Shocker in New Jersey: Governor’s race a nail-biter

Update: The Associated Press called this election for Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday. Read more about the outcome here.

New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli remained locked in a neck-and-neck battle Wednesday, with the outcome too close to call in a race Democrats had long been confident about winning.

Republican strongholds Ciattarelli was counting on — especially Ocean County, the biggest GOP vote-producing county in the state — saw massive turnout while traffic to the polls appeared milquetoast in the state’s urban, heavily Democratic areas.

By the early morning, incomplete and unofficial returns showed Ciattarelli and Murphy virtually tied. The two candidates traded first place throughout the day Wednesday. The first-term governor told supporters he would wait until all the votes were counted — and that he hopes to win — but his Republican opponent all but declared victory.

“I wanted to come out here tonight and tell you that we won,” Ciattarelli told a jubilant crowd at a Marriott hotel in Bridgewater. “I’m here to tell you that’s we’re winning.”

Whether Murphy wins or loses, the results offer a massive reality check for New Jersey Democrats — and further deepen the damage done to the party nationally on Tuesday, when Republican Glenn Youngin beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe to flip Virginia red. Democrats were at risk of losing control of the Virginia House.

In New Jersey, Democrats had benefited from the unpopularity of former Republican Gov. Chris Christie and former President Donald Trump to turn once-solid GOP suburbs blue, saw their voter registration advantage over Republicans soar to more than a million and grew their state legislative majorities.

Even longtime state Senate President Steve Sweeney, New Jersey’s top state lawmaker, is imperiled as Democrats were poised to see their majorities in the state Legislature take a big hit.

“We’re going to wait for every vote to be counted and that’s how our democracy works,” Murphy said in brief remarks to supporters at the Grand Arcade at the Pavilion in Asbury Park. “We’re all sorry that tonight could not yet be the celebration we wanted it to be ... When every vote is counted, and every vote will be counted, we hope to have a celebration.”

Democrats held out hope that an untold number of still-uncounted mail-in ballots could save them, and officials must accept any that arrive by Nov. 8 — potentially dragging out the standoff for days. Even so, the results are more than troubling for New Jersey Democrats as they prepare to defend four U.S. House seats in next year’s midterm elections that they flipped during the Trump era.

Much of Murphy’s campaign focused on tying Ciattarelli, the 59-year-old Central Jersey native and founder of a medical publishing company, to Trump. That attack appears to have lost its appeal.

Murphy is a progressive whose popularity skyrocketed during the early days of the pandemic but retreated as Covid-19 faded from voters’ minds and traditional concerns like taxes, education and the economy once again took precedence.

Ciattarelli focused on those issues while avoiding campaigning with nationally-famous Republicans. He also harnessed anger over vaccine and mask mandates, even speaking out against such a requirement during a school board meeting in deep red Toms River.

Should he lose, Murphy would be the latest Democrat to fall victim to a “curse” in which New Jersey Democratic governors fail to get reelected in a state that votes solidly blue in federal elections. No Democrat has won reelection since Brendan Byrne in 1977, while three Republicans have, the latest being Christie.

Ciattarelli’s ads and campaign rhetoric frequently featured Murphy telling an audience that “if you’re a one-issue voter and taxes are your issue … we’re probably not your state.” New Jersey’s property taxes are consistently ranked the highest in the nation, and Ciattarelli campaigned on lowering them — something no recent governor, Republican or Democrat, has managed to do. He’s also promised to overhaul New Jersey’s school funding formula, which would likely face a big obstacle in the state Supreme Court, whose decisions requiring equal funding for the poorest and richest school districts have long been the bane of suburban conservatives.

Ciattarelli also portrayed Murphy, a millionaire former Goldman Sachs executive who grew up in Massachusetts, as an out-of-touch outsider, even making fun of the way he eats pizza.

While Ciattarelli embraced some of the national culture war issues, saying he’d roll back school curriculum requirements on teaching about LGBTQ people, he sought to downplay election conspiracy theories promoted by Trump, telling Republicans that the election “is not rigged here.”

Murphy sought to elevate national issues, such as abortion and gun control, pointing out that Ciattarelli had called for banning abortions after 20 weeks and loosening New Jersey’s gun control laws, which are among the strictest in the nation. Murphy's allies, led by the New Jersey Education Association — the state's largest teachers union — outspent Ciattarelli allies in independent spending by more than two-to-one.

Though polls still showed Murphy leading late in the campaign, the gap had narrowed from the summer as President Joe Biden’s popularity in New Jersey slipped six points into negative territory in a recent Monmouth University poll. Still, public polling showed Murphy leading between six and 11 points late in the race.

Underneath the national issues, out-of-work New Jerseyans faced long waits for unemployment benefits during the pandemic due to a crush of applications and an outdated computer system. They also faced long wait times at motor vehicle offices, to the point where place-saving in line became a cottage industry.

State legislative Democrats, meanwhile, were also looking at the likelihood of their majorities shrinking. They currently hold 25 of 40 seats in the state Senate and 52 of 80 seats in the Assembly. But early returns showed them trailing in several key races.