Governor Phil Murphy (D), first elected in 2017, has reached his term limit and will leave office after eight years.
The race for the Democratic nomination was crowded, with prominent current and former officeholders on the ballot. U.S. Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, New Jersey Education Association president and former Montclair Mayor Sean Spiller, and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney were among those who ran.
Ultimately, U.S. Representative Mikie Sherrill pulled away with the nomination after receiving 34% of the vote. First elected in 2018, Mikie Sherrill represents New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District. Prior to her time in office, Sherrill served for one year as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey and almost ten years on active duty in the United States Navy. Sherrill’s campaign has focused primarily on three core issues: lowering housing costs, improving public transit, and increasing transparency. She supports decreasing health care and energy costs, improving housing affordability by increasing new home construction, and expanding job training programs and offering more apprenticeships. Sherrill has released an online safety agenda, where she has promised to enact an Age Appropriate Design Code and ban the usage of cell phones in public school classrooms. The agenda also addresses Artificial Intelligence (AI), with plans to require developers of AI products to offer detection tools for users and to label AI-generated content.
Five candidates vied to be the Republican Party’s nomination to replace Murphy, with State Senator Jon Bramnick, former State Assemblymember Jack Ciattarelli, and former radio host Bill Spadea leading in polls and fundraising. Justin Barbera and Mario Kranjac also ran for the office.
In the end, Ciattarelli easily won the primary with 68% of the vote. He previously ran for the governor’s office in 2017 but lost in the primary, and again in 2021 but then lost to Governor Murphy in the general election. From 2011 to 2018 Ciattarelli represented District 16 in the New Jersey General Assembly, serving as Assistant Minority Whip in the last four years of his term. He previously served on the Raritan Borough Council and the Somerset County Board of Commissioners. His career experience includes working as an entrepreneur and small business owner. Ciattarelli’s campaign platform includes plans to make the state more affordable by means such as reducing state spending and capping property taxes. He also plans to pursue government reform measures, including instituting term limits for state legislators and ending remote work for public employees. Ciattarelli advocates for an energy plan that promotes an all-of-the-above energy policy and withdraws the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball have rated this race as Lean Democratic.
All 80 seats in the New Jersey Assembly are also up for re-election in 2025. Over 200 candidates were on the ballot yesterday, with 24 competitive districts for Democrats and seven contested races for Republicans.