Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli will meet in the first debate of the general election on Sunday, and the game plans have already been drawn.
Experts and strategists said they expect a clash between two key themes: Sherrill’s handling of state-level issues and Ciattarelli’s ties with President Donald Trump.
Ciattarelli has served in local, county, and state government, while Sherrill’s elected work has come wholly in Congress. His campaign has worked to paint Sherrill as unprepared for state leadership, including with ads that show her struggling to name a piece of legislation she’d like to enact as governor.
“The onus at this point is kind of on Mikie Sherrill to show a command of the issues and to overcome some of the hesitancy that the Ciattarelli campaign has been trying to portray her with in the ads,” said Dan Cassino, the executive director of the Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll.
Cassino said the strategy is grounded in data. An FDU poll found Ciattarelli makes slim gains with independent voters when they are prompted on local issues, but drops slightly when national issues are mentioned.
“If she has a strong performance, it shuts down a lot of those doubts that the [Ciattarelli] campaign is trying to put out,” Cassino said.
Kate Gibbs, the executive director of the Republican State Committee, said Sherrill struggles to differentiate her policies from those of Gov. Phil Murphy and legislative Democrats, who have controlled the state government for nearly the last eight years.
“What I expect to see is Jack having a complete mastery of all of the different issues that are facing New Jerseyans, from the affordability crisis to surging electricity bills to public safety to education to quality of life,” Gibbs said. “And we’ll see that Mikie Sherrill doesn’t want to talk about state and local issues, because she cannot separate herself from any of the policy failures that the Trenton Democrats have put in place.”
Dan Bryan, a former senior adviser to Gov. Phil Murphy and co-author of the New Jersey Globe’s Stomping Grounds column, said Sherrill’s motivating message will be affordability in the state.
“I think Mikie is going to be looking to show the audience and the state that she’s the candidate that’s going to drive down costs,” Bryan said. “She’s been laser-focused on affordability in this cycle, and when she’s talking about her proactive agenda, it’s affordability, affordability, affordability.”
While Ciattarelli is expected to steer the debate toward the state issues he’s most familiar with, President Donald Trump will surely come up. The Sherrill campaign has sought to highlight Ciattarelli’s recent embrace of Trump, with national Democrats blasting ads that declare the Republican nominee “100% MAGA.”
He has a balancing act to strike: Ciattarelli must keep Trump fans in the Republican base motivated, while also shedding off concerns that he would be a New Jersey version of Trump for moderates who might not approve of the president.
“He doesn’t want to criticize Donald Trump for fear of depressing support among MAGA and conservative voters, but he also cannot be seen to be embracing him, because Donald Trump is not popular in New Jersey,” Cassino said. “So he’s got to thread that needle.”
Gibbs said Trump has little effect on the issues that matter to those watching, like increasing property taxes and needed school reform. She said that even if Sherrill brings up the president, New Jerseyans will stay focused on state issues.
“She can bring [Trump] up, but I think she’s doing it to distract from the fact that she doesn’t really know much about state and local issues,” Gibbs said.
Bryan said Sherrill’s critiques of the ties between Trump and Ciattarelli can’t be swept aside so easily.
“[Ciattarelli] talks a lot about, ‘Oh, Mikie only talks about Trump.’ Well, it’s not true. What Mikie says is actually a value statement on Jack. Jack has a blind allegiance to Trump,” Bryan said.
Cassino said most people who tune in will be politically invested people who have already made up their minds — that could be even more true on Sunday night, when the Giants play the Chiefs in primetime football. He said the biggest effect the debate will have on the race will come from media coverage and clips on social media — the “zippy” moments.
“That’s always what matters,” he said. “So both sides are strongly incentivized to try and create viral moments.”
Sunday’s 90-minute debate, sponsored by the New Jersey Globe, On New Jersey, and Rider University, begins at 7 p.m. The debate is one of two authorized by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.
Note: Editor David Wildstein, a moderator on Sunday’s debate, was not involved in the production of this article. The New Jersey Globe’s reporters are not involved in the creation of debate questions.
