Sherrill, Ciattarelli enter tight race for New Jersey governor

MONTCLAIR, New Jersey — The two major party candidates in the competitive and noisy race for New Jersey governor are eyeing victory as voters head to the polls on Election Day.

“We’ve seen, you know, rallies with thousands of people. Early voting, mail-in voting is very, very good,” Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill told reporters after voting at a school in this northern New Jersey township. “I think I’m going to do pretty well today.”

His Republican rival Jack Ciattarelli, making his third consecutive bid for governor and nearly upsetting Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy four years ago, was confident.

“If we replicate or do better than 2021 with Election Day voting, we’re going to celebrate a victory,” Ciattarelli said Monday night during an appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity.”

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And at a rally in Neptune City, New Jersey, hours earlier, Ciattarelli told supporters: “I got some really good news. In about 28 hours we declare victory, we win this race.”

New Jersey, along with Virginia, are the only two states to hold gubernatorial elections within a year of a presidential election. Their gubernatorial elections typically receive outsized national attention and are seen as a key barometer ahead of next year’s midterm elections, when the Republican Party will defend its slim majorities in the House and Senate. And this year, they are seen as the first major electoral test of President Donald Trump’s unprecedented agenda.

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In a state where registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans despite a surge in Republican Party registrations this decade, Ciattarelli appeared to narrow the gap in recent weeks with Sherrill.

Both candidates touted early results from in-person and mail-in voting ahead of Election Day.

“We’re past the firewall that we wanted to put in place today, the blue firewall, which is the numbers look good. So we’re just going to go through the tape and continue to get every vote out,” Sherrill said Tuesday.

And Ciattarelli told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “we’re in good shape. We’ve accomplished all of our goals with mail-in voting, and with the nine days of early voting, we’re exactly where we need to be.”

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Trump made significant gains in New Jersey in last year’s presidential election, losing the state by just six percentage points, a major improvement from his 16-point deficit four years earlier.

The president held two tele-rallies for Ciattarelli in the latter part of the campaign in hopes of energizing MAGA supporters, many of whom are low-propensity voters who often sit out voting in years without presidential elections.

“We appreciate what the president is doing to excite the base and remind them that they got to vote, like all New Jerseyans. The future of our state is at stake. Get out and vote,” Ciattarelli told Fox News Digital on Monday after a campaign stop in this northern New Jersey precinct.

But in a blue-leaning state where Trump’s poll numbers are understated, Sherrill has regularly linked Ciattarelli to the president, accusing his Republican rival of “really following the president, giving him an A.”

The race in New Jersey was rocked earlier this fall by a report that the National Personnel Records Center, which is a branch of the National Archives and Records Administration, mistakenly disclosed Sherrill’s improperly redacted military personnel records, which included private information like his Social Security number, to a Ciattarelli ally.

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But Sherrill’s military records indicated that the U.S. Naval Academy blocked her from participating in her graduation in 1994, amid a cheating scandal.

Sherrill, who was never accused of cheating in the scandal, served nearly a decade in the Navy.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill leaves a voting booth after voting on Election Day in Montclair, New Jersey. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News Digital)

The confrontation was shaken up again during last month’s final debate after Sherrill’s allegations that Ciattarelli was “complicit” with pharmaceutical companies in the deaths of tens of thousands of New Jerseyans from opioids, as she named the medical publishing company he owned that distributed content promoting the use of opioids as a low-risk treatment for chronic pain.

New Jersey traditionally elects a governor from the party out of power in the White House, which this year favors the Democrats.

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But Garden State voters have not elected a governor from the same party in three consecutive elections in more than half a century, which would favor Republicans.

One of these political trends will be broken in Tuesday’s election.

Fox News’ Ben Florance, Mark Meredith and Adriana James-Rodil contributed to this report.