This New Jersey Republican is convinced he can win back the Statehouse

SOMERVILLE, New Jersey — Jack Ciattarelli has been campaigning for governor of New Jersey for the better part of a decade.

His first 2017 gubernatorial bid ended in a nearly 16-point primary loss. He came up 3 points short as the Republican nominee in 2021. Now, Ciattarelli is convinced the third time’s a charm — and he thinks national GOP leaders will agree.

“They’re not going to make the same mistake they made last time,” Ciattarelli told POLITICO in an interview at a diner in suburban New Jersey. “They bought into that conventional wisdom that a Republican couldn’t win. We proved that I can win.”

His 2021 bid was viewed as a long shot — he trailed by double-digits in public polling in the final stretch of the race — but he nearly upset incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. The near miss, as well as key down-ballot losses, left national Democrats shaken heading into the midterms.

Ciattarelli, a former three-term state assemblymember who has one other declared primary opponent and is expecting another, said he was optimistic the 2025 governor’s race will not be treated with the same “indifference.”

New Jersey voters have not elected a Democratic governor for three consecutive terms since the 1960s and, before Murphy’s 2021 reelection, they routinely replaced Democrats with Republicans.

Ciattarelli’s new campaign borrows ideas from his prior runs: He remains laser-focused talking about lowering property taxes and the cost of living in New Jersey — perennial issues in the state. More recently, he’s endorsed term limits for state lawmakers.

“My job is to get big government out of the way,” Ciattarelli said in the interview. “Out of the way of taxpayers, out of the way of businesses, out of the way of parents and out of the way of police. So I'm committed to fixing the state we all love.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This is your third straight run for governor. You were around three points shy of winning in 2021 — what do you think were some strategic mistakes that you’ve made in past runs that you're looking to rectify that can get you over the finish line?

I can't see any serious strategic mistakes that we made. The political landscape is very different this time. We're not dealing with a pandemic. Very hard to campaign when the governor has issued a shelter-in-place order.

… And we're also not dealing this time around with indifference. Last time around, there were a lot of people who liked Jack, liked the campaign, liked the message, but didn't feel like we had a legitimate chance to win. So they sat it out.

That won't be the case this time, because of the closeness of the [2021] race … [Republicans also] won seven seats in the state Legislature, including beating the longest-sitting state senate president.

It was [Republicans] most successful night in 30 years. So people now understand that we can win this race.

You said in 2022 that your 2021 campaign team was not diverse enough. The direct quote was “my team was too white,” and you said that hampered your ability to perform in communities of color. Do you still stand by that remark? 

One of the things I'm very pleased with with the [campaign kick-off] announcement that we made on April 9 is that, if you take a look at the audience, it was much more diverse than it was last time around. And that's because we've been able now to open certain doors and avenues that give us better access to minority communities. People of color. You saw that with the crowd that night, there were a great many Black and brown people all throughout the audience. And that's very pleasing to me that these doors and avenues have been opened.

I feel like every interview that I've seen you do so far, someone asks you what you think about former President Donald Trump. How much do you think national politics — especially Trump — will factor into the 2025 primary and general elections?

If you run for governor as though you're running for mayor, the national winds won't determine the outcome of the race. I believe that. It's why I've won seven times in the eight times I've been on the November ballot, again, in races where Democrats outnumber Republicans, sometimes by a lot. Go places other Republicans don't or won't. Talk about our commonsense conservative approach to solving kitchen table issues. And that's gonna resonate with people, no matter where they live, no matter what their ethnicity.

New Jersey politics has really been dominated recently by conversation over the county line, which places party-backed candidates more prominently on primary ballots. Just the other day, a federal appeals panel upheld a preliminary injunction that bars the county line in this year's Democratic primary, but it's a very real possibility that we could have a county-line-free 2025 primary. So what do you think the impact would be if we were to have no county lines for the 2025 Republican primary?

It will all come down to those people that work hardest and get their message out in order to earn people's faith, trust and confidence. I continue to believe that county organizations reserve the right to screen candidates, vet candidates and endorse candidates. That is the role of the county committee person, and I respect that role. I also believe people have a freedom to associate.

The one thing that is not getting enough attention is how the columns or rows are awarded. I think that process could certainly be more transparent as to what column or row any particular party or slate gets. But I continue to believe that county organizations reserve the right to lend their imprimatur to candidates that they have vetted and endorsed.

One of your newer proposals is the idea of term limits — eight years in each state legislative chamber. What was the genesis of that?

I think it's an idea whose time has come. As you go around the state, you talk with people, there's a great many that feel that some people have stayed too long or that all legislators have an opportunity to stay too long. New ideas come with new faces. And so we term-limit our governor. I have always voluntarily term-limited myself at the municipal, county and state level. Again, I think it's an idea whose time has come, and let's have the discussion. And let's have it over the course of this campaign.

What do you think the likelihood is actually of getting that to come to fruition? Because you're asking lawmakers to cap their own service, unless you would grandfather them in.

Asking legislators to do what, in my opinion, is the right thing. And it shouldn't be hard to do the right thing. Of course, it all depends on my ability to deliver a Republican majority. And so I do think that if we have a Republican majority that we can get through my agenda. After all, I'm running on that agenda, and if people have elected me, that means they've endorsed that agenda. If I'm not successful in producing a Republican majority, then we have to sit down with the Democratic leadership and see what we can achieve.

One of the big themes of your 2021 race was education, specifically what's being taught in schools. There was one memorable video where you said that you wanted to roll back the LGBTQ+ curriculum. Is education in this aspect something that you still plan to campaign on this time around? And what would that look like?

We want our children to learn about the value of inclusivity. But as I said in my announcement speech, our lessons need to respect the role of parents. And just as importantly, our lessons need to be age-appropriate.

… I think we need to be very careful about talking about explicit sex acts to 12-year-olds. So these are some of the things that I certainly want to revisit with regard to the public school curriculum [as well as] greater emphasis on basic skills and providing more vocational training opportunities because not all kids want or need to go to college.

Before the 2022 midterms, you said Democrats were "overplaying" the Dobbs decision. What we've seen in the [2022] midterms and other elections across the country is that abortion rates tend to be pretty popular with the electorate. Do you think that abortion rights are an electoral albatross for Republicans?

Democrats seem to only run on two things: Donald Trump and abortion.

I've always had a very, very strong libertarian streak, which means I don't believe big government should get involved in deeply personal decisions. I do believe abortion is a deeply personal decision between a woman, their partner and their health care professional. And I've always respected and supported a woman's right to choose.

So I don't see that being an issue in the 2025 gubernatorial race. Democrats may try to make it an issue, but if they do, it's a lie. I've supported a woman's right to choose.

So would you maintain the status quo as it relates to abortion rights in New Jersey? Or would there be programs that you'd like to cut, like funding for Planned Parenthood or programs to fund abortion providers — are those some things that you would want to address as governor?

One thing we're not going to do is make New Jersey the abortion capital. If you listen to Phil Murphy, he's telling anyone and everyone who can't get an abortion in their home state, come to New Jersey. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's what New Jerseyans want.

I continue to be someone who supports parental notification. I went with my 16-year-old daughter to the dentist. The notion of a 15- or 16-year-old seeking an abortion without their parents knowing is very, very troubling to me.

Planned Parenthood provides health care services to hundreds of thousands of young women all across the state. This isn't about cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, but it's also about providing funding to those agencies out there and nonprofits like the Pregnancy Resource Center in Bergen County that also helps women that don't get a dime of state funding. [Editor’s note: Pregnancy Resource Center is a crisis pregnancy center, which opposes abortion]. 

Parental notification for abortions for minors in the state has been barred by the state Supreme Court. So how's that something that you get around and address?

That gets to a whole ‘nother issue. We need a governor who's going to appoint Supreme Court justices who are in lockstep with the majority of New Jerseyans. Right now, I don't believe they are, particularly on that issue.

Is it that you are looking to create a more conservative state Supreme Court bench?

I'm looking to create a Supreme Court bench that is more in its views consistent with the majority of New Jerseyans.

Immigration is obviously something that everyone's been talking about nationally. You've seen state officials weigh in on this, whether it be Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bussing migrants from Texas to New York City, Gov. Murphy saying that he wants to make New Jersey a sanctuary state by limiting the amount of cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials. What would you do as governor to address immigration?

I would work to ban cities declaring themselves sanctuary cities and New Jersey declaring itself a sanctuary state. I think that encourages illegal immigration. And we're never going to prevent a local law enforcement agency from working with any federal government agency if they've arrested somebody for a crime and we found out the person is not an American citizen.

We're a country that believes in law and order. We're a country that believes in secure borders. We're not anti-immigration. Immigration is one of the things that makes this country great — legal immigration. But we can't be declaring sanctuary cities or New Jersey being a sanctuary state. That only encourages illegal immigration.

Property taxes are a perennial issue in the state. You are proposing capping property taxes to 1 percent of assessed value of home and freezing property taxes for those 70 and older. How do you pay for that?

We can cut the size and cost of state government. And we can also roll up the half a dozen or so current property tax rebate programs, which are administrative nightmares, not only for applicants for all the people processing those applications in Trenton. It's almost like it's a jobs program. Government shouldn't be in the business of creating administrative nightmares, only to employ more state workers. Homestead property tax rebate, senior freeze, ANCHOR, Stay New Jersey.

Each of these programs, by the way, cost billions of dollars. I also find it insulting that we continue to take money out of your right-hand pocket and then put some of it back in your left-hand pocket and call it a rebate program and pat ourselves on the back. It's insulting. Let's come up with one permanent solution that works for all New Jerseyans and is easy to administrate.

On state spending, politicians always say that they want to cut Christmas tree items, pork or special items for special legislative districts. Those tend to be a very small part of the budget. In terms of the large structural parts of the budget, including but not limited to school funding, pension payments, health benefits for government workers, even Medicaid — are those or other structural items within the state budget something that you would want to address or roll back?

First of all, Murphy's spending is up $20 billion in less than seven years time. He's gone from $36 billion, which was Christie's last budget, to his most recent budget proposal which is $56 billion. I'm of the opinion [that] as easy as it is to raise spending $20 billion, it can be just as easy to decrease spending $20 billion. Everyone lauded Murphy's first and second budgets, which were $15 billion less than what we're currently spending. Let's go back to those budgets.

But we have to reduce size and cost of state government to do other things that need to be done to give everyday New Jerseyans out in the community some relief. I believe we can do it. Other states have, we can too. The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania cut the business tax in half from 10 to 5 percent. Pennsylvania has a 3 percent flat tax on income taxes. Why is it other states can do this? I believe we can too.

You mentioned the Pennsylvania business tax rate — what do you think that the business tax rate in New Jersey should be, especially since we're having this big debate right now over the corporate transit fee which raises the business tax 2.5 percent for businesses over $10 million in profits.

It’s the wrong decision at the wrong time, and it goes back on a promise. Because we had promised to sunset the surcharge and now it's already back just under a different name. If Pennsylvania can lower its business tax by 5 percent — cutting it in half — we can too, and we need to. We need to be regionally competitive, and right now, we are not.

You continue to hear about a dedicated revenue stream for New Jersey Transit. The need for a dedicated revenue stream for New Jersey Transit. We have a dedicated revenue stream. It's called the New Jersey state budget. We've made a full pension payment now five years in a row without there being a dedicated revenue stream because Murphy has decided to make that a priority in the state budget. Funding New Jersey Transit is a priority just like the Transportation Trust Fund is a priority. That's why you recently saw an increase in the gas tax. So all we have to do is set priorities, and right now, I think when you have over a billion dollars in pet projects in the budget, and we're spending $58 million on a French Museum in Jersey City, I think our priorities are out of whack.

You mentioned pension payments. I believe that at some point during the last governor's race you suggested not making a full pension payment. Do you think the state should do full pension payments?

Anybody who's earned a pension will always be paid their pension. That is a promise, and that's my guarantee.

From year to year, there ought to be some flexibilities in the budget to meet other priorities. Right now, we have an emergency in New Jersey Transit. And I don't think the answer is congestion pricing or fare increases of 15 percent. I mean, how much can people possibly spend each week to get their job? And by the way, if you want to increase transit revenues, the best way to do that is providing a system that is convenient, dependable and safe. Right now it's not, and that's why people want to continue to use their cars.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated the number of Jack Ciattarelli's primary opponents.