The increasingly acrimonious race between Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli to become the next governor of New Jersey is coming to a close as both candidates work through jam-packed schedules in the final hours before Election Day.
Both candidates were out for their final push on Monday. Sherrill started the day at an event hosted by the county’s Democratic committee in the all-important Morris County, where each candidate hopes to win over large numbers of suburban voters. She plans to end the day in her hometown of Montclair with an election-eve rally. Ciattarelli is in Totowa and Neptune City on the Jersey Shore, where he’s expected to do well. He plans to head to Raritan in Somerset County, the town where he grew up.
On average, polls give Sherrill a 5-point lead going into Tuesday, and registered Democrats have a sizable 266,000-vote lead in early in-person voting and vote-by-mail ballots. Early in-person voting has surged in the state this year to more than 600,000, tripling the number from the 2021 gubernatorial race.
But Ciattarelli maintains that his own internal polling puts the race at a dead heat. And Republican strongholds like Toms River, Lakewood and Jackson have seen some of the highest totals for early in-person voting — an indication that Ciattarelli’s base is just as fired up.
The question now is whether Democrats in urban strongholds will turnout for Sherrill, or if Ciattarelli can overcome her likely advantage in early votes. Uncertainty also hangs over Passaic County, where the state GOP asked the federal Department of Justice to send federal monitors to oversee the handling and counting of mail-in ballots over concerns of fraud.
The justice department said it will not only monitor vote-by-mail tallies, but also plans to station agents at polling sites in the county, where immigrants make up a large percentage of the population. New Jersey Democrats have called the Trump administration’s plan an attempt at voter intimidation and suppression.
Final Act
Sherrill went big on Saturday night. The four-time Congress member hosted a rally in Newark with former president Barack Obama, who endorsed her last month.
An energetic and upbeat crowd of 3,000 packed the gym at Essex County Community College. The night’s program was largely focused on Trump. When Sherill gave her speech introducing the former president, she expressed her outrage with the White House.
“ I'm angry at the way things are. I'm angry that our president is cutting everything from the Gateway tunnel funds to SNAP benefits,” she said.
Obama spoke for 40 minutes without even once saying Ciattarelli’s name — referring to him only briefly as “her opponent.”
”Mikie’s opponent has now run for governor three times in a row,” Obama said. “The other two times he lost. So this time his strategy is to suck up to the Republicans in Washington.”
Former President Barack Obama at a rally for Democratic nominee for New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill.
The event capped off a week filled with campaign events with high-profile Democrats for Sherill. Last week, she set out on a bus tour with Pete Buttigieg and fellow Congressmember and veteran Rep. Jason Crow. She also held get-out-the-vote rallies with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.
By contrast, Ciattarelli has mainly stuck with his strategy of retail politics. The Republican has been greeting voters at diners across New Jersey in what his campaign has called “early voting rallies.”
He’s also shown a willingness to venture into strong Democratic territory like Camden, Newark and other urban centers, with an eye toward siphoning off as many votes as he can.
But to close out his campaign, he’s focused on Republican strongholds, hosting several events in South Jersey and on the shore.
What will happen in Passaic County?
The Department of Justice announced two weeks ago that it would be sending federal monitors to Passaic County on Election Day.
The county is a Democratic stronghold, though there are pockets that President Donald Trump flipped last year.
In a letter to the department’s Civil Rights Division, New Jersey GOP attorney Jason Sena wrote that Passaic County has a “sordid history” of vote-by-mail “fraud,” and accused the state Attorney General’s Office of being “incapable of prosecuting these matters.”
Sena complained that the Passaic County Board of Elections declined to enact “basic transparency” measures proposed by Republicans, including allowing 24-hour surveillance cameras in the vote-counting room and logbooks noting everyone who accessed it.
Democratic nominee for New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill.
The letter also cited two examples from 2014 and 2020 where county residents, including an elected official, were indicted over alleged voter fraud.
A spokesperson for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division declined to comment on what specifically the monitors plan to do in Passaic County, referring Gothamist to a press release stating that federal officials will be at polling places on Election Day.
Patricia Campos-Medina, vice chair of the Sherrill campaign, called it voter intimidation by the Ciattarelli campaign.
“ They know that they're losing and now they're using the monitoring of sites as a scaring tactic,” she said.
Ciattarelli’s campaign would not provide comment on the federal monitors and instead referred Gothamist to the New Jersey Republican State Committee. NJ GOP Executive Director Kate Gibbs pushed back on the accusation that bringing in the monitors is voter intimidation.
“ This isn't about trying to suppress the vote. It's not about trying to intimidate anybody. This is about making sure that we have impartial eyes on the election and that it's run fairly,” she said.
In a statement, Michael Zhadanovsky, spokesperson for the New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, told Gothamist that Platkin’s office is confident that the election is being run properly and that it will not tolerate anyone — including federal monitors — doing anything at polling locations that disrupts voting.
"We are committed to ensuring a free, fair, and secure election, and eligible voters should have full confidence going to the polls and casting their ballots,” he said.
