What to Watch in New Jersey’s Gubernatorial Primaries

An AI version of Josh Gottheimer dukes it out with Trump.
Photo-Illustration: YouTube/ Josh Gottheimer for Congress

Only two states will hold gubernatorial elections in 2025: Virginia and New Jersey. The former will not have gubernatorial primaries as the major-party candidates, Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, were unopposed. But New Jersey’s primaries to determine which candidates will compete to succeed term-limited incumbent Phil Murphy have become very expensive slugfests, particularly among Murphy’s fellow Democrats. The relative dearth of public polling on the June 10 races has made the outcome a bit more mysterious than usual. But the races will undoubtedly be studied closely as an early indicator of where voters stand five months into the second Trump administration. Here, what to watch in Tuesday’s races.

What might have been a robust Republican gubernatorial primary in the Garden State lost most of its drama when President Donald Trump endorsed 2021 nominee and front-runner Jack Ciattarelli. The longtime central New Jersey politician (a former state legislator and local elected official) is a familiar figure after finishing second in the 2017 gubernatorial primary and then running much better than expected against Murphy four years later. The Trump endorsement undercut MAGA talk-radio host Bill Spadea’s candidacy and made Ciattarelli’s past criticism of the 47th president largely moot. A third candidate, anti-Trump state senator Jon Bramnick, picked the wrong year to run. Ciattarelli has led comfortably in every public poll.

The most striking thing about the Democratic gubernatorial race is how much money multiple candidates are raising and spending. Part of the reason is that New Jersey has one of the oldest and most generous public campaign-financing systems in the country, offering up to two-to-one matches of privately raised funds over $580,000. But lots of money is spent outside the system as well. As of May 27, official numbers showed that five of the Democrats (congresspeople Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrillmayors Ras Baraka of Newark and Steven Fulop of Jersey City, and former state legislative leader Steve Sweeney) had already spent over $6 million in private contributions and matching funds. But that doesn’t count PAC spending, particularly the incredible $37 million the state teachers-union PAC has made available to the campaign of its president, Sean playswho hasn’t bothered to raise much money at all (and who did not, as a by-product, qualify for participation in the two state-sponsored candidate debates held last month). Spiller aside, the other candidates are reasonably competitive with one another in funds, with Gottheimer having held back the most for a final ad blitz.

A recent overview of the Democratic race by Politico concludes that “each of the Democrats do have a conceivable path to victory on June 10.” Sherrill, a military veteran who flipped a U.S. House seat in 2018 and has a vaguely centrist image, is generally regarded as the front-runner (leading substantially in a couple of mid-May polls), in part because of her support from New Jersey’s usually powerful county party organizations. But that advantage may not be what it used to be since New Jersey recently abolished the so-called county line, a ballot design that gave party-endorsed candidates enormously greater visibility in primaries. A lot will depend on turnout patterns, which are also quite unpredictable since this is the first competitive New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial primary in a while. But early voting (mostly by mail, but, in the past week, in person as well) has been high, and all that spending should boost turnout as well. Baraka (who got a raft of publicity after being arrested during a protest at an ICE detention facility) and Fulop (who has stressed an anti-Establishment reputation), the most self-consciously progressive candidates, are counting on grassroots mobilization. Sweeney is the only candidate from the southern part of the state. Spiller is obviously very dependent on get-out-the-vote efforts from his union’s members. The large field of viable candidates and the fact that anyone can win with a simple plurality make this race hard to call.

As for issues, there are basically two: affordability and electability. All the Democrats claim they will lower New Jersey’s notably high cost of living. Baraka and Fulop are pushing for more progressive income-tax rates. Sweeney is heavily emphasizing tax breaks for seniors. Gottheimer has a comprehensive tax-reform scheme and is emphasizing “lower taxes” in a way that rivals Republicans.

But echoing the concerns of Democrats nationally, probably the top issue for Democrats is electability and who will most effectively defy the state’s most famous part-time resident, Donald Trump. Sherrill was something of a poster child for the Democratic resistance during Trump’s first term, knocking off a Republican incumbent in the 2018 midterms. Baraka was obviously willing to get himself handcuffed to show his opposition to Trump’s mass-deportation policies. Though all Democrats these days call themselves “fighters,” Gottheimer (despite the bipartisan reputation he developed as one of the founders of the House Problem Solvers Caucus) reached new highs (or, depending on how you look at it, lows) with a campaign ad that showed an AI-generated image of the congressman in boxing shorts duking it out with the president of the United States:

Whoever emerges from the Democratic scrum and (presumably) Jack Ciattarelli will engage in a likely quite competitive general-election contest. Republican optimism is based on a general disgruntlement with the way in which Democrats have governed New Jersey (they’ve held a trifecta since 2017) and two recent trends: Ciattarelli’s surprisingly strong finish in 2021 and that Trump cut his margin of defeat in the state from 15.9 percent in 2020 to 5.9 percent in 2024. There’s also the fact that neither party has won three consecutive gubernatorial elections in New Jersey since 1961, so the GOP is due for a win.

On the other hand, as in Virginia, New Jersey gubernatorial elections usually (e.g., in seven of the past eight elections) tilt in the direction of the party that does not control the White House. And New Jersey remains a blue state overall, albeit by a recently diminishing margin. You can expect whoever wins this year to herald the results as an unmistakable omen of the political future, while the loser spins and makes excuses.