Democrats on Tuesday were hoping New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy would give them a decisive reelection victory and provide a piece of good news as they anxiously watched a Virginia race that was looking increasingly out of reach.
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But more than four hours after polls closed in New Jersey, Republican Jack Ciattarelli held a narrow lead over Murphy. Some of the state’s heavily Democratic areas had yet to be counted, but a close finish was not what Democrats had envisioned in a reliably blue state that picked Joe Biden over President Donald Trump by 16 percentage points.
For most of the campaign, Murphy held a commanding lead, but the governor’s edge slipped to single digits in the days leading up to the election, leaving the outcome less certain. With 80 percent of the vote tallied, Ciattarelli was up 50？percent to 49 percent over Murphy.
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Nationally, the political mood has shifted significantly since President Biden took office in January, with the president’s approval ratings falling and Trump signaling a return to the political arena. The races in New Jersey and Virginia provided the first barometer of the extent of that shift.
Although Democrats were not nearly as concerned — and Republicans not as hopeful — about New Jersey as Virginia, both sides recognized that even a Murphy win could signal a complex dynamic. In particular, operatives from both sides were carefully watching the margins in the suburbs outside New York City and Philadelphia, hoping to gauge whether the GOP is making inroads in these pivotal areas ahead of the 2022 midterms.
The Trailer’s guide to the New Jersey race
Democrats flipped four New Jersey House seats in 2018 as part of the nationwide rebuke of Trump that year in vote-rich suburban districts. Republicans have already cited those New Jersey Democrats as top targets in their quest to win back the House and further blunt Biden’s agenda.
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If history were a guide, Ciattarelli was well-positioned to win Tuesday. No Democrat had won reelection for governor since 1977 in New Jersey — and the last two GOP governors both won their first elections in the first year of a new Democratic president.
Christine Todd Whitman and Chris Christie prevailed when Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, respectively, had spent less than a year in office, the same position Biden is in now. Those GOP victories foreshadowed Republican electoral waves that walloped Democrats in the following year’s midterms.
Biden’s approval rating is lower than Clinton and Obama at this point in their presidencies. In New Jersey, his approval dipped from 51 percent in August to 43 percent last week, according to a Monmouth University poll.
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Yet Murphy had advantages that were lacking by Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia. Murphy is an incumbent, and a relatively popular one, in a state with a big Democratic edge in voter registration. (McAuliffe is a former governor). And McAuliffe’s GOP opponent ran an unusually deft campaign.
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Like the Virginia contest, the New Jersey race had become somewhat nationalized in recent weeks, as Biden and Trump remain figures who can mobilize voters from the opposing camp.
Murphy not only spent the campaign touting his accomplishments as governor, but also trying to energize Democratic voters by invoking Trump. His campaign hammered Ciattarelli over his attendance at a “Stop the Steal” rally a year ago, including airing a hard-hitting ad that overlaid his speech at that event with images of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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Ciattarelli has said he did not know it was a “Stop the Steal” event and wouldn’t have gone if he had. Unlike some Republicans, he has acknowledged that Biden won the election.
As one of two marquee races this year, the New Jersey gubernatorial contest attracted such Democratic heavy hitters as Biden, Obama and Vice President Harris.
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Biden appeared with Murphy last week during a trip to the state to promote his infrastructure plan. “So many of the national challenges we’re confronting are areas where you’re already leading — and that’s not hyperbole,” Biden said. “So, thanks for showing the way, pal.”
When Obama headlined a campaign event a little more than a week before the election, he mocked Ciattarelli for claiming not to know the purpose of the rally he had attended.
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“When you’re standing in front of a sign that says ‘Stop the Steal’ and there’s a guy in the crowd waving a Confederate flag, you know this isn’t a neighborhood barbecue,” Obama said. “You know it’s not a League of Women Voters rally. Come on! Come on, man! That’s not what New Jersey needs.”
Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman, spent the campaign navigating how to avoid embracing Trump’s fervent voter base without unduly alienating it — a dance resembling that of Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin, and one that foreshadows a challenge many GOP candidates may face in 2022. Ciattarelli tried to refocus the conversation on local issues like the state’s record-high property taxes, and he sought to paint Murphy as “tax-and-spend liberal” who wants to impose his far-left priorities on the state.
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“This guy’s not Jersey. As someone who’s a proud American who’s just as proud of his heritage, if I’m fortunate enough to be your governor for two terms, there will be a Christopher Columbus Day,” Ciattarelli said in early October, referring to a cultural debate so salient among Jersey Italians that it was a plotline for “The Sopranos.”
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Murphy, whose popularity soared over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic when New Jersey and New York were hit with the first wave, did not shy away from his big-government policies, arguing that the state’s taxes translate to some of the best public schools and health care in the country.
Ahead of Election Day, 207,863 people had voted early in person and nearly 500,000 had cast ballots by mail. There are a little more than 6.5 million registered voters in the state.