Republican-held House seat. In that campaign and in her primary run this year, Sherrill stressed her background as a Navy helicopter pilot and a former federal prosecutor and pitched 'ruthless competence' as a counter to Trump.
'It just seems so obvious to me what the path forward is. It's effectively govern,' Sherrill recently told NBC News. 'And this is what I've been doing since 2018 when I first ran, right? ... I say to people, 'What's keeping you up at night?''
'I tell people it's not maybe the sexiest tagline, but ruthless competence is what people in New Jersey want to see in government,' Sherrill added later. 'And that's what I've always provided, and that's what I think stands in stark contrast to the most incompetent federal government we've probably ever seen in this nation.'
Still, while Sherrill won with over a third of the vote, the results revealed a fractured party.
Two candidates who pitched themselves as more progressive, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, won a combined 36% of the vote. Two of the more moderate candidates, U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney, got 20% combined, while teachers union president Sean Spiller won 10%.
Trump boosts Ciattarelli with the MAGA faithful and shows his hold on the GOP
After having come just 3 percentage points shy of defeating Murphy in 2021, Ciattarelli made one thing clear in his bid four years later: He's all in on Trump.
Like many prominent Republicans, Ciattarelli wasn't always on board — he criticized Trump as a 'charlatan' in 2015. And while he embraced Trump during his previous bid for governor, he didn't campaign with him.
That led Ciattarelli's opponents, including his top competitor, former radio host Bill Spadea, to try to frame him as insufficiently loyal to Trump. (Spadea had voiced criticism of Trump before he fell back in line.)
But Trump's endorsement of Ciattarelli cemented his front-runner status, helping hasten the end of the campaign. And in a nod to Ciattarelli's past criticism, Trump tried to inoculate him from any attempt to undercut his Trump bona fides.
'Jack, who after getting to know and understand MAGA, has gone ALL IN, and is now 100% (PLUS!),' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post announcing his backing.
Tuesday's result suggests that Trump's seal of approval was good enough for most GOP primary voters. By late Tuesday evening, Ciattarelli was carrying all of the state's 21 counties.
Ciattarelli's vote share was at 67% by late Tuesday evening, compared with just 22% for Spadea. State Sen. Jon Bramnick, who had been critical of Trump, had won just 6%, followed by two other candidates who had each won less than 3% of the vote.
Ciattarelli thanked Trump in his victory speech for his 'endorsement and strong support,' making a joke about his being a 'part-time New Jersey resident.' (Trump owns a home and a golf course in Bedminster.)
But Ciattarelli spent most of his speech focused on a general election argument, not on shoring up his base — indicative of the line he'll have to walk in a state Trump lost three times, even after the improvement he showed last year.
Old-school political machines still have some sway
Both parties are grappling with antiestablishment sentiment, wondering how to handle it, channel it or just avoid getting run over by it. But Tuesday's results were also a reminder that political institutions still have some staying power.
New Jersey's traditional political machines were dealt a blow last year following a lawsuit from Democrat Andy Kim during his Senate run, when a court ordered that county parties could no longer give advantageous ballot positions to their preferred candidates.
That diminished the sway those parties had Tuesday, but they still demonstrated some power.
Ciattarelli was the only Republican who competed for county party endorsements. Fulop didn't compete for Democratic county party endorsements, and Gottheimer sat some out, as well. Some county parties split between the candidates, with Sherrill earning the most endorsements from 10 of the 21 counties.
While Sherrill was carrying 15 of the state's 21 counties late Tuesday, Gottheimer was winning his home county, Bergen, which endorsed him. Sweeney, the only candidate from South Jersey, fared far better in the six counties that backed him. He was winning 40% of the vote in Gloucester County while garnering 7% of the statewide vote.
The county party endorsements were no guarantee of victory: The Essex County Democrats, for example, endorsed Sherrill. But as of late Tuesday evening, she was trailing Baraka in Essex County, where he is mayor of Newark, the state's largest city.
Even in that instance, though, the party endorsement may have helped Sherrill cut Baraka's margins in his home base.
Both parties frame the November fight
Tuesday night's victory speeches were also important table-setters, indicative of how each party is looking to frame the general election. And New Jersey's general election this year may foreshadow much of what we see on the campaign trail around the country in the 2026 midterms.
Outside of a quick thanks to Trump, Ciattarelli kept his focus tightly on Sherrill and New Jersey Democrats in his victory speech. He criticized her as 'Phil Murphy 2.0,' arguing that she has 'enabled every extremist and costly idea Phil Murphy has put forth,' and he even revived a key criticism of Murphy from his 2021 campaign.
He also criticized Sherrill's focus on Trump as a deflection.
'Mark my words: While we focus on these key New Jersey issues, my Democratic opponent will do everything in her power. Trust me ... if you took a shot every time Mikie Sherrill says 'Trump,' you'd be drunk off your ass every day between now and Nov. 4,' he said.
'But every time you hear her say 'Trump,' I want you to know what it really means: What it really means is Mikie doesn't have a plan to fix New Jersey,' he continued.
During her victory speech, Sherrill leaned heavily on her biography but also emphasized a dual mandate — a fight against New Jersey Republicans and also against Trump, a recipe that Democrats have successfully leaned on in past midterm elections.
Calling Ciattarelli a 'Trump lackey' who shouldn't lead the state, Sherrill criticized 'Trump and MAGA Republicans in D.C. [who] want to raise your taxes and take away your health care and education dollars.'
'This country is too beautiful to be beholden to the cruelty and self-interest that Jack and Trump are trying to hoist on her,' she said.
'The future is built on hard work and hope, and here in New Jersey, we're known for our grit, our tenacity — maybe a little bit for how loud we are — but it's going to take a strong voice to cut through the noise from Washington and deliver for the people,' she said. 'So I stand here tonight doing just that. And as a mom of four teenagers, you guys know I'm not going to put up with the incompetent, whiny nonsense coming from aggrieved MAGA Republicans.'
The power and limits of money
Tuesday's results showed how money matters in campaigns — and how it has its limits.
On the Democratic side, Sherrill won despite having been outspent by some of her opponents whose outside groups dropped millions of dollars on the race.
The largest outside spender was Working New Jersey, a super PAC funded by the state's teachers union, which Spiller leads. The group had spent a whopping $35 million on the race as of May 27, according to the latest campaign finance reports, while Spiller's campaign had spent $342,000. As of late Tuesday, Spiller had about 10% of the primary vote.
Gottheimer and Fulop were also boosted by outside groups that spent millions of dollars on the airwaves. (Gottheimer drained his congressional account to fund the outside group supporting him.) Sherrill got support on the airwaves from One Giant Leap PAC, which spent less than either Gottheimer's or Fulop's groups but spent most of its funds in the final weeks of the race.
Ciattarelli and an aligned outside group, Kitchen Table Conservatives, outspent the other Republicans. And Ciattarelli touted his strong fundraising as proof that he would be a formidable general election candidate.