The summer is over, Labor Day has come and gone, and New Jersey’s gubernatorial election is here.
When all is said and done, the race between Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) and former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R-Somerville) will likely only be determined by the two or three million New Jerseyans, give or take, who choose to cast a ballot. Many of those New Jerseyans will be voting based on the kinds of local issues that always dominate state campaigns: property taxes, energy prices, school funding formulas.
The consequences of their vote, however, will be felt far beyond just New Jersey. With only two gubernatorial elections this year to gauge the political landscape, all eyes will be on New Jersey and Virginia – and unlike prior election cycles, when Virginia was seen as by far the more competitive race, New Jersey may be this year’s marquee contest.
“New Jersey and Virginia are the first real tests of where things stand, and they’re important trial balloons for messaging ahead of 2024,” said Matthew Klein, an analyst at the Cook Political Report. “They’re really the big tests of what we’ve got going on.”
National groups are expected to spend tens of millions of dollars on the race this fall, far more than what they’ve invested in past years. Sherrill and Ciattarelli, recognizing the race’s stakes, are both leaning into national issues in their campaigning, and making the case to voters that their choice of term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy’s successor could have dramatic consequences.
Whatever the results may be, they’re sure to be interpreted as tea leaves for 2026, when control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives will be up for grabs – turning what could otherwise be a parochial state contest into something far bigger.
“People figuratively say, ‘The eyes of the nation will be on us,’” said Mo Butler, a Democratic strategist in New Jersey and a member of the Democratic National Committee. “This actually is that election. The eyes of the nation will be on what happens in New Jersey. This time it’s really real.”
National investments
Earlier this summer, the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) made a notable announcement: it would spend $20 million this fall on ads supporting Sherrill, dramatically higher than its $2.3 million investment behind Murphy in 2021. “The DGA is committed to holding New Jersey’s governorship and making sure that voters up and down the Garden State understand the stakes of this election,” a DGA spokesperson said at the time.
The meaning of the investment was twofold: national Democrats are intensely interested in securing a win in New Jersey, and they view the race as competitive enough to warrant spending $20 million on it.
Their counterparts at the Republican Governors Association (RGA) have not publicly announced any investments in the race, though Klein said that the RGA typically plays its cards close to its chest when it comes to spending. In the Ciattarelli camp, that’s likely summoning some flashbacks of 2021, when the RGA, convinced Ciattarelli was destined to lose, largely backed out of the race and only spent around $3.8 million; Ciattarelli ended up falling short just 51% to 48%.
RGA Chairman Brian Kemp, however, was in New Jersey last month to fundraise for Ciattarelli, and Politico NJ reported this morning that a pro-Ciattarelli super PAC has been created with the apparent aim of accepting RGA cash. And Republican National Committeewoman Janice Fields, who’s also a local elected official in Somerset County, said that her Republican friends from other states are constantly offering to help the Ciattarelli campaign, far more than they had in prior cycles.
“They want to help in any way they can – ‘we want to take a bus to New Jersey and help you, we want to do postcards, we want to make phone calls, whatever we can do to help,’” Fields said. “Before, in other gubernatorial races, you were asking them to help you. Now, nationally, everyone’s asking us what they could do to help us, because this race is so important to them.”
That kind of attention and investment creates tremendous pressure on Sherrill and Ciattarelli to perform well, especially if New Jersey emerges as the fall’s one truly competitive race; Virginia has historically held that label more often, but former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger (Sherrill’s close friend and roommate) seems to have built a durable lead there, and most observers see the New Jersey contest as tighter. (New Jersey also used to be a far bluer state than Virginia, but the two states voted for Kamala Harris by nearly the exact same margin last year.)
The candidates themselves know the national stakes, and Sherrill in particular has built her campaign around national issues accordingly. Not a day goes by that the Sherrill campaign doesn’t remind voters of the fact that Ciattarelli is endorsed by President Donald Trump, supported the Medicaid and food stamp cuts in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, and has put little daylight between himself and the controversial president.
“Mikie has sort of nationalized the race,” Butler said. “She’s tying it back to Trump and what Trump is doing in Washington, and what that would mean to New Jersey if we have a Republican governor married up with a Republican president.”
Ciattarelli has consciously hewed closer to local issues, trying to make the election more of a referendum on Murphy and Democrats in Trenton. But he, too, has not been afraid to bring national politics in when it could benefit him; he spent the final month of the primary constantly promoting his endorsement from Trump, and he’s been willing to go toe-to-toe with Sherrill on national issues like immigration enforcement and detention.
Trump himself remains one of the race’s biggest wild cards. Will the president, who spends much of his time at his golf club in Bedminster, campaign with Ciattarelli this fall? Ciattarelli has said he’d welcome Trump to New Jersey – but given Trump’s underwater approval ratings in the state, would that really help him win?
National intrigue
Most of these considerations are ones that might be a factor in any gubernatorial election. But what’s unique about New Jersey and Virginia is that, because of their off-cycle elections, they get to be the only game in town once every four years, and parties and politicians looking for tea leaves about future elections will be laser-focused on the two races (and little else).
In 2017, big Democratic wins in both New Jersey and Virginia were an omen of a great Democratic year in 2018 – especially in those two states in particular, where Democrats flipped a combined seven House seats. And in 2021, a Republican win in Virginia and a surprisingly narrow Democratic victory in New Jersey heralded a much more Republican-leaning environment in 2022, when Republicans flipped one House seat apiece in each state.
A resounding Sherrill victory this year, then, would give Democrats confidence heading into the 2026 midterms; a Ciattarelli victory, or even a narrow Sherrill win, would be seen as an auspicious sign for Republicans. Butler and Fields, fresh off national party meetings this summer, said that both of their parties see New Jersey’s election as potentially predictive of the 2026 elections and beyond.
“You have a Democratic Party right now that is on the back of its heels,” Butler said. “Mikie’s a great candidate, and if Mikie pulls this thing off in November, that gives [Democrats] momentum going into what’s going to be a very pivotal midterm election.”
“If we can pull this off, we’ve got a great opportunity in the midterms,” Fields said. “If a blue state can turn in the Northeast, so can those midterm seats. I think that’s a gauge on where people are voting.”
Moreover, both parties will be looking at what messaging works and doesn’t work; a Sherrill loss, for example, may convince Democrats that a Trump-focused argument isn’t as effective as it once was. And polling in the race is likely to come under scrutiny as well: pollsters underestimated Trump in all three of his presidential elections, but if polls (which currently show Sherrill with a modest lead) turn out to be right this year, that may build confidence ahead of 2026.
“If the polls are only off by one or two points in these races, then I think that probably means we can feel a little bit more comfortable in the polling ahead of the midterm elections,” Klein said. “And if they’re really off, then it might speak to a real fundamental reshaping of the electorate that could be challenging to portend in 2026.”
The two people who can learn the most about their political futures from the results, though, are New Jersey Reps. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) and Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon). Both represent districts that voted for Trump by around one percentage point last year, and both are likely to be top targets in the fight for the House in 2026.
If Sherrill can carry Kean’s district, which is demographically similar to the one she represents in the House, that would bode well for the crowded field of Democrats hoping to unseat him. Conversely, if Ciattarelli wins Pou’s historically blue district based in Paterson, that would be a strong sign that Trump’s shocking gains in the plurality-Hispanic district weren’t a one-off.
More generally, Ciattarelli’s campaign will be a test of how durable Trump’s New Jersey coalition will be for Republicans going forward. Trump made enormous strides with Garden State voters, especially Hispanic voters; can Ciattarelli, who has made a concerted (and, in some cases, criticized) effort to appeal to minority voters, prove that those voters will keep voting Republican?
National implications
Looking at the New Jersey governor’s race exclusively as a crystal ball for how future elections will go, one could argue that the actual identity of the winner isn’t as important as how much they win by.
“Who wins isn’t necessarily as telling as the margin by which they win,” Klein said. “If Sherrill wins by two points, sure, she’ll get to be governor and Democrats are going to claim victory, but national Republicans are going to be much happier than national Democrats, because that’s an indication that Trump isn’t going to be a big drag. If she wins by nine, then it’s a very different story.”
But for New Jerseyans, of course, it matters quite a bit who the next governor will be, and that governor will inevitably have an impact on national political and policy debates.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the selection of the state’s attorney general, which in New Jersey is an office appointed by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate rather than separately elected. Current Attorney General Matt Platkin, a Murphy appointee, has taken on a leading role in the state-level legal fight against the Trump administration, joining with other Democratic attorneys general around the country to challenge Trump policies in court, often successfully.
If she wins, Sherrill won’t retain Platkin himself, but whoever she does choose as her attorney general would almost certainly take a similar anti-Trump tack in office. Ciattarelli, on the other hand, has specifically pledged to name an attorney general who “will not be suing the White House for executive orders” like Platkin has done.
“It’d be nice if the attorney general’s agenda was worrying about New Jersey and making people from New Jersey do the right thing, rather than going after the Trump administration,” Fields said.
The next governor will also have the power to name at least one new state Supreme Court justice, and perhaps more if they’re re-elected in 2029 or if a justice steps down before the mandatory retirement age of 70. New Jersey has a long tradition of bipartisanship when it comes to judicial nominations, but Ciattarelli has indicated that he’d be willing to break from that norm.
Then again, even if Ciattarelli wins in November, he’d be constrained by the fact that he’d have to deal with a sizable Democratic majority in the State Senate, which won’t face voters until 2027. (All 80 seats in the State Assembly will be up this year, but Democrats are heavily favored to retain their majority there, too.) A Governor Sherrill, on the other hand, would likely have a Democratic trifecta to work with, though some Democratic legislators privately prefer compromises with Republicans to another consecutive Democratic governorship.
But regardless of control of the state legislature, governors alone have plenty of power, both official and symbolic, when it comes to handling national issues and the Trump administration. From cooperation with immigration enforcement to addressing federal funding cuts to dealing with executive orders related to transgender athletes and DEI, Sherrill and Ciattarelli could each make very different marks on the national conversation.
“What is federalism going to look like for the next two years?” Rasmussen said. “Is it going to be cooperative? Is it going to be competitive? Is it going to be contentious?”
And inevitably, no matter who wins or by how much, chatter about future presidential ambitions is going to begin, though Rasmussen said he’s not convinced either candidate will go down that path if they’re victorious.
“New Jersey politics is always at the forefront of what’s going on in our national politics,” Rasmussen said. “There’s a reason why every governor since Woodrow Wilson has seen themselves as potential presidential candidates.”
That type of speculation, though, will have to wait until Sherrill or Ciattarelli actually win. The two candidates will spend the next two months navigating a minefield of a campaign season, with the country’s eyes on them every step of the way. That kind of national attention could come with a lot of peril – and a lot of opportunity.
“It’s a lot of pressure,” Fields said. “We have a lot of pressure nationally to pull this out. But we’re expecting a lot from them, too. We’re saying, ‘Okay, nationally, this is important to you, you want to win – what are you going to do for us?’”
