He was the 2021 nominee and nearly defeated incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy
Jack Ciattarelli will get another shot at becoming the next governor of New Jersey.
The Associated Press called the race for Ciattarelli about 20 minutes after polls closed.
The Trump-backed Republican, who came within three points of unseating Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in 2021, won his party’s nomination again on Tuesday night. Ciattarelli has been running for governor for nearly a decade, losing his first bid in the 2017 primary.
Now, he’s leading a party that is hoping to upend Trenton, which has been ruled by Democrats for the past eight years.
“To our most well-known part-time resident who honored me with his endorsement and strong support: Thank you, President Donald J. Trump,” Ciattarelli said in a victory speech.
The general election will be a test of how Ciattarelli positions himself in a showdown with Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a four-term congressmember who won her party’s nomination shortly after Ciattarelli did.
“We won because our campaign is about people, not politics. It’s about vision, not division,” Ciattarelli told supporters gathered in Holmdel, in Monmouth County. He added that “New Jersey so desperately needs change” from Democratic rule, and said that “a vote for Mikie Sherrill is a vote for four more years of Phil Murphy.”
Ciattarelli was already the frontrunner when President Donald Trump endorsed him in May, but that nod inevitably means that the Garden State’s off-cycle gubernatorial will be a test of the MAGA movement in a state that leans blue.
From now until general election ballots are counted in November, the question will be whether Trump in his second term provides coattails other Republicans can ride or comes with baggage that will bring them down.
Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker, is perhaps an unlikely candidate to carry Trump’s torch. He once called the president a “charlatan” who was “not fit” for the Oval Office. But, like other once leery Republicans, Ciattarelli got in line and in May got Trump’s endorsement.
Jack, as friends and foes alike call him, entered local politics in the early 1990s serving on a borough council, then county commission and then in the Legislature. Over the years, especially since he launched his first run for governor, he’s built up his name I.D., forged relationships and met who-knows-how-many voters.
His first run for governor ended early, when he lost the primary to Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who was Gov. Chris Christie’s No. 2.
Ciattarelli tried again in 2021, won the primary and came within three points of unseating Murphy – an outcome that shocked most political observers, so much so that a prominent pollster apologized after the election for a survey that showed Murphy would cake walk to victory.
In the years since, Ciattarelli has kept campaigning and sidled up to Trump.
In 2021, he walked a tightrope of embracing Trump enough to appease the Republican base while not appearing too MAGA. He attended a “stop the steal” rally, for example, but then denied knowing the reason behind it.
He’s struck a much different tone since then.
“This is not the deep-blue state that sometimes the national media says it is,” Ciattarelli said during a radio appearance shortly after Trump’s endorsement. “There’s a real opportunity here, and with the president’s help, we can get it done.”
And now he is now just five months away from seeing if it’ll all pay off.
Dustin Racioppi contributed to this report.
