New Jersey Governor: Sherrill and Ciattarelli Were Born to Run
June 12, 2025 · 2:43 PM EDT
It was a chalky night in New Jersey as the frontrunners for the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial nominations won comfortable victories over their many opponents.
Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former GOP state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli were the favorites to secure their parties’ nominations in the Garden State in Tuesday’s primary contests. Now they face a five-month sprint to the general election and one of the first major contests of the second Trump era (along with Virginia).
While New Jersey remains a Democratic-leaning state, recent gains by Republicans have made the GOP optimistic about seriously competing for the governor’s mansion in November. Donald Trump came closer to winning New Jersey than any Republican in three decades (it was almost as close as Arizona), and Ciattarelli himself came up just 3 points short in his last run for governor in 2021.
Tougher than the Rest
In the end, the Democratic primary wasn’t particularly close. Sherrill earned 34 percent of the vote in the six-person field, 14 points ahead of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop won 16 percent, Rep. Josh Gottheimer won 12 percent, New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller won 11 percent, and former state Senate president Steve Sweeney won 7 percent.
Sherrill, who represents a wealthy suburban district in North Jersey, enjoyed widespread support across the state, carrying 15 of 21 counties and putting up a massive margin in her home county, Morris, with 62 percent of the vote. In five of the six counties she lost, she came in second place.
While Baraka, Gottheimer, and Sweeney all managed to carry their home counties (Essex, Bergen, and Gloucester, respectively) none were successful in significantly broadening their support. Conversely, Sherrill actually won South Jersey, narrowly outpacing Sweeney, whose hopes had rested on deep ties to the local political machine, in his own territory.
Sherrill’s victory was both expected and a sign of her strength. The former Navy helicopter pilot had led in every publicly released survey of the race, though often narrowly and within the margin of error. (One outlier, from longtime Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray’s new firm StimSight Research, was remarkably accurate. The order of all six candidates in the poll matched the final result, and each candidate’s vote share was within 3 points of the poll result.)
But Sherrill was also significantly outspent by many of her opponents. While the campaigns themselves all spent roughly the same amount due to campaign finance laws (save for Spiller, who spent nearly nothing), Sherrill’s allied super PAC was outpaced by groups supporting Spiller ($37 million), Gottheimer ($11.6 million), Fulop ($7.7 million) and Sweeney ($4.3 million).
Prove It All Night
There was considerably less suspense in the GOP primary, as Ciattarelli trounced conservative radio host Bill Spadea, 68-22 percent. Moderate state Sen. John Bramnick won 6 percent.
Ciattarelli, who was the GOP nominee in 2021 and unsuccessfully sought the nomination in 2017, also led in every poll of the race. He also had a 2-to-1 fundraising advantage over Spadea and a larger super PAC. Any remaining uncertainty evaporated when Trump endorsed Ciattarelli over Spadea, despite the latter’s aggressive courting of the president.
Ciattarelli’s own political path underscores the degree to which Trump has remade the GOP in his image. In 2017, Ciattarelli disavowed Trump, announcing he did not vote for him and calling him a charlatan. In 2021, Ciattarelli again kept his distance from the former president and tried to focus his race on local issues. But in 2025, he actively sought Trump’s endorsement and featured him in his campaign ads.
Racing in the Street
Now that the primaries are over, both parties will kick into high gear ahead of November. The race is currently rated Lean Democratic.
Trump will be a major factor in Democratic messaging — so may Elon Musk, the billionaire who became the public face of many of Trump’s federal government cuts before falling out with the president last week.
Unlike in 2021, Ciattarelli won’t shy away from an association with Trump; Republicans believe the president’s strong performance in New Jersey, especially among Hispanic voters in North Jersey, speaks to a real opportunity to grow the GOP coalition.
The last time New Jersey voted three times in a row for a governor of the same party was in 1961, a streak Sherrill hopes to break. And Democrats are optimistic that their voters are re-energized after a demoralizing 2024, with exceptionally high voter turnout this week. Nearly 800,000 Democrats voted in the primary, far outpacing the 527,000 votes cast in the 2017 primary (the last contested race) and closer to the 2020 presidential primary turnout of 1 million voters. The campaigns themselves had expected lower turnout, closer to 625,000, than what ultimately occurred.