Politics
Deep blue New Jersey amid ‘Lord of the Rings’ moment to ‘save the state’ from Democrats: Scott Presler
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New Jersey is in the midst of a “Lord of the Rings” moment as Republicans work to rally voters to flip the deep blue state red in a tight gubernatorial election that’s coming down to its final days, Republican activist Scott Presler told Fox News Digital in an exclusive Zoom interview.
“To anyone who thinks that New Jersey is not winnable this November, I want to remind you that in 2021, that election was decided by 84,000 votes,” Presler told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview. “Six hundred thousand Republicans did not vote in that election. That election was winnable. Did you know that there are 250,000 gun owners in New Jersey that are not registered to vote? If simply every Second Amendment supporter got registered and voted, we would flip New Jersey from blue to red.”
Presler is on a “flip it red” mission in the Garden State, registering voters and promoting GOP candidate Jack Ciaterelli’s campaign against Democrat candidate, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, in an off-year election that could add to the Democratic Party’s mounting woes following 2024’s ballot box losses or preserve the party’s legacy in the longtime blue state.
Presler is the founder of Early Vote Action, a PAC he operates that focuses on voter registration and rallied support for President Donald Trump’s campaign and the GOP in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania during the 2024 election. The Republican activist spent months criss-crossing the Keystone State to rally support for the Trump–Vance ticket before the battleground ultimately threw its support behind the GOP on Election Day.
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Scott Presler registers new voters and hands out signs amid tailgaters in State College, Pennsylvania, in 2024. (Fox News Digital/Charlie Creitz)
Presler has since crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey, where he’s targeting the longtime blue state with conservative activism.
“We just won a landslide victory for Donald Trump, winning all seven swing states and winning the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with our work at Early Vote Action. In December of 2024, I announced that we were going to focus next on helping to flip the New Jersey governorship from blue to red. So we have currently, 14 full-time staff on the ground across New Jersey’s 21 counties. We have been working tirelessly all throughout 2025, helping to register voters. And our message is: leave no county untouched,” he said, explaining he and staff are not only focused on deep blue counties ahead of the election, but also on reinvigorating voters in rural and right-leaning counties.
New Jersey is in the midst of a “Lord of the Rings” or “Star Wars” moment, Presler said, saying voters have the chance to “save their state” and pointed to data showing how Republican support has increased in the state.
“This is their opportunity to save the state. This election in 2025 is gonna be seen as a referendum. The final opportunity, this is your ‘Lord of the Rings,’ This is your ‘Star Wars’ moment when people have the chance to save their state,” he said.
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New Jersey voted to elect former Vice President Kamala Harris as president nearly a year ago. Trump, however, made big inroads with Garden State voters, flipping five counties red, and improved on his 16-point loss in the state during the 2020 election to a six-point loss in 2024.
“Every month besides June, when that party switching was happening, Republicans have gained in an off-year election when the Democrats are spending more money than us and in a blue state. That shows me that I think the tide is changing, and I think that we have wind at our backs,” he said.
Republican activist Scott Presler rallied voter registration in the battleground state of Pennsylvania for the GOP during the 2024 election and is now focused on flipping New Jersey red during the 2025 off-year election. (Jeff Kowalsky/ Getty Images )
Presler rattled off that New Jersey voters have become increasingly incensed by the state’s notoriously high property taxes, its spiraling energy rates and even its ongoing ban on plastic bags at checkout lines that have spurred some residents to abandon Democrats in favor of the GOP ticket.
“Republicans, we must be that common-sense home, that common-sense party, that we are going to bring down property taxes, which is hurting New Jersey families — and that’s the number one issue that I hear about,” he said. “That we wanna bring down electricity prices, the number two issue that hear about from voters. And voters also want the third common-sense issue, which is law and order. They want us to deport and arrest criminal illegal aliens that are committing crimes against New Jersey voters. And from being on the ground this last year in 2025, I think you’re gonna see a huge amount of independent and Democrat voters vote for Jack because of those three common sense policies.”
The activist pointed to one former Democrat voter and teacher he chatted with at a fair in Sussex County, New Jersey — a rural area of the state that borders both New York and Pennsylvania — who remarked Democrats had become so “extreme” in their views that he left the party and is considering casting a red vote.
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“They have become so extreme, so radical in their beliefs, even when it comes to things like allowing children to change their gender at such a young age. He says that he wants nothing to do with that party anymore,” Presler said of what the voter relayed to him. “And after a conversation I had with him, he’s even willing to give Jack Ciattarelli a closer look. And so that just shows me that Democrats are fleeing their former party. And they’re looking for a new home.”
Republican activist Scott Presler is the founder of Early Vote Action, a PAC that focuses on voter registration and is currently working to flip New Jersey red. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Gen Z, the youngest American generation that is able to vote, played a pivotal role in delivering Trump a victory in 2024, with Presler saying male Gen Zers, specifically, are moving more to the right in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election.
The GOP activist pointed to another resident he chatted with during the Monmouth County, New Jersey, Fair over the summer, an 18-year-old who was not yet registered to vote.
“When I am talking to a voter, I really want to get into the mind and the head of the voter. And I was just asking him some questions. ‘Hey, would you like to own a home one day?’ And he was saying, ‘Yeah I want to but gosh the property’ — he said this, not me — ‘the property taxes are so high here,’” Presler recounted.
“As I’m just talking to him, I’m really discerning most of his beliefs. I think all of them really are congruent with the Republican Party. And so I’m courting him, and I’m asking for his vote for Jack Ciattarelli, and I am asking him to register to vote. And it’s young men like that man that I think you’re going to see who carried Donald Trump to victory in 2024, a lot of those some voters are gonna come out this year,” he added.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) both launched gubernatorial bids for their respective states in the 2025 election. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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Sherrill is in the midst of facing a campaign scandal after a report in September revealed that the United States Naval Academy blocked Sherrill from taking part in her graduation amid the cheating scandal. The Democrat House lawmaker slammed the release of the report and said she was banned from walking at her graduation because she declined to report classmates who were involved in the scandal.
“Mikie ‘Cheating Scandal’ Sherrill,” Presler called Sherrill. “She voted against (the Laken Riley Act). She has no plan to bring down property taxes. She has no plan to bring down electricity crisis prices. And she doesn’t know where she made her money, $7 million worth in stock trades. … In fact, I would argue that those are the reasons why Democrat turnout is gonna be depressed. Their candidate is uninspiring versus Jack Ciattarelli.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Sherrill’s campaign regarding Presler’s remarks but did not immediately receive a response.
On the flip side, Presler said, Trump-endorsed Ciattarelli is offering voters policies that would bring taxes and electricity prices down, ending New Jersey’s ban on plastic bags, opposing offshore wind to protect marine life, among other policies.
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“They want to make life affordable for New Jersey voters so they don’t have to move to Pennsylvania,” he said. “They don’t to move Florida. They want to stay in new Jersey. And so really Jack Ciattarelli is offering policies that the residents are responding to.”
Politics
Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf
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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.
Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.
Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
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President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”
The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.
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Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)
He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.
Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.
“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.
He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.
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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.
Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.
Politics
California Democrats launch pricey polling effort to winnow crowded gubernatorial field
As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.
The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.
“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.
As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.
The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.
That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.
The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.
Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.
Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.
Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.
The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.
“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.
Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.
The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.
“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.
Politics
Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’
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President Donald Trump outlined five key items he believes will tip the upcoming midterm elections in the GOP’s favor — if Republicans can muscle them through Congress.
“No transgender mutilation surgery for our children,” Trump told an audience at the Republican Members’ Issues Conference. “Voter ID, citizenship [verification], mail-in ballots, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports.”
“It’s the best of Trump. Those are the best of Trump. This is the number one priority, it should be, for the House,” Trump said.
Trump’s exhortations to Republican lawmakers come as the GOP wages an uphill campaign to hang on to a controlling majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He framed his legislative priorities as a way for Republicans to capitalize on popular demands within the GOP base that would increase their chances of preserving a Republican governing trifecta.
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
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Currently, Republicans hold just four more seats than Democrats in the House of Representatives.
The GOP holds six more than Democrats in the Senate.
To keep the numbers in their favor, Republicans will need to beat historical trends. In the vast majority of past cases, parties that capture the White House in presidential elections face blowback in the midterms. Notably, the last time a majority party gained seats in both chambers of Congress in the midterms came under the Bush administration in 2002, following devastating attacks on the World Trade Center.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, left, and President Donald Trump shake hands during an Invest America roundtable in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, District of Columbia, on June 9, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Trump said he believes Republicans have a shot at bucking the trend come November if they focus on his list.
“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of his legislative priorities.
Republicans have already taken strikes towards two of them through the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and cast a ballot. That bill cleared the House last month for a second time in the 119th Congress.
Its future is uncertain in the Senate, where Republicans would need the assistance of seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. Democrats, for their part, believe the legislation would disenfranchise voters who cannot readily provide documented proof of citizenship through a passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has promised a vote on the package despite its long odds.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during a “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Several members have introduced bills on transgender issues, although none of them have cleared either chamber.
“I’ve never been more confident that if we keep these promises and deliver on this popular agenda, the American people will stand with us in overwhelming numbers, just as they did in 2024,” Trump said.
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