Republicans say Trump is at center of GOP losses in key state

Hudson County’s GOP leader said it was on Saturday when he started to believe Republicans might lose the governor’s race.

That was the first of November, the day people normally would have started receiving their monthly food stamp benefits — benefits cut off by the ongoing federal government shutdown. Jose Arango, the Hudson County Republican Party chairman, said he grew worried then that voters who helped propel Donald Trump to the White House again last year wouldn’t be as energized to vote for the GOP this time around.

“I started feeling a twist on the community, the Spanish community. And when I saw that, we couldn’t stop it — the car had already left the station, we were where we were, and it was something we couldn’t control,” he said. “The Republican Party in New Jersey couldn’t control what was going on in Washington.”

Republicans grappling with the dismal results of their party in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election told the New Jersey Monitor that the outcome says less about Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli than it does about the national political climate. Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman, was handily defeated by Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D), 56% to 43%.

“We were outplayed,” said Sen. Mike Testa (R-Cumberland).

A referendum on Trump

The ongoing federal government shutdown, the longest in the nation’s history, hung heavily over the race in the last month, as did other actions by the Trump administration.

Ciattarelli, who maintained some distance from the president in past bids, broadly refused to criticize Trump as he ran for governor for a third time. During a debate with Sherill, Ciattarelli was asked to grade Trump and gave him an “A.” Democrats seized on that moment.

Sen. Vince Polistina (R-Atlantic) noted his county is home to a federal military base, and families impacted by the shutdown are anxious about the economy. He said New Jersey’s rejection of Ciattarelli was not only a referendum on Republicans, but a message to federal leaders not to create hardships for people, “from a health care perspective or food insecurity.”

“Clearly, the electorate spoke and blamed Republicans, and we took a beating for it,” he said.

Some Republicans were blunter in their analysis.

“This was a referendum on Donald Trump and the reaction in New Jersey, a blue state, to Donald Trump, and since Jack was 100% MAGA, he was part of the referendum on Trump,” said Sen. Jon Bramnick (R-Union), a moderate and frequent Trump critic who was among Ciattarelli’s rivals for the GOP gubernatorial nod. “Things aren’t very complicated in politics sometimes.”

Assemblyman Brian Bergen (R-Morris), a conservative member of the lower chamber, said it appears voters this year cared more about what Trump is doing than what’s happening in New Jersey. He cited Trump’s push to demolish the east wing of the White House to build a ballroom and the president pulling funding for the Gateway project, which Bergen said happened at “the most untimely time for our election.”

“I’m getting the sense from everybody that, more or less, it’s directly connected to that type of stuff,” Bergen said. “And it has very little to do with anything happening in New Jersey, to be honest, and that sucks.”

Ciattarelli should have praised Trump where their platforms overlapped and split on policy where he disagreed, said Bramnick. Not doing so risked straining voters’ credulity or alienating them altogether.

Bramnick noted that during a GOP gubernatorial debate earlier this year, his opponents competed to be the candidate who loves Trump the most.

“I sat there while everybody was saying that they couldn’t find anything that they disagree with the president. I said, ‘Look, nobody believes that,’” Bramnick said. “People want authenticity. Authenticity is sometimes you disagree.”

Testa disagrees that Trump shoulders the blame for Tuesday’s results. After endorsing Trump in the GOP primary, Trump did not appear in New Jersey for any general election campaign events, Testa noted. But Democrats had a better message about the government shutdown than Republicans, he added.

Republicans have sought to reopen the federal government without addressing a spike in health care costs caused by the lapse of federal subsidies for plans purchased on the individual marketplace. Democrats have argued that any budget measure that would end the shutdown should include those subsidies.

The lapse in federal funding for food stamps, in particular, hurt Republicans, according to Testa. Trump has said he won’t tap into an emergency fund to pay out food stamp benefits until the shutdown ends.

“Nobody wants to hear about children potentially going hungry without food, without proper nutrition,” Testa said.

Testa blames GOP consultants on the Ciattarelli campaign for missing a swell of anti-Trump voters coming to the polls, saying bad data enabled ineffective messaging.

“The Republican consultant class in the state of New Jersey, particularly those who were working on this campaign, should never be hired again in the state of New Jersey,” he said.

Moving on

Ciattarelli’s loss was not the only bad news for the GOP on Tuesday. Sherrill’s win helped flip a handful of Assembly seats now held by Republicans, giving Democrats an even firmer grasp on the 80-seat body come January.

Sen. Doug Steinhardt, Warren County’s Republican chairman and a former state GOP chair, said the party failed to energize GOP voters who rarely turn out to vote, including in the 23rd Legislative District, which Steinhardt represents. The district is a conservative area in the northwestern part of the state.

Democrats have not won a legislative race in the 23rd since the 1970s, and though results there were not especially close Tuesday, Republicans’ margin of victory was less than half of what it was in almost every race since at least 2009.

“Speaking for my own county — and I was critical of it last night and again this morning — we didn’t do as good a job as our Democratic counterparts making sure our low-propensity voters were getting to the polls,” he said.

Testa said New Jersey Republicans need to unite around a better message, but it’s too early to say what that message is. Bergen said his party needs to improve on protecting itself from “external factors.”

“We need to build a strong foundation within our party where we’re trusted and people will err on the side of going with us even if crazy sh*t’s happening in the world,” he said.New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com.