The Republican candidates vying to become New Jersey’s next governor are sounding increasingly like President Donald Trump, and their messaging has gained unlikely fans: Democrats.
Democratic strategists from the state are hopeful that Republican candidates’ Trumpy rhetoric will dissuade moderate voters in November’s race, allowing Democrats to hang onto the governor’s seat despite dropping party approval ratings and a rightward shift in the state.
“The fact that there has been a very spirited Republican primary has been a great thing for Democrats,” Democratic strategist Daniel Bryan said. He added that the candidates are “in so deep on Trump right now it’s going to be hard for them to pivot away from that in the general, and I don’t think Trump would let them pivot away from it in the general.”
The two leading candidates at the forefront of the Republican field, according to polls — former state representative Jack Ciattarelli, who narrowly lost the last governor’s race, and conservative radio host Bill Spadea — are both cozy with Trump.
Each visited the president at his golf club in Bedminster in recent weeks. Ciattarelli and Spadea have made their support for Trump central to their campaigns, including by accusing each other of being insufficiently loyal to the president.
The tone Ciattarelli and Spadea have taken this campaign cycle has been a departure from past political ventures. Ciattarelli called Trump a “charlatan” a decade ago, but has since fully supported several of the president’s moves. Spadea published an op-ed in 2021 offering thoughts on why “Trump’s presidency failed” but has attempted to paint himself as the true Trump candidate.
While Trump-aligned policies and rhetoric have drawn the ire of Democrats elsewhere in the country, New Jersey Democrats aren’t entirely against it. Some even understand it given the changing tides of party politics.
“It makes sense, from a Republican perspective, to try to occupy that MAGA lane, because it’s not really the lane anymore on the Republican side of the aisle, it’s the entire road,” said Henry de Koninck, a political consultant who has worked in New Jersey.
Another Democratic operative in the state said they don’t see the focus on Trump being successful for Republicans in the long run. It’s a strategy that “can only be helpful for Democrats” in a general election where the party is already aiming to capitalize on disapproval with the presidential administration, they told NOTUS.
“People who came out and voted for Trump last year aren’t necessarily coming out to vote for someone that Trump says they like,” said this source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about Democrats in the state. “And even if they do, he didn’t win here, so it doesn’t make sense to me, this kind of race for the MAGA hat.”
Every county in New Jersey shifted right in the 2024 election. But the state’s four most populous counties went anywhere from three to 45 percentage points for Kamala Harris.
Party members are hoping Ciattarelli and Spadea’s rhetoric will come back to bite them amid low Trump approval ratings. A poll released last week by New Jersey’s Stockton University said more than half of New Jersey voters rated the president’s performance so far as poor. Multiple Democrats also pointed to historical off-year and midterm election trends that favor the party that’s not in the White House, largely driven by frustration with presidential policies regardless of who’s in office.
“The party out of power has that kind of anti-incumbent momentum,” de Koninck said. “If that trend continues, that’s a good sign for Democrats.”
It’s a trend that manifested in Pennsylvania, where Democrats won two state legislative seats last week, including one in a district that Trump won by 15 points this past November. The Democratic operative told NOTUS they hope a similar trend plays out in New Jersey this year, and that these unexpected wins are proof that the “Trump stamp of approval and a Trump loyalist label doesn’t necessarily translate to votes on election day.”
Nationally, Democrats have also taken note of the Trump-mania that’s made its way into the Republican primary.
“The Republican primary has become a single-focus race, and that single focus is who can own the MAGA lane,” Izzi Levy, a spokesperson for the Democratic Governors Association, told NOTUS.
Like state-level Democrats, the DGA is attempting to capitalize on the single-focus of it all in a bid to get voters to help the party hang onto the governor’s seat. A week-in-review email last week from the Democratic Governors Association branded the situation as an “increasingly hostile MAGA GOP primary” and said the race features “Trump, Trump and more Trump.”
“[Spadea and Ciattarelli] are making their case to be the Garden State’s next governor not to New Jersey families, but to Donald Trump,” the email said.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the state are eager to stick with Trump-style rhetoric despite the possibility it might backfire.
Chris Russell, a New Jersey GOP strategist who works for Ciattarelli’s campaign, told NOTUS that Ciattarelli’s rhetoric has taken on a more Trump-like tone, but that the campaign isn’t concerned about criticism over the messaging shift, nor does it think it’ll hurt Ciattarelli’s chances of winning in the historically blue stronghold. Russell pointed to Ciattarelli’s numbers in 2021, when he trailed Gov. Phil Murphy by less than four percentage points, and to Republicans’ gains in voter registration since then.
“For any Republican to come close in New Jersey, you have to dominate amongst unaffiliated voters, so the message is right sitting with them,” Russell said.
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Shifra Dayak is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.