Could New Jersey Be A Bellwether Of GOP Fortunes? 

It has never been said “So goes New Jersey, so goes the nation.” But next month’s gubernatorial election here between Democrat Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill and Republican former State Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli may indeed be a bellwether regarding how the midterms will play out next year.

This is an interesting state. If not solidly blue, it has certainly pitched its tents in the blue camp more often than not. The last ostensible Republican to sit in the governor’s residence of Drumthwacket was the rather pathetic and Trump-deranged Chris Christie — who has since made a career currying favor with left-wing media as their token “Republican.”

Next month voters in the Garden State will have a clear choice as there are genuine challenges facing whoever wins the race.

First off, it is an expensive proposition to both live and run a business in New Jersey. The median price of a single-family home here is $580,000, up 3.5% year-on-year and over 60% in five years. Property taxes on these homes can run you north of $13,000/year. Although this is a strain on finances, in the past we could at least turn to excellent schools as a demonstration of getting a bang for our buck. I personally put two kids through the entire public school system where I live from K-12 and was more than satisfied with the quality of their education (a few spasms of wokeness along the way notwithstanding). But in the past ten years New Jersey has tumbled from having the overall second-highest rated public schools in the country to twelfth. So, what then are we getting for shelling out property taxes — which for many homeowners here is tantamount to a second mortgage — that seem to go up 2% per year like clockwork?

Utility bills are another point of contention. In 2020 the average New Jersey household (median is harder to locate) paid a little over $91/month. As of mid-2025 the number has risen to $162/month. A 78% increase. Increased demand certainly has played a part as data centers, particularly for AI, have a voracious appetite for electricity … this at the same time Democrats have been trying to push consumers into EVs and using electricity as opposed to fossil fuels. Indeed, New Jersey has aggressive clean energy and decarbonization goals. While those are meant to reduce emissions in the long run, in the short run they can introduce costs — e.g. retiring fossil plants, investing in transmission upgrades, subsidies or mandates for renewables, and constraints on new fossil generation.

The New Jersey Democrat Party’s platform supports “reducing fossil fuel dependence, expanding renewable energy, and protecting residents from its impacts.” Our current governor, Phil Murphy, has proposed a “100% clean energy goal” and has pushed “renewable energy” legislation.

RUTHERFORD, NEW JERSEY – MAY 10: Jack Ciattarelli and Matt Servitto attend 2025 Paisan Con at The Williams Center on May 10, 2025 in Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Bobby Bank/Getty Images)

New Jersey also has among the highest individual income tax rates in the nation. At 10.8% for the states’ highest earners, it is only superseded by California, Hawaii, and New York. Ciattarelli proposes lowering the top-tier income tax rate to 5% as well as capping property taxes at a percentage of a home’s assessed value. He has also pledged to lower business taxes from 11.5% to 5% and make the first $100,000 in small business income tax-exempt. Businesses are leaving. And, to be frank, but for personal reasons keeping me here, I’d have moved my fund out of this state to more business-friendly environs (not coincidentally red states) years ago. I am not the only one. Of course, it will cost you 2% to leave the state if you sell your home … they get you coming and going here.

Then there are the costs of auto insurance, third highest in the country, and healthcare, which run 15%-20% over the national average. It goes on and on … and the middle class continues to get squeezed.

Gov. Murphy, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, need not worry about these matters of course. But these are issues that New Jersey residents feel every day, every time the latest utility bill or property tax assessment comes in the mail. Issues that Sherrill especially, pitching for the incumbent party, must address. (Her most sensible policy proposal I have seen is an idea to combine school districts to reduce redundant costs. But she needs more.) Yet, when pressed directly in two separate debates whether she plans to raise taxes, she could not give a straight answer.

And that is part of Sherrill’s problem. She seems unable to answer questions in a manner akin to Kamala Harris, master chef at the word salad bar. In a May 4 interview with CBS New York’s Marcia Kramer, the congresswoman was asked what law she’d like to enact on day one if she became governor. The way Sherrill looked at Kramer you would have thought the woman asked her to tell the world her social security number and ATM pin code. “I would love — that’s a really good question, ‘cause there’s so many that are coming to mind right now.” After stalling for about 18 seconds, she finally offered a meek pitch for a federal block grant program to help the state with “key programs” including ones in the “health care area”. (A less friendly interviewer might have followed up by informing the congresswoman that she would have no control over such grants as governor.)

Sherrill is pushing the “girl boss” motif, leaning on her experience as a Naval aviator to offer a veneer of toughness to resist those who have driven out some of the state’s most valuable taxpayers and businesses. But the last time the GOP held a majority in either chamber of the New Jersey Legislature was 35 years ago. New Jersey is a Democrat-controlled state. So, what policies do we need her to defend us against? Her own party’s?

CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY – OCTOBER 11: New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial nominee Mikie Sherrill tours the USS Battleship New Jersey. (Photo by Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images)

And this stain of de facto incumbency is about more than just party. Sherrill appears to be a graduate of the Nancy Pelosi School of Investing. Estimates vary, but her net worth, now roughly $10 million, grew significantly after she was elected to Congress. Ciattarelli has pounced on that, accusing her publicly of insider trading; she did indeed trade defense stocks while sitting on the House Armed Services Committee. Sherrill’s response to this accusation should be of little comfort to a DNC wishing to put behind them Hillary’s smug deflection of questions about wiping her private server clean (“you mean with a cloth?”) or Kamala’s “I haven’t been to Europe” debacle. Said Sherrill, “It’s not as if I go sit on the House Armed Services Committee and suddenly, I’m trading Boeing or something.” She was, in fact, fined for a reporting violation (not insider trading). Sherrill appears to be, to put it bluntly, another self-enriching DC “swamp” creature.

With that said, Ciattarelli certainly has some hurdles before him. He is running as a Republican in a state that has not voted Republican for President since 1988. Nor does New Jersey tend to vote for a GOP governor if there is also a Republican in the White House. But he also has some things in his favor. Locally, Murphy is finishing his second term, and not since 1965 has New Jersey given Democrats three gubernatorial terms in a row.

Sherrill has been trying to tap into the undercurrent of TDS I often see manifested in otherwise rational and intelligent people here by linking him to Trump. But how effective is that in 2025? As Ciattarelli has said: “The president has nothing to do with high property taxes or energy prices.” New Jerseyans may accept that. In 2016 and 2020 Donald Trump received 41% of the vote here. Last November that number climbed to 46%. And given the double-whammy of Trump’s successes so far — closing the border, ending wars, record-high stock markets, clamping down on urban crime, etc. — as well as the Democrat Party literally polling the lowest in a generation, it is no wonder that Democrats are looking to the New Jersey race with considerable disquiet.

Another, if anecdotal, bit of encouragement for Ciattarelli is that in my three decades in the Garden State I’ve noticed New Jerseyans are able to separate local and national politics. As one example from my own town, we had an off-year election in 2023 for four of the eight Town Council seats. Prior to then the make-up was seven Democrats and one Republican. After the election it was three Democrats, five Republicans. A GOP sweep. And this is in a zip code that nevertheless went 68% for Harris just a year later.

As with past elections, Democrats may be too reliant on optimistic polls, which consistently show Sherrill ahead. Even so, there are ominous signs in the numbers. The latest from Quinnipiac puts her at just 50% to Ciattarelli’s 44%. But as I have discussed with fellow conservatives in my town, no pollster ever calls us … or if they do we tend to not engage. It should be noted that a Rutgers-Eagleton poll in October 2024, less than a month before the election, showed Trump could expect just 35% of the Garden State to pull his lever. The actual result was, as stated, 11 points higher.

Barring a Sherrill blow-out, New Jersey is a “no-lose” scenario for the GOP. If Sherrill squeaks to a narrow win, well, it’s a blue state anyway. But if Ciattarelli somehow gets the nod, that would be a harbinger of bad things to come for the Democrats in the midterms. Who knows? For Ciattarelli, who has run for governor twice before, maybe third time’s the charm?

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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, The Daily Wire, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three books. You can also follow him on Substack and X.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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