The New Jersey gubernatorial election should have been a razor-thin race. It would be the silver lining against two predictable Democratic victories in Virginia and New York City. Instead, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciatarelli by 13 points, 56% to 43%. In the coming days we will analyze the results and delve into the demographics, but as a person who has been involved in Jersey politics for decades and has served as chairman of a Republican county party, we must acknowledge mistakes if we want to win.
Terminating the Gateway project in the middle of the gubernatorial election will go down as one of the worst mistakes in political history. President Donald Trump is and was the double-edged sword. Ciatarelli needed more of his voters to vote, and Sherrill used Trump as the boogeyman to get Democrats out.
The Trump factor
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Trump voters are voting for Trump. They don’t vote for other Republicans. I joined Dana Perino for her podcast “Perino on Politics” and said that if we wake up Wednesday morning and low propensity Trump voters stay home, it will be Governor-elect Sherrill. Trump held two tele-rallies for Ciatarelli, but would an in-person Trump rally have helped turn out those voters? Personally I think it would have helped, but maybe I have tunnel vision.
Democratic Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill speaks during an election night party in East Brunswick, New Jersey, Tuesday, November 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Tunnel vision
On October 14, Trump announced the termination of the Gateway Project, a multibillion-dollar commuter rail project. Sherrill could use this cancellation as a major line of attack in northern New Jersey, where hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans commute to New York and spend hours in brutal traffic. If Democrats had voted to reopen the government, that issue would have been off the table, but it was a mistake to end the project in the middle of the gubernatorial election.
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Did Republicans have tunnel vision and not see that voters were angry and blaming them for the cancellation of a project that would make their commute easier? Back to the double-edged sword. If Ciatarelli had attacked Trump on the issue, even more Trump voters would have stayed home. Either way, it gave Sherrill a strong offensive line in the final weeks of the campaign.
Message
Sherrill said she would freeze electricity rates on day one. Even Democratic Governor Phil Murphy admitted it was a fantasy, saying, “I’m not sure how you would actually do that.” Anyway, it’s a simple message and people think, great, my rates aren’t going up.
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When Sean Hannity asked him at the town hall what the first thing he would do as governor was, Ciatarelli said he would sign an executive order that would end sanctuary cities. While that message was necessary to convince the less likely Trump voters, it clearly should not have been his first action as governor. First and foremost, people were looking for economic relief. Back to the double-edged sword.
The polls
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Highly respected pollsters who accurately predicted the 2024 presidential race said this race was within the margin of error. AtlasIntel, which says, “AtlastIntel was the most accurate pollster of the U.S. presidential election for the second year in a row, both nationally and in key swing states,” published a poll on October 31 that said, “The New Jersey governor’s race is close. The scenario below shows Mikie Sherrill (D) leading Jack Ciatarelli (R) by just 0.9 percentage points – a difference within the margin of error.”
As a former county chairman and Republican Party strategist, I can say clearly that we need additional methods to assess how voters feel because polls drive the message. We also need to figure out how the betting markets can be so right when some polls are so wrong.
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There will be more to say, but the double-edged sword struck hard and now the Republican Party of New Jersey will be torn apart. The only question is, is New Jersey truly a blue state or would a stronger embrace of President Trump have turned the tide in Ciatarelli’s direction? If he had announced that he had spoken to Trump and restored funding for the tunnel, would that have changed everything? It’s hard to see how anything could have closed the 13% gap, but better polling might have helped redirect the message to a New Jerseyan who actually cared.
