Trump casts a long shadow over a Governor's race

There are plenty of thorny policy issues facing the next governor of New Jersey. Housing and health care costs are high. Mass transit is on the ropes. Schools are among the most segregated in the country, and sea levels along the state's 130-mile coastline are rising.

But on the campaign trail, nearly all the candidates in both parties have been forced to focus heavily on another topic altogether: President Donald Trump.

He has dominated the rhetoric at Republican and Democratic debates. His photograph has been featured prominently in ads for candidates competing for their party's nomination in June. At forums that draw each side's most energized base of supporters, he is either the standard-bearer or the bête noir. Some candidates have even laced their comments with curse words in an apparent effort to emulate Trump's blunt speaking style.

"You're going to hear a couple of guys argue about who's more Trump-like," Edward Durr Jr., a Republican candidate, said at the start of one debate.

It was the inverse of a warning made days earlier by Ras J. Baraka, the mayor of Newark who is running for the Democratic nomination: "We're moving too far to the right. We're scared to be Democrats."

New Jersey and Virginia are the only states that hold governor's races the year after a presidential election. And every four years the results are scrutinized for clues about voter sentiment before midterm contests that can determine party control of Congress.

Because of a change in ballot design that has led to a seismic shift in the way campaigns are run in New Jersey, this year's primaries are particularly volatile. No longer do candidates endorsed by local party leaders get a preferential spot on the ballot -- a change that has given their rivals better odds of success. As a result, neither party has coalesced around a dominant front-runner, and the primaries' unusually competitive nature is likely to offer early insights about messaging, voter enthusiasm and attitudes toward Trump's second presidency.

"Either it's going to be the first sign that Trump is in trouble and that voters are ready to rebalance, to recalibrate," said Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University's Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics. "Or it's going to be a sign that Democrats are still on their heels, that Trump still has the Democrats on the run."

Gov. Philip D. Murphy is barred by term limits from running for reelection. And the race to replace him has drawn an enormous field of candidates, including two sitting members of Congress, two big-city mayors and a Republican who nearly beat Murphy three years ago.

Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 830,000 voters statewide. But independent voters make up the second-largest voting bloc and carry enough clout to swing elections in New Jersey, a largely suburban, well-educated and affluent state.

In the governor's race, clear lanes have emerged on the left and on the right on a range of divisive issues stoked by Trump, including abortion access, transgender rights and the president's pardons of the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.

But on no issue does Trump's influence on the race appear more clear-cut than on immigration, even in a state where roughly 1 in 4 residents was born outside the United States.

After a campaign focused on border security, Trump notched a far stronger showing in November than he did in 2020, losing New Jersey by just 6 points, down from 16 points four years ago. In more than half of the state's counties, he won -- including in Passaic County, an urban region of northern New Jersey filled with vibrant immigrant communities and a large population of Palestinians, many of whom were dissatisfied by Democrats' political response to Israel's bombing of the Gaza Strip after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by the terrorist group Hamas.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a former Democrat from South Jersey who joined the Republican Party four years ago and has become an ally of Trump, said the president's victory in November presented an opportunity to continue to expand the party's base in New Jersey.

Recent polls have shown that immigration remains a dominant concern among New Jersey voters. And Democrats have approached the topic far more warily than Murphy did eight years ago when he was first running for office.

Jersey City's mayor, Steve Fulop, and Sean Spiller, the president of the state's largest teachers' union, have said that they would strengthen New Jersey's ability to defend immigrants if elected governor. But only one of the Democratic candidates for governor, Baraka, loudly criticized the Trump administration after it moved recently to reopen an immigrant detention center in Newark, a step likely to put the state at the epicenter of the president's effort to enact mass deportations.

Other Democratic candidates have staked out positions that speak to voters' unease about unchecked immigration and crime.

In January, Rep. Josh Gottheimer set himself apart as the only Democrat in New Jersey's congressional delegation to support the Laken Riley Act, which directs the authorities to detain and deport immigrants without legal status who are accused -- but not convicted -- of certain crimes. And Stephen M. Sweeney, a former state Senate president, has said he would roll back a rule limiting the voluntary assistance that the authorities may provide federal agents, which has been a cornerstone of New Jersey's immigration policy for six years.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a former Army helicopter pilot, addressed immigration policy only generally during a recent candidate forum at Rutgers University.

But she grew emotional as she spoke about what she sees as the overarching threat New Jersey faces from the Trump administration.

"Every dream I had for my children and my grandchildren, everything I believe about this country, is under attack right now from Donald Trump," she said. "And I cannot imagine how I would work with him when he is working to destroy everything that I love."

The audience erupted in applause as Sherrill appeared to wipe away a tear.

John L. Campbell, a former sociology professor at Dartmouth College whose research has focused on Trump's norm-shredding first term, said Democrats across the country are struggling to find a resonant message, particularly on issues like immigration.

"I just don't think they've figured it out yet," he said.

"They need to figure out a way to at least genuflect a little bit to some of the issues that have been successful for 'Team Trump,'" he said.

Among Republican candidates for governor, the campaign has been a race to embrace the president and his agenda. A group supportive of Jack Ciattarelli, who fell 3 points short of beating Murphy in 2021, set up a website challenging an opponent's fealty to Trump.

In turn, that opponent, Bill Spadea, a far-right radio host on leave from his job, released an ad that featured a snippet from an interview in which Trump groused about Ciattarelli, suggesting that if he had asked for Trump's endorsement, he might have won his race in 2021.

"This guy never came to ask for my support," Trump said in May. "When MAGA sees that, they don't like it."

Even Sen. Jon Bramnick, a moderate Republican candidate who has been an outspoken Trump critic, has said that he would accept the president's support, even as he noted that it was unlikely to be offered.

The races are unfolding against a backdrop of dizzying change in Washington, making political strategy especially challenging.

"It's almost 100 years from now until the general election in November," said state Sen. Holly Schepisi, a Republican. "Popularity today doesn't necessarily translate to popularity a few months from now."

In New Jersey, one of the most palpable signs of the shifting sands in Washington has seen an uptick in the tempo of deportation actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who have shown a new willingness to enter workplaces to make arrests.

Nedia Morsy, director of Make the Road New Jersey, an organizing group focused on immigrant rights, sees the actions by ICE as an opportunity for left-leaning candidates to begin to define an alternative narrative, particularly in a race that will be watched nationwide.

"Folks should rethink their strategy if their intention is to shy away from immigration," Morsy said, "because it is important to every single community in New Jersey."

"New Jersey," she added, "can serve as a referendum across the country."