Why the GOP has a great shot of winning New Jersey’s governor race this year

New Jersey stands an excellent chance of electing a Republican governor this year, and so potentially breaking from its long, slow decline.

Though solidly blue for years, the Garden State has shifted red of late in response to hapless Democratic misrule under Gov. Phil Murphy and the alliance of machine and far-left Dems who dominate the legislature.

Once a swing state, New Jersey moved left this last generation:

• It hasn’t voted for a Republican prez since 1988.

• It hasn’t had a GOP US senator in half a century, and nine of its 12 congressmen are Democrats now.

• Dems have controlled both houses of the legislature for 20 straight years.

But Jersey did vote for Republican Chris Christie for governor in 2009 and ’13, and for Christine Todd Whitman in 1993 and ’97.

And in a 2021 Election Night shocker, former General Assemblymember Jack Ciattarelli — this year’s GOP frontrunner for gov — came within just 3.2 percentage points of knocking out Murphy.

Then, last November, Jerseyans gave Donald Trump a full 45% of their votes, leaving Kamala Harris with the smallest Garden State winning margin of any Democratic presidential contender in 32 years.

And now the entire Democratic Party is struggling with record-low approval ratings and a general cluelessness about how to recover.

Meanwhile, political-activist GOP wunderkind Scott Presler, who worked miracles registering Republicans last year to help Trump take Pennsylvania, is vowing to do likewise now in the Garden State.

Heck, there’s an outside chance the General Assembly could even flip red.

Look: Garden Staters suffer all the modern blue-state woes: high taxes, massive state debt, high crime, decaying infrastructure, expensive but underperforming schools in many towns and cities — plus some special Jersey burdens like huge holes in the pension funds for retired public workers and massive corruption in Democrat-dominated areas.

Christie, the last Republican gov, came in like a lion and left like a lamb, his reform drives stymied by a Democratic legislature and firmly left-leaning state courts.

Then Murphy spent his eight years making everything worse, with the usual tax-and-spend, garnished with hard-left cultural warring such as imposing corrosive DEI mandates on the public schools.

He also stood up for corruption in Jersey’s ports by killing the bistate Waterfront Commission, which had fought the mob for decades.

And NJ Transit remains a bane on Garden State commuters, a railroad that can neither run on time nor even clearly communicate what today’s problem is, but only imply it’s someone else’s fault.

Jersey desperately needs a governor who’ll turn everything around — fight corruption and the vested interests that feed off record-high property and income taxes; reject the far-left ideology that poisons kids’ minds and protects illegal-migrant criminals; rebuild a business-friendly climate that provides jobs and a growing private-sector tax base.

The primaries are June 10; with Murphy term-limited, both are packed.

On the Dem side, the only candidate who presents any real hope for change is Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a moderate who strives for bipartisan solutions.

The rest — Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, teachers-union boss Sean Spiller, former state Senate president Stephen Sweeney — offer at best the same old, same old and at worst policies that will dig Jersey even deeper into its big-government hole.

On the GOP side, Ciattarelli promises income-tax cuts “for all taxpayers,” a cap on budget growth (plus a Department of Government Efficiency for the state, which could certainly use it), expanded school choice, lower gas, electric and insurance rates and a ban on sanctuary cities.

Just behind him in the polls are state Sen. Jon Bramnick and radio host Bill Spadea.

Spadea, who served in the Marines, also vows to be “tough on immigration” and to cut taxes.

Bramnick, though, might have a problem working with Trump: Prior to the 2024 presidential election, he vowed to drop out of the governor’s race if Trump won the state, because “if that’s what New Jersey wants, I ain’t your guy.”

At least Garden Staters will have a wide choice this year; here’s hoping they get it together to choose real change.