By NIKITA BIRYUKOV, DANA DiFILIPPO AND SOPHIE NIETO-MUNOZ
Republished with permission of N.J. Monitor

It’s anyone’s guess who will win the six-person race for the Democratic nomination for governor.

One of the candidates, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, said he doesn’t know what kind of mood there will be at the party his campaign is hosting to watch election results come in Tuesday night.

“Could be a party, could be a funeral,” Fulop told the New Jersey Monitor.

Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, is barred from seeking a third term this November. With New Jersey’s controversial county-line ballot now in the trash bin and President Trump’s reelection creating ire among New Jersey Democrats and renewed enthusiasm among the state’s Republicans, the race to succeed Murphy is one of the most competitive in ages, with 11 total candidates in Tuesday’s primaries spending a record amount of campaign cash.

Republican Jack Ciattarelli is the front-runner in the five-man race for the GOP nomination. A former assemblyman who has run two unsuccessful campaigns for governor — and nearly beat Murphy in 2021 — Ciattarelli said Republican primary voters “know that I can win in November” and promises “a big change coming for New Jersey.”

“People are energized,” he told the New Jersey Monitor. “They know that I’m going to unite the party, they know I’m going to raise the necessary money, and they know that I’m going to have coattails.”

    Republican governor hopeful Jack Ciattarelli rallying supporters at the Brownstone in Paterson over the weekend. (Courtesy of Ciattarelli campaign)
  

Ciattarelli’s opponents are state Sen Jon Bramnick, contractor Justin Barbera, former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac, and longtime radio talk show host Bill Spadea. Trump’s endorsement of Ciattarelli is expected to give him a major boost with GOP primary voters.

The Democratic field — Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Fulop, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, teachers union president Sean Spiller, and ex-state Sen. Steve Sweeney — have talked almost as much about Trump on the campaign trail as they have about each other. Sherrill, who was first elected to Congress amid the 2018 Democratic wave that came after Trump’s first two years in the White House, said her campaign’s final days are focused on Democratic voters’ desire for affordability and resistance to the Trump administration.

“Largely it’s both the concerns they have about Trump and Washington and the attack on our economy and our rights and freedoms and the desire that we bring down costs here in New Jersey by building more houses and pushing clean, cheap solar into the power grid,” Sherril told the New Jersey Monitor Friday. “And that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

Sherrill, who is leading the Democratic race in public polling, in some ways is looking past the June 10 primary. During Friday’s interview, she launched an attack against Ciattarelli and his coziness with Trump that presaged a potential November match-up between Ciattarelli and Sherrill.

“People are growing increasingly disgusted with how much Ciattarelli is just giving over power to Trump,” she said.

    Governor hopeful Rep. Mikie Sherrill, in pink, rallies supporters in Montclair on June 8 in advance of the gubernatorial primary. (Courtesy of Sherrill campaign)
  

Baraka, too, has Trump on his mind. The Trump administration has put Baraka in his crosshairs: It arrested Baraka on May 9 and charged him with trespassing on an ICE property, dropped the charges 10 days later, then sued Baraka and the city of Newark four days after that, accusing the city of illegal protection of undocumented immigrants via Newark’s sanctuary city ordinance. Baraka last week sued the Trump administration for false arrest and malicious prosecution.

During a campaign stop in Lawrenceville Thursday, Baraka presented himself as a fighter for the working class who has both the will and the experience to take on the Trump administration. He listed cut after cut that Trump “and his minions” have made that hurt working people.

“This is a moral moment,” he said, likening the fight against Trump to civil rights struggles in the 1960s. “We have to pray that fear doesn’t turn us into cowards, because in moments like this, you make safe decisions, not the right decisions, and safe decisions don’t get you where you need to be.”

If elected governor, he added, he would not take a back seat to legislators. He accused Murphy of failing to effectively push legislative leadership to advance bills that stall interminably even when they align with Democratic ideals and priorities. Governors, he said, should set a state’s agenda and have their legislators’ backs.

    Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat running for governor, talks to supporters on June 6, 2025, in Lawrenceville. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
  

“The governor has to be in the front. You got to take the blows,” he said.

On the GOP side, Kranjac has argued that he — not Ciattarelli, not Spadea — is the Trumpiest candidate in the race.

“I was called the ‘Trumpy mayor of Englewood Cliffs’ because I fought relentlessly to keep my promises. I cut taxes, cut spending, kept CRT out of schools, stood up to Black Lives Matter, and didn’t allow a single unit of high-density, ‘affordable housing’ to be built in our town. My record proves that I’ll fight just as hard for New Jersey and never give up,” Kranjac said in a statement.

Outsiders vs. Insiders

From street festivals to telephone town halls, Spadea hopscotched the state over the weekend looking to impart one message: He’s the only true outsider in the race, on both sides of the aisle. He argues that in November, he would not appeal just to Republicans but also to “disaffected Democrats who feel that their party has abandoned them.”

“If you want something different than we have had over the past 30 years, where most Democrats have run roughshod over weak Republicans, then I am the only choice,” said Spadea. 

Spadea losing the Trump endorsement to Ciattarelli was a blow to Spadea’s campaign — so much so that he cut a campaign ad addressing the snub — but Spadea remains committed to the argument that Ciattarelli is a “compromiser” who too often supports Democrat-led policies and positions like discounted college tuition for undocumented immigrants.

“If we have any hope of winning in November, I am the right candidate at the right time,” Spadea said.

    Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, a gubernatorial candidate, speaks to voters in Fair Lawn on June 8. (Courtesy of Fulop campaign)
  

Fulop is making the same type of pitch on the Democratic side, arguing that he is an outsider and that is what voters want and need. Fulop said when he talks to undecided voters — polls show they account for a quarter of respondents — he stresses that an institutional candidate is going to have a hard time getting elected in November because of issues Murphy could not resolve in his two terms.

Fulop, who like Baraka was sued by the Trump administration for Jersey City’s sanctuary ordinance, suggested internal Sherrill campaign polls that show she is up double digits have been fluffed. 

“I think it’s pretty clear that that was fake now that people look at how everybody’s reacting and where the climate of the race is today. I think everybody thinks it’s a very, very close race,” he said.

Sweeney, on the other hand, is advocating for an insider. A former state Senate president who spent two decades in the Legislature, Sweeney argues that Trenton needs someone with Statehouse experience to lead.

“My experience in local government and the state Legislature has prepared me to lead from day one, but it’s my deep understanding of hardworking people and the challenges they face that makes me the Democrats’ best choice on Tuesday — and New Jersey’s best choice this November,” Sweeney said in a statement.

Sweeney, an ironworker by trade, said he was running to lower housing, utility, and medical costs.

‘Big money’

The spending in this year’s gubernatorial primaries has already made this the most expensive governor’s race in New Jersey history — topping the last record-breaker, the November 2005 general election — and one candidate is decrying the spending by his rivals.

That would be Democrat Sean Spiller, who heads statewide teachers union the New Jersey Education Association. Spiller, whose personal campaign has raised so little that he’s the only Democrat who did not receive public matching funds from the state, used the race’s final days to hammer home his message that he can’t be bought by “big money.”

“We can finally elect somebody who is not going to be beholden and bought by the big money that always buys politics,” Spiller said.

Spiller’s critics have noted that big money has supported his campaign in a major way, with a super PAC aligned with Spiller’s union pouring over $40 million into an independent expenditure group that has blitzed roadsides and mailboxes around the state with billboards and mailers. The group is responsible for more than half of the outside spending in the race.

But that’s not the big money he means. Instead, he said, too many candidates take too much money from insurance companies, Wall Street, big banks, developers, and political bosses. Such donations influence public policymaking and drive political candidates to make “empty promises” to regular working people on the campaign trail that they never fulfill, he added.

“There’s a disconnect between what somebody says and then what happens when they get there. And it is because of the money,” he said.

Gottheimer is also focused on spending — the state’s. A five-term congressman, he has made big pledges to cut property taxes by slashing state spending.

“People talk to me a lot about how they’re just crushed by taxes,” Gottheimer said, “but the other big thing that’s coming up is making sure that we can win in November.” 

He said he’s prepared to fight the Trenton machine that he says is to blame for rising utility bills and property taxes. 

In an interview Friday, he touted his first election in 2016, where he flipped a congressional seat held by Republicans for 84 years, and noted he was elected to his fifth term last year by 12 points. 

“I’ve got a record of doing some of the most impossible things in Washington, solving the country’s problems,” he said. “I do what’s best for Jersey. I’m willing to fight.”

State Sen. Jon Bramnick (R-Union), the only sitting lawmaker seeking the GOP gubernatorial nod, is also focused on general election viability in his closing pitch.

Bramnick, a moderate Republican long opposed to Trump, argues that candidacies fashioned in Trump’s likeness would fare poorly in a New Jersey general election and says more traditional conservatism would prevail.

“The Democrats are running scared. They are not proud of their record. They want a candidate that they can beat,” Bramnick says in a closing ad. “They don’t want me, because I come to the table with the basic principles of our party: small government, low taxes, and law and order. That’s how we win as Republicans in this state.”