HASKELL, New Jersey — Former Trump critic Jack Ciattarelli is the front-runner in Tuesday’s New Jersey Republican gubernatorial primary after receiving the president’s “complete and total endorsement” in the race.
After two unsuccessful gubernatorial runs in 2017 and 2021, Ciattarelli has embraced the “Make America Great Again” agenda while also looking to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters with issues that have previously been successful for Garden State Republicans.
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“Three generations of Ciattarellis have lived here in New Jersey, three generations since the time my grandparents arrived from Italy, and all three generations have achieved their American dream, right here in New Jersey,” Ciattarelli told a group of supporters Sunday in Haskell, New Jersey.
In the state’s 2021 gubernatorial race, Ciattarelli came within 3 points of beating Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ), and in 2024, President Donald Trump came within 5 points of winning the historically blue state. State Republicans have expressed confidence that the third time’s the charm with Ciattarelli this year.
Road to MAGA
Ciattarelli’s path to winning Trump’s support is common among former critics of Trump, who are now his closest political allies, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called Trump a “con artist” in 2016. Even Trump’s own vice president, JD Vance, privately compared Trump to Hitler in 2016.
In 2015, Ciattarelli said Trump was “not fit to be president of the United States” and that “sitting silently and allowing him to embarrass our country is unacceptable.”
A decade later, Ciattarelli has embraced Trump’s agenda and promised to implement some of the president’s policies in the Garden State.
“I said what I said about Donald Trump back in 2016, as did JD Vance, and today he’s the vice president of the United States,” Ciattarelli said on a radio show last December.
Trump himself has even seemingly come around to Ciattarelli. Nearly a year before the endorsement, Trump appeared on the show of conservative radio host Bill Spadea, who is also running for governor, and alluded to Ciattarelli’s 2021 campaign.
“This guy never came to ask for my support,” Trump said. “And you know what? When MAGA sees that, they don’t like it and they didn’t vote for him.”
In his endorsement, Trump said of Ciattarelli that “after getting to know and understand MAGA,” he “has gone ALL IN, and is now 100% (PLUS!).”
At a campaign event over the weekend, Ciattarelli said Trump “endorsed me because he knows that the energy we’ve got going here in New Jersey. He’s endorsed me because he knows we’re raising necessary money. He’s endorsing me because he knows we got coattails back in 2021 with the wind in our face.”
As for Spadea, Trump suggested he didn’t know who he was just days ahead of the primary, posting on his Truth Social platform that Ciattarelli’s “opponents are going around saying they have my Endorsement, which is not true, I don’t even know who they are!”
“We can’t play games when it comes to Elections, and New Jersey is a very important State that we must WIN. The whole World is watching,” Trump said Saturday.
Ciattarelli’s 2025 campaign
With Ciattarelli appearing to have fully embraced the MAGA movement in his third run, he has promised to implement much of Trump’s agenda, including returning state workers to work in person full-time, pushing back against wind farms, and creating a state program similar to the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Ciattarelli has repeatedly said that, should he be elected in November, on his first day in office, he would end New Jersey’s sanctuary state status. There is currently no legal definition for sanctuary city or state policies, but places with these declarations generally limit obligations for local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration officers.
“Day one, executive order No. 1: No town in this state will be a sanctuary city, and we will not be a sanctuary state,” Ciatterelli said.
He also has said he would not enter into litigation against the Trump administration, unlike Murphy, who, alongside New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, has entered multiple legal battles against the Trump administration. Platkin has notably challenged Trump’s executive order attempting to end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.
Ciatterelli’s campaign has also focused on cost-of-living issues, with New Jersey having some of the highest property taxes in the country and being consistently ranked one of the most expensive states to live in.
“All the crises we face across this state right now, this affordability crisis, I will downsize your state government. I’ll make it less expensive so we can lower taxes for individual businesses,” Ciatterelli said.
While Ciatterelli’s run seems squared away for him to capture the Republican nomination, there is an open, six-way race for the Democratic nomination. Notable candidates include Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), as well as Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop.
Ciatterelli said he is unfazed by whoever Democratic voters nominate. He claimed that “every single one of them has been complicit in Murphy’s failed policy” and that Democrats’ 25 years in power in the state legislature have also been a “failure.”
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“I’ve been very fortunate. The reason why I’m running for governor is I want people today to feel confident that the future generation of New Jersey can achieve their American dream right here in New Jersey,” Ciatteralli said.
“Unlike governors on both sides of the aisle over the last 40 years, I’m not using this opportunity to get to Washington,” he said, adding, “I just want to fix the state we all love.”