TRENTON, N..J. (AP) — New Jersey voters on Tuesday will settle the Democratic and Republican primaries for governor in a contest that could send signals about how the public is responding to President Donald Trump’s agenda and how Democratic voters think their leaders should push back.

New Jersey is one of just two states with a race for governor this year — the other is Virginia — and the fact two-term Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is term-limited has created fresh drama for the open seat.

There’s a six-way race on the Democratic side that features several seasoned political figures. Trump’s endorsement of former state lawmaker Jack Ciattarelli may have given him a boost on the Republican side, where he faces four primary challengers.

Polls are open from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. Tuesday, but it’s not the only day of voting. Early in-person voting was held from June 3-8. Mail-in ballots were sent to voters beginning in April.

The contest hinges in part on New Jersey issues, including high property taxes and the soaring cost of living, but national politics are sure to figure in. Trump, who has long had a strong presence in New Jersey, waded into the race with his endorsement, attacking Democratic control of state government. Democrats are looking for a winning message and leadership after the sting of bitter losses in 2024.

“Because these are the first major elections since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, there’s a tremendous amount at stake simply through public perception,” said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship.

For Democrats? “They’ll just get further in a hole if they don’t hold this seat,” he said.

For Republicans? They could win because New Jersey tends to be purple during gubernatorial years, Dworkin said, but that would be viewed as a tremendous victory for Trump.

The Democrats running are Mayors Ras Baraka of Newark and Steven Fulop of Jersey City; U.S. Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill; teachers union President Sean Spiller and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney. The Democratic campaign has been hard fought and pricey, with tens of millions spent in one of the country’s most expensive media markets.

On the Republican side, most of the candidates declared their support for the president’s agenda, pressing for a state-level version of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. They’ve also said they would end so-called sanctuary policies and, in a New Jersey-specific pitch, called for the end of the state’s 2020 law banning single-use plastic bags.

Ciattarelli has said he would sign an order on his first day in office ending New Jersey’s Immigrant Trust Directive, which bars local police from cooperating with federal officials on civil immigration matters. He has also said he would direct whomever he names attorney general to end lawsuits against the Trump administration, including a case aimed at stopping the president’s order ending birthright citizenship for people whose parents were in the country illegally.

Murphy, who became the first Democrat to be reelected in more than four decades in 2021, is barred from running again by term limits and hasn’t endorsed a successor in the primary.

Both parties will look to build their general election campaigns on widespread voter frustration. For Democrats, that means focusing on the parts of Trump’s aggressive second-term agenda that are unpopular. Republicans, meanwhile, are casting blame for economic hardships on Democrats who’ve run state government for the last eight years.

New Jersey has been reliably Democratic in Senate and presidential contests for decades. But the odd-year races for governor have tended to swing back and forth, and each of the last three GOP governors has won a second term.

Democrats have the largest share of registered voters in the state, followed closely by independent voters and then Republicans, who have roughly 800,000 fewer registrations than the Democratic Party. But the GOP has made gains in recent years, shaving the Democrats’ lead of more than 1 million more registrations to the current level.

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Wakefern Food Corp. and ShopRite continued their support of the Special Olympics New Jersey Summer Games that took place from June 6 to June 8 at The College of New Jersey. 

More than 500 volunteers, including team members from Wakefern and local ShopRite stores and their families,  volunteered throughout the event, extending a nearly 40-year tradition of involvement with the event.

Wakefern and ShopRite, two of the biggest employers in New Jersey, provided more than 15,000 meals to athletes, families and volunteers over the course of the weekend. Volunteers helped distribute snacks and organize activities and gift giveaways for athletes and their families to enjoy during their downtime.

“It’s a privilege to partner with Special Olympics New Jersey – an organization that celebrates the strength, determination and spirit of these remarkable athletes,” said Mike Stigers, president of Wakefern Food Corp., the retailer-owned supermarket cooperative and distribution and merchandising arm for ShopRite stores. “We are honored to play a role in creating a fun experience for everyone involved and look forward to cheering on our own ShopRite associates who are competing in the Games.”

The event began on June 6 with the 42nd annual Law Enforcement Torch Run, which raises awareness and funds for the Special Olympics movement. The torch run stops at nearly 50 ShopRite locations across New Jersey, where ShopRite associates provide refreshments to support participants.

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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