The race to be the GOP nominee in the next New Jersey governor’s race may come down to who has the best relationship with Washington, D.C.
In the 2024 election, President-elect Donald Trump had the best finish for a Republican in New Jersey since former President George H.W. Bush came within 2.5 points in 1992. That kind of pull, along with his control over the party generally, means he can have an outsize effect on a deep-blue bastion Republicans think could be ripe for flipping.
Four major candidates have declared their candidacies for the 2025 gubernatorial race: Jon Bramnick, Jack Ciattarelli, Bill Spadea, and Ed Durr. However, a key Trump ally, Mike Crispi, waits in the wings as he contemplates running.
“New Jersey is now proven to be a state where a MAGA leader can win,” Crispi said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. Trump’s performance “proves that with some resources and with more time, a Republican gubernatorial candidate — the right one, with the right message — can win.”
The Trump factor: A wide range of support
Scott Presler, founder of Early Vote Action, said he “absolutely” thinks Trump’s performance in the 2024 election has given the next governor a mandate to embrace the “America First” agenda.
“I think you’re going to see a shift in tone from all of the Republican candidates. … You’re definitely going to be seeing an embracing of the America First agenda,” he said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “The fact that we won the popular vote has given people ‘permission’ to support the America First agenda, when in 2016, perhaps they were less likely because they still felt that they were in the minority.”
Of the four major candidates who have declared, Spadea and Durr are the most outspokenly pro-Trump, although the former previously criticized the president-elect as having “failed” and said “I don’t want him to run again” before Trump won the GOP nomination.
There appears to be no bad blood between Trump and Spadea, though. In May, Trump appeared on Spadea’s talk show and praised him for having his back “from the beginning,” while criticizing Ciattarelli for not asking Trump for his support in 2021 when he lost to Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ).
Durr, in an interview with the Washington Examiner, said he is the only declared candidate who has been unwaveringly pro-Trump “since day one.” He added that while he may not agree with everything Trump does or says, including his support for Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) for House speaker, that “doesn’t mean I would fight against the president.”
He said he spoke with Trump over the phone, and six months later, when they met in person, Trump remembered their conversation. “Maybe I did make somewhat of an impression on him, but I’ve always said that I will work with the administration and absolutely do what’s best for the state and for the country.”
Ciattarelli refused to endorse Trump in 2016 and won the most recent Republican gubernatorial primary against more Trump-aligned candidates. Ciattarelli softened his rhetoric on Trump in 2021 and has since become a supporter of the president-elect. He and Spadea have gone back and forth, questioning each other’s loyalty to the president-elect on social media in 2024.
A vocal critic of Trump, Bramnick is the only candidate not trying to position himself ahead of his competition based on his support for the president-elect. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, he said, “I respect the president of the United States, but as the governor of New Jersey, I will work feverishly with the president on anything that’s good for New Jersey, and if it’s not good for New Jersey, I will stand up and fight for our state.”
Crispi, who launched an exploratory committee regarding a possible gubernatorial bid, has a “good relationship” with Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Roger Stone. The America First Republicans of New Jersey chairman delivered a fiery speech at Trump’s record-breaking rally in Wildwood and was shouted out by the president-elect onstage.
He also did 32 events for Trump across the state, made 1.5 million voter contacts, and had 2,000 volunteers working in every county “to get out the early vote” and push for a Trump victory. Given Crispi’s MAGA ties and exhaustive campaign efforts that contributed to the state’s rightward shift in November, he would likely be on Trump’s short list of candidates to endorse in the primary.
Each candidate’s unique appeal to voters
Each candidate brings something unique to the table. Both Spadea and Crispi have received public praise from Trump, Ciattarelli is a centrist who New Jersey Republicans already selected in 2021, Durr pitches himself as the most “grassroots” candidate, and Bramnick has the longest track record of success at the ballot box.
The Washington Examiner interviewed dozens of New Jerseyans at Trump’s May rally in Wildwood, and the two issues they expressed most concern about were illegal immigration and the economy. Bramnick and Durr shared similar plans for how they would address these matters if elected in November 2025.
“We’re a sanctuary state,” Durr said. “I will end that day one. I will end all the policies that afford benefits to illegal aliens. That is a huge chunk of the budget where we provide free college, free medical care, free schooling, free legal advice, free everything, free abortions. This is ridiculous, that illegals are treated better than actual citizens.”
“I don’t believe in sanctuary cities because I think they violate federal law,” Bramnick said. “I don’t think the job of a state government is to protect someone who’s here illegally.”
“I like Phil Murphy personally, but his out-of-control spending came home to roost,” he said on the economy. “There’s no doubt we would have been in a much better position, tax-wise, if they had not overspent when they had all of this surplus. I have never voted for one of these Democratic budgets. … I’ve always been very, very fiscally conservative.”
Durr said he is not going to “tax us to death and spend us to death” but would instead look to cut “wasteful spending” out of the budget to help “make New Jersey affordable.” If residents can’t afford the bare necessities, he said, all the other issues “really mean nothing.”
Bramnick and Durr both said they want to make being harder on crime a priority if elected. The former expressed support for the death penalty and increasing the penalty for car theft, and the latter wants to end the state’s bail reform law, which puts “criminals out walking the street.”
In addition, they agree that New Jersey universities such as Rutgers should lose state funding if they do not protect Jewish students on campus as antisemitic conduct has skyrocketed on campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack against Israel. New Jersey has the second-largest Jewish population per capita in the country.
“I better not see antisemitism at all at these universities,” Bramnick said. “They will pay a significant price in terms of their funding.”
Bramnick’s pitch to New Jersey voters is that “I have far more experience” than the other candidates, “but more importantly, I’m the only one who can win the general election.”
Bramnick was a member of the New Jersey General Assembly from 2003 to 2022, serving as minority leader for the last 10 years, and has since been a state senator. Ciattarelli was a member of the General Assembly from 2011 to 2018, Durr was a state senator from 2022 to 2024, and neither Crispi nor Spadea have been elected to office.
Bramnick cited he won his district by 7 points despite Biden having won it by 17 and in spite of there being 7,000 more Democrats than Republicans registered in it. He said “I’m definitely the guy” Democrats do not want to run against.
Trump-aligned candidates warn of ‘red flags’ in GOP field
One reason Crispi is considering running for governor is that he believes the other candidates are all “flawed,” although he would “strongly support” any of the Republican candidates over the Democratic nominee because “the worst Republican is a hell of a lot better than a Democrat. I firmly believe that about any candidate in this field.”
“There have been many people urging me to run,” he said. “And the reason why I think it’s such a big deal is because there’s no MAGA candidate in the race right now.”
His concerns with Bramnick are on policy. For example, he lamented the state senator for co-sponsoring what Crispi called “the groomer bill,” or Senate Bill 2421, which faced GOP criticism for “overstep[ping] the role” of parents in reviewing what kind of material is appropriate for their children to consume. Crispi said this puts “protections for schools to basically put pornography into second grade libraries” because the bill pushes “equitable access to learning materials” regardless of age.
Crispi’s main criticism of Ciattarelli is that he has “flip-flopped” on a number of policies, but at least he “does not hide the fact” that he is a centrist.
Durr criticized both Bramnick and Ciattarelli for being “weaker” on the issues of abortion and the preservation of the Second Amendment than he is.
Crispi raised several “red flags” about Spadea, however, including that he “betrayed Trump” by calling him a “failure” and saying he didn’t want him to run again, that he has supported pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants, warned about his ties to former Ocean County Republican Chairman George Gilmore, and criticized his “silence” on the party-line ballot issue.
He and Durr both expressed concern about Spadea’s ties to Gilmore, who they chided as an “establishment” Republican who has ties to Philip Norcross, brother of Democratic philanthropist George Norcross and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ), as well as Trump foe Chris Christie. Crispi accused Gilmore of “using his party chairmanship” for his own financial interests, slammed him for fundraising for former Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey’s mayoral bid, and criticized him for going against several Trump-endorsed candidates.
Crispi also said he doesn’t see Durr as a “viable” candidate because of his lack of fundraising, noting “you can’t win if you don’t raise money,” and claimed that “Ed the Trucker” has been banned from Bedminster, New Jersey.
In response to the charge of being banned from Bedminster, Durr said this was a lie first spread by former Assemblywoman Beth Sawyer during her unsuccessful 2023 primary challenge against him. “Mike, if you have the facts, produce them,” he fired back.
On the fundraising point, he admitted he hasn’t “focused on fundraising” up until this point but said he does have a fundraiser next week.
Durr had his own criticisms about Crispi, who he says “has no real base. He has no following. He’s never won an election. He’s not even a Jersey resident by originality. He moved here from New York, so he can’t call himself a Jersey boy. I’m a Jersey boy. Raised and lived here all my life.”
“I am the only candidate running that’s filed or not filed, that has no establishment ties. I am not tied to any establishment,” Durr said. “Whether it’s John, Jack, or Bill, even Mike, they all have connections to the establishment where I have none. I’m the grassroots guy. I’m the real guy who’s grassroots there.”
Scott Presler’s plan to ‘Pennsylvania’ New Jersey
Presler’s efforts in Pennsylvania during the 2024 presidential elections were credited by many Republicans, including Lara Trump, with delivering the commonwealth and its 19 electoral votes to the president-elect in November. In 2025, he plans to “Pennsylvania” New Jersey.
Building on the Garden State’s “rightward shift” in the 2024 election, he said the goal of Early Vote Action is “to simply bring our Pennsylvania model of voter registration next door to the adjacent state of Jersey.”
“For this election, it’s not necessarily about persuasion or conversion, which are important,” he said. “My message is simple: If every Trump supporter that voted for the president in 2024 comes out on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, you will elect a Republican governor.”
Early Vote Action has already hired staff, New Jersey coordinator Paula Scanlan, and they are already there. In addition to voter registration efforts, the organization is also working to “get people to commit to voting.”
“So, the strategy is no different than 2024, and what I mean by that is we would go to gun shows, gun shops, farmers markets, fraternity houses, Bass Pro Shops, Walmarts, gas stations, and churches [for] voter registration,” Presler said. “Our goal was simply to meet voters where they are and especially go to places where we know like-minded conservatives are more likely to be.”
Presler’s strategy has three parts: get people registered to vote, get them committed to vote, and as the date gets closer to Election Day, “we will be following up with those people to simply turn them out to vote, and if we turn out every Republican, we win.”
Presler revealed that he will not be endorsing a candidate in the primary because he is “an outsider, and I think it’s only right and fair that the people of New Jersey choose their candidate,” but he will “be supporting whoever our Republican nominee is.”
“Ultimately, I want to make sure that we never have another governor like Murphy again,” he added.
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The leading Democratic candidate to take the baton from Murphy and go up against the Republican nominee is Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), who had a 12-point lead over the next candidate in the most recent primary poll from November.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Ciattarelli and Spadea for comment.