The leader of the national Democratic Party stood on a porch in Somerset County on Saturday — seven miles away from the president’s golf club — to hammer home a message.

“Stopping Donald Trump starts right here in New Jersey,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin told a few dozen local party leaders, candidates, and voters at a private residence in Basking Ridge — three days before the primary in the massive race for the Garden State’s next governor.

Martin was on hand for a final-weekend push for votes and painted Jersey as ground zero for American elections right now. It’s one of only two states, along with Virginia, to hold a gubernatorial race this year. And it’s seen as an early litmus test on Trump’s first year back in the Oval Office.

Republicans are trying to win back the governor’s office after eight years of term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. Trump, who lives part of the year at his golf club in Bedminster, even held a phone call last week to stump for Republican frontrunner Jack Ciattarelli, stressing the goal is to turn the blue-leaning state red.

“New Jersey is ready to pop out of that blue horror show and vote for somebody that’s gonna make things happen,” Trump said.

Martin admitted Saturday the Democratic Party is trying to shake off a lull after Republicans retook the White House and both houses of Congress. To boot, New Jersey hasn’t elected one party to three straight terms in the governor’s office since 1961.

“I think what most people want to see is if our Democratic Party will get up off our asses and fight,” Martin told the audience that stood on the lawn outside the house in the rain to hear him speak. “Why have we lost ground with so many people? Because they believe we’re not gonna fight. They believe we’re weak. They believe we’re spineless.

“Let’s get out there and fight.”

Six candidates are running in Tuesday’s primary for the Democratic nomination to succeed Murphy. And all signs show it’s a very tight race.

The five-man Republican primary is different: Ciattarelli, a former state Assemblyman who came within about 3 percentage points of upsetting Murphy in 2021, has led big in all polls and has Trump’s critical endorsement.

Though there are still 800,000 more registered Democrats in New Jersey, Republicans have gained ground and Trump shrank his margin of defeat in the state last year.

On Saturday, Martin said Republicans’ “best opportunity to stop us” is in Jersey — and even noted Ciattarelli is well liked.

“While Jack may be a nice guy, Donald Trump is not and you can expect (Ciattarelli) to fall in line,” the DNC chair said.

“At some point, we have to remind Americans who we are,” Martin added. “Donald Trump goes around talking about making America great again, but he ignores the values that built this country.”

Next year is big for Jersey, too. Democrats believe one of the seats key to retaking the U.S. House in Trump’s midterms lies in the state’s purple 7th congressional district, home to Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. Martin’s stop Saturday took place there, and several Democrats hoping to unseat Kean were on hand.

The six Democrats running in the gubernatorial primary are: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller, and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney. All of them have repeatedly promised to combat Trump.

Last week, Trump called the Dem contenders “literally lunatics.”

The DNC has not endorsed a candidate. Martin praised all of them.

“We’re going to make sure we’re investing a lot of time, energy, and money to keep this state blue,” he told reporters after his speech. “And I think we’ll prevail in the end. You’ve got six great candidates.”

He said they all “represent the great diversity in our party — the ideological diversity, the geographical diversity.”

Asked how much money the national party will pour into the general election, Martin said: “It will be a significant seven-figure investment in this state.”

He noted the president was back at his Bedminster club this weekend and is slated to attend a UFC event in Newark on Saturday night.

“They’re very bullish on their chances here,” Martin said of Trump and Republicans. “He’s going to put a lot of his own time and personality and money and effort in this state.”

Trump also reiterated his support of Ciattarelli on social media Saturday afternoon.

Also running in the Republican primary are contractor Justin Barbera, state Sen. Jon Bramnick, former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac, and former radio host Bill Spadea. Barbera, Kranjac, and Spadea are Trump supporters. Bramnick has been willing to criticize the president.

Early in-person voting runs through Sunday.

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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X at @johnsb01.

NEWARK, New Jersey (WABC) — Newark Mayor Ras Baraka believes it is time for him to make the move from the mayor’s office to the governor’s office.

“Being in charge of Newark for over a decade, you can see a lot of things we’ve been able to accomplish, but not for as many people as we wanted to accomplish it for,” Baraka said. “I think in the governor’s office, you can do a lot more for people across the state of New Jersey who witnessed in our party the same issues that we have from housing to violence to Medicaid to Medicare to health care.”

In his 11 years as mayor of Newark, the city has seen a tremendous growth spurt – the city skyline is etched with new businesses that moved in and new partnerships have brought more jobs.

“We’ve reduced crime, we’ve changed the lead service lines, we went up twice in our Moody’s financial rating in the city, we’ve turned people’s Section 8 vouchers into mortgages,” Baraka said.

Under his leadership, Newark Public Schools are back under local control and flourishing.

As governor, he wants to control costs across the board to make living more affordable.

“We have too many school districts, we have more school districts than cities, and we have too many cities, more cities than California, which is eight times our size,” Baraka said. “And so it’s incredibly inefficient and we’re paying two or three times for similar services or same services that we could combine and reduce our costs.”

He has multi-pronged plan to address housing, which includes a capital fund for affordable housing, subsidized affordable home ownership, tax relief for home owners, a cap on rent increases, and regulating investment firms that impact housing and raising filing fees for evictions.

On higher education, Baraka says he will push for free community college and partner universities with private sector leaders to recruit and retain local talent.

Some critics called his recent arrest outside the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center a political stunt.

“I was down there every day, if I wanted to do a political stunt, I could have done it at 7:00 in the morning, I’m there every day, 7 o’clock, when I was there earlier that day with the ICE agents out there in the front,” he said.

He was asked if he would try to have it shut down as governor.

“Well, I think what we should try to do as governor is to make sure that we don’t have private prisons in New Jersey,” Baraka said.

There are six Democrats and five Republicans in the running for New Jersey governor. Eyewitness News will profile a candidate for governor each day this week.

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Hundreds lined Haddon Avenue in Haddon Township, New Jersey, Thursday night for the annual Pride Parade, with all the colors and feelings of pride on full display.

“It’s awesome, it’s beautiful, it’s what Pride is,” said Lauren Smith from Voorhees.

The parade featured bands, floats, entertainment and participants of the two and four-legged variety.

“This is our second year coming. We came last year and had an absolute blast, so we’re back again,” said Gracie Broglin from West Deptford.

Randy Teague is the mayor of Haddon Township.

“It means that everyone is welcome, we’re an inclusionary community and we accept everybody,” says Teague.

For many, this night is a chance to be accepted.

“It just makes us feel very welcome and feel comfortable and safe together,” said Dejenee Mathis from Marlton.

Emily Munsick came out with her wife and two little girls.

“It’s really nice that this is here, they look around and they see, ‘Oh, two moms, OK, I have the same thing,’ so it’s important to have that community,” Munsick said.

This is the fifth year for the Haddon Township Pride Parade. Last year, more than 3,000 people marched in the parade and organizers said this year was even bigger.

Brendan Slavin is on the Board for the Haddon Township Equity Initiative, which sponsors the parade.

“This year we actually are expecting about 4,000 (people) and we’re about 30% larger on the participant count, businesses, local businesses that came in,” Slavin said.

This year’s theme is “Choose Joy,” a message Slavin and many others hope will march on during this month of Pride and beyond.

“Joy is something that isn’t given to you. So it’s something the world can’t take from you either. So in the world, you can choose to be angry, you can choose to be upset with everything, you can choose all this political climate stuff, just choose joy,” Slavin said. “That’s something you can protect, something that spreads easily, too. So just choose joy.”