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Canvassing New Jersey: Protecting a Democratic Gubernatorial Seat in Target Cong Districts [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-07-30

We are now canvassing in the 17 Hope Springs from Field PAC [dated website, to be updated in the Fall] target states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky (KY-6), Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia & Wisconsin.

The primary reason we are in New Jersey is because of the 2025 Governor’s election, which Republicans believe “Ciattarelli is well positioned to win this year, in part because of dissatisfaction with the leadership of Murphy, who has been in office eight years and is term-limited.” And although we have found varying weakness for Democratic Governor Phil Murphy at the doors, polls taken this month show Mikie Sherrill leading Republican Jack Ciattarelli outside the margin of error. Significantly, Sherrill was polling above 50%.

New Jersey and Virginia (where we’ve been canvassing since April) are considered harbinger elections, setting the stage for the midterm elections next year. So while both states are considered Leaning Democratic right now, we understand the importance of electing Democrats to these governorships and state legislatures.

But New Jersey was closer in the presidential election than Democrats hoped for. President felon made substantial gains among young and Latino voters which we think can be reversed, especially given the treatment of Trump’s brutal deportation targets.

At this point, we are focused on NJ-07 and NJ-02. NJ-07 is Thomas Kean’s seat and has been targeted by the DCCC. The Cook PVI rating for this race is EVEN. The Cook PVI for NJ-02 is R+5. It’s a big fat red, so why are we here?

Here’s the thing: New Jersey Democrats have undergone what you might call a political awakening (or what one paper called “a series of political earthquakes”). Before he was indicted, South Jersey political boss George Norcross had been a dominant figure in making sure Democrats got elected in this area.

New Jersey has perhaps the most connection in the modern day to the old-line machine politics of the past. Reforms have weakened the power of Tammany Hall and its antecedents virtually everywhere, except in New Jersey. Voters have generally decided that they want to be in control of who represents them, and this simple request has imploded the gilded towers of the presumed deciders in our politics. That’s not to discount the achievement here, though. The combination of a comically corrupt senator and what people clearly saw as a corrupt process to replace him proved too much for the system to bear.

With Norcross losing power, the county line lawsuit and Menendez’s indictment, a vacuum exists for which Sherrill has developed a strategy that seems to be working. You might call it an Inside/Outside strategy. She pursued the endorsements of the county Democratic parties while relying upon the grassroots field operations that bypassed them (and was successfully used by Andy Kim to win election to the Senate last year). Given the residual effects from Norcross’ legacy, Hope Springs volunteers aren’t so much replacing the machine as going around it. Sherrill’s campaign is working with its remnants to double the effect.

Then there is the political realities:

Adding to the uncertainty is the lack of a media center. Northern New Jersey is in the New York City media market, while the southern half is tied to Philadelphia, so residents “know a lot about the New York mayor’s race, but they don’t know a lot about the governor’s race in New Jersey,” said Julie Roginsky, a Democratic political consultant, co-founder of Lift Our Voices, and writer of the column Friendly Fire at NJ.com. “There’s just no local news anymore. It’s incredibly hard for candidates to communicate.” [...] Observers also noted that while there are still more Democrats than Republicans in the state, the gap between them is shrinking and more people are opting to reject both. According to New Jersey data, there were 2,768 new registered Republicans in May, compared to 2,226 new registered Democrats. New unaffiliated voters outpaced both at 4,472. There were about 6.6 million voters in the state overall as of the end of May, 2.5 million of whom are registered Democrats.

Last Saturday, 677 volunteers knocked on 50,301 doors. They talked to 4,074 voters and had in-depth conversations with 2,566 of them, respectively, guided by our Issues Questionnaire.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/30/2335881/-Canvassing-New-Jersey?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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