NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A congresswoman and former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot secured the endorsement of the highest-ranking Hispanic official in her state. A mayor highlighted his arrest by immigration officials. A congressman campaigned at a Latino supermarket. And another mayor decided to put his self-taught Spanish to use on the trail.

The New Jersey gubernatorial primary has emerged as a crucial test for Democrats seeking to regain Latino support nationally. It highlights the challenges in traditionally blue areas where the party’s loss of support among Hispanics in 2024 was even more pronounced than in battleground states. President Donald Trump slashed Democratic margins in New Jersey and New York, even flipping some heavily Latino towns he had lost by 30 and 50 percentage points in 2016.

The Democratic primary for governor features an experienced field of current and former officeholders: U.S. Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, New Jersey Education Association president and former Montclair Mayor Sean Spiller and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney.

Although Trump made closing U.S. borders a central promise of his campaign, his economic message hit home with Latinos. More Hispanics saw inflation as the most important concern last fall than white voters, AP VoteCast showed. That lesson has been taken to heart in this year’s campaign, with strategists, unions, organizers and politicians pivoting away from immigration and putting pocketbook concerns at the forefront of their appeals.

“At the end of the day, if you’re worried about paying your bills and being safe at night, everything else is secondary,” Rep. Gottheimer said in an interview. “I think that is front and center in the Latino community.”

Warning signs for Democrats

Laura Matos, a Democratic National Committee member from New Jersey and board member of Latina Civic Action, said the party is still finding its way with Hispanic voters, warning that support can’t be taken for granted even when Democrats win most of it.

While there was a big rightward swing among Hispanics in Texas and Florida in 2024, it was similarly pronounced in blue states like New Jersey and New York. Here, 43% of Latino voters supported Trump, up from 28% in 2020. In New York, 36% of Latino voters supported Trump, up from 25% in 2020, according to AP VoteCast.

Understanding that all Latino voters don’t think or vote alike helps. Compared to the 2020 election, Trump gained significantly with Dominican voters, where he went from 31% to 43% of support. Of the 2 million Latinos in New Jersey, more than 375,000 are Dominican, making up the second largest Hispanic group in New Jersey, after Puerto Ricans, a group where Trump also increased his support from 31% to 39%, the survey showed.

But sometimes candidates overthink such targeted appeals.

“The November election results in parts of New Jersey should serve as a big warning sign that Democrats need to think about how they’re communicating with some of these voters,” Matos said.

Sherrill’s campaign manager acknowledged in a memo to supporters last month that “there is a real risk of a Republican winning in November.” New Jersey tilts Democratic in presidential and Senate elections, but Republicans have won the governorship in recent decades.

Focusing on the economy

Strategists, organizers, union leaders and some candidates agree that what they are hearing from Latinos is consistent with the concerns of other working class voters.

Ana Maria Hill, of Colombian and Mexican descent, is the New Jersey state director of the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, where half of the members are Hispanic. Hill says raising the minimum wage and imposing new regulations to cap rent increases are popular among those she has been calling to support Newark Mayor Baraka. She says Democrats lost ground by not acknowledging real-world struggles that hit Latinos hard after inflation spiked following the pandemic.

“I think where we lost voters last year was when workers asked ‘What’s going on with the economy?’ We said ‘the economy is great.’ And it could be true, but it’s also true that eggs cost $10, right? It’s also true that a gallon of milk costs $6.”

Taking that lesson to heart, Gottheimer held a press conference at a Latino supermarket in Elizabeth, a vibrant Latino hub south of Newark, against a backdrop of bottles of a corn oil used in many Hispanic kitchens. Sherrill headed to a Colombian restaurant, also in Elizabeth, on Saturday for a ‘Get Out the Vote’ rally.

One of her advisers, Patricia Campos-Medina, a labor activist who ran for the U.S. Senate last year, said candidates who visit Latino businesses and talk about the economic challenges the way Sherrill has done show they get it.

“She has a message that covers a lot of big issues. But when it comes to Latinos, we’ve been focusing on the economy, affordable housing, transportation, and small business growth,” Campos-Medina said.

When state Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz, the state’s highest-ranking Hispanic official, endorsed Sherrill last week, she cited her advocacy for affordable child care directly, for instance.

A candidate’s arrest

Trump’s four months in office have been defined by his aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration. That gave Baraka a chance to seize the spotlight on a non-economic issue as an advocate for immigrant residents in Newark. He was arrested while trying to join an oversight tour of a 1,000-bed immigrant detention center. A trespass charge was later dropped, but he sued interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba over the dropped prosecution last week.

“I think all this stuff is designed to be a distraction,” he said recently. “But I also think that us not responding is consent. Our silence is consent. If we continue to allow these people to do these things and get away with it, right, they will continue to do them over and over and over again.”

In one of his final campaign ads in Spanish, he used footage from the arrest and the demonstrations to cast himself as a reluctant warrior, with text over the images saying he is “El Único,” Spanish for “the only one,” who confronts Trump.

Confident Republicans

Former state assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli is making his third bid for governor, and Trump’s backing may help. But Chris Russell, a Ciattarelli campaign consult, said Democrats’ habit of misreading of Latino voters might matter more.

“Democrats believe the key to winning these folks over is identity politics.” He added: “They’re missing the boat.”

Ciattarelli faces four challengers for the GOP nomination in Tuesday’s primary.

During a telephone rally for Ciattarelli las week, Trump called New Jersey a “high-tax, high-crime sanctuary state,” accusing local officials of not cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

But Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, another contender for the Democratic nomination, said he is not entirely convinced the Democratic party will keep losing support in New Jersey. He thinks the gubernatorial race will be a referendum on current Gov. Phil Murphy. Immigration and the economy may enter some Hispanic voters’ thinking, but how that plays out is anybody’s guess.

“The Latino community is two things in New Jersey. It is growing significantly, and it is a jump ball. There’s nobody that has an absolute inside track.”

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Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

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© 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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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