New Jersey voters will head to the polls Tuesday to pick the two major party candidates who will square off in November’s gubernatorial election — which many observers say is poised to serve as an early referendum on President Donald Trump’s second term.
With Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy term-limited, Republicans want to win back the governor’s mansion in a state that swung 10 points to the GOP between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections. The heavy favorite to win the Republican nod is the party’s 2021 nominee Jack Ciattarelli, whom Trump endorsed in May, while Democratic New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill leads the crowded Democratic field in polling.
A day before the primary balloting, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the New Jersey gubernatorial race as “Lean D.” Multiple observers have said that the outcome of the race will likely show what voters in the right-trending state think of the current White House. If the Trump-backed Ciattarelli wins both the primary and the general election, flipping the governor’s mansion red for the first time in eight years, it would almost certainly serve as an early victory for the president.
The 2025 election marks Ciattarelli’s third consecutive attempt to win the governorship. After coming up short in the 2017 Republican primary, he captured the 2021 GOP nomination and lost the November election to Murphy by 3 percentage points — a closer than expected result.
In order for Ciattarelli — a former state assemblyman — to return to the general election, he first has to defeat his four GOP primary opponents, former radio host Bill Spadea, State Sen. Jon Bramnick, former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac and Justin Barbera, a former third party candidate for Congress. Spadea and Kranjac have both sought to position themselves as aligned with Trump — despite the president endorsing Ciattarelli. Meanwhile, Bramnick is widely regarded as a rare anti-Trump Republican.
I am honored to have the support of President @realDonaldTrump and so many New Jerseyans across the state.
Early voting is open today & tomorrow! Election Day is Tuesday! Get out there & vote! pic.twitter.com/i0kIZpW6mo
— Jack Ciattarelli (@Jack4NJ) June 7, 2025
A May poll from Emerson College showed Ciattarelli with a commanding lead — pulling 44% of support compared to 18% for his nearest rival, Spadea. Bramnick polled at 8%, with Barbera and Kranjac tied at 2% each. Twenty-three percent of respondents said they were undecided.
“Mario was called the ‘Trumpy Mayor of Englewood Cliffs’ because he fought relentlessly to keep his promises,” Kranjac’s campaign manager Michael D. Byrne said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation, highlighting the mayor’s conservative policies on fiscal issues, education, crime and housing. “Now, he’s the only candidate who has pledged to put the Democrats on the defensive over late-term abortion and finally start saving babies in New Jersey. Mario looks forward to winning the primary tomorrow and ending Phil Murphy’s failed policies.”
Meanwhile, Emerson College’s May poll of the Democratic field showed Sherrill — a congresswoman representing a suburban seat based in affluent Morris County — on top with 28% of support. Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka and New Jersey Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, were tied at 11% each according to the poll. Teachers union president Sean Spiller had 10% of support while former State Senate President Stephen Sweeney polled at 5%. Twenty-four percent of voters polled were undecided.
While Sherrill is the member of the New Democrat Coalition — a group of House lawmakers often regarded as mainstream liberals — Baraka and Fulop, the respective mayors of New Jersey’s two largest cities, have both appealed to the party’s “progressive” wing. Baraka called himself an “unapologetic progressive, standing up for freedom” in a June 2 op-ed for NJ.com. Fulop meanwhile appeared to portray himself as a reformist in an op-ed for the website also published the same day.
Baraka made headlines in May after federal authorities arrested him on a trespassing charge after he protested outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. The Newark mayor, who leads a sanctuary city, has called his prosecution by the Trump administration “malicious.”
“By God’s grace, we are in the hunt, and, one day out, the momentum is real. But we don’t count victories before they’re earned. This isn’t about predictions or polls, it’s about people, and we’re going to work every last minute to bring this home,” Baraka told the DCNF in a statement. “We’re running through the tape, staying grounded, and focused on turning out every voter who believes in a more just and affordable New Jersey. The energy is here, the coalition is strong, and we’re ready to finish what we started.”
“For decades, a small group of power brokers has treated New Jersey like it’s theirs to control, picking candidates in smoke-filled rooms and shutting out anyone who doesn’t play by their rules. We said no to all of it,” Fulop said in a statement provided to the DCNF. “We built this campaign without them, without their money, without their permission. And now, on the eve of the primary, we’re in striking distance because voters are fed up.”
Fulop said that voters in the Garden State are “done with being told who’s next in line” and want “a governor who owes nothing to the machine, and everything to the people.”
“We’ve spent the last two years on the ground, not in boardrooms, but in union halls, diners, places of worship, parks, and community centers. We’ve listened, we’ve learned, and we’ve fought to earn every vote,” the Jersey City mayor added in his statement. “That’s the kind of campaign we’ve run, and it’s the kind of leadership I’ll bring to Trenton, honest, unfiltered, and driven by the people who make this state work.”
As New Jersey is a closed primary state, only registered Republicans and Democrats can vote in their party’s respective primaries — meaning the over two million Garden State voters not affiliated with a major party cannot cast votes on Tuesday.
The Garden State, in addition to Virginia, is one of two states that hold races for the governor’s mansion the year after presidential elections. Several past New Jersey gubernatorial elections, including the 2009 victory of Republican Chris Christie and Murphy’s initial 2017 win, were viewed in part as reactions to Presidents Barack Obama and Trump, who were respectively inaugurated just months before.
The campaigns of Ciattarelli, Spadea, Bramnick, Barbera, Sherrill, Gottheimer, Spiller and Sweeney did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Nfeld / Wikimedia Commons)
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