By Brooke Holzhauer and Isabella Burke
NJ State House News Service
New Jersey’s candidates for governor, Republican Jack Ciattarelli and Democrat Mikie Sherrill, accused one another of deceitfulness during their second and final debate on Oct. 8. Throughout the hourlong back-and-forth, at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, the candidates scolded one another: “Shame on you.”
Ciattarelli, referring to a Sherrill campaign ad’s claim that he intends to raise New Jersey’s 6.625% sales tax to 10%, said: “It’s a lie. It’s not true.”
Sherrill, a veteran Navy helicopter pilot, said Ciattarelli acted as though he wasn’t aware that his campaign allegedly had distributed her military records, with her Social Security number intact.
“Either he’s really incompetent or he’s lying,” she said.
Fill it up, please
On one key issue though, they agreed: New Jersey will maintain its distinction as the only U.S. state that bans self-service at gasoline stations. Polls have shown that residents appreciate an attendant’s dispensing fuel rather than doing so themselves.
Ciattarelli said not pumping your own – a law since 1949 – was a “special, special” New Jersey difference. “We’ll continue to have full service,” he said.
Sherrill recounted driving into New Jersey “on fumes from Delaware,” sometimes in the rain with her children in the car. “A lot of people really love our state laws as they are,” she said.
Voters will pick Sherrill or Ciattarelli to replace Murphy, a two-term Democrat, in the general election on Nov. 4. The state constitution limits the chief executive to two consecutive terms.
Sherrill, 53, has represented the 11th Congressional District since 2019. A married mother of four from Montclair, she’s a former Navy lieutenant and an ex-federal prosecutor.
Ciattarelli, 63, is making his third bid for New Jersey governor. He’s a former General Assembly member and ex-Somerset County commissioner who founded and sold a medical publishing business. Ciattarelli and his ex-wife have four children.
Trump and Murphy
Each candidate tried to sully the other as allies of Murphy or President Donald Trump. A Sept. 22-23 poll by Emerson College showed Murphy with 35% job approval, while Trump’s is 41%. The survey, of 935 likely voters, linked the ratings to anxiety about the economy. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.
Ciattarelli said he gives the president, who endorsed him, an A grade.
“He’s right about everything that he’s doing,” Ciattarelli said. “Inflation is much lower than it was when Joe Biden was in.”
Sherrill gave Trump an F.
“At every single level, costs are going up on New Jerseyans,” she said. She attributed that to Trump’s tariffs and the legislation that the president called the Big Beautiful Bill, with higher costs of health care, energy and housing.
Ciattarelli assigned an F to Murphy and called his administration “the worst governorship of our lifetime.” The Democrat was responsible for “an affordability crisis” driven by property taxes, electricity rates, housing and child care, he said.
Sherrill said Murphy, who endorsed her, deserved a B grade. “There’s ways Trenton could do a lot better,” she said. She promised “a culture shift” with an emphasis on government accountability.
Getting nasty
Sherrill said her opponent, as a medical publisher, had made millions of dollars because he “put out propaganda” by opioid manufacturers. Ciattarelli, she said, “killed tens of thousands of people” in New Jersey as a result of addiction.
When the issue came up in Ciattarelli’s 2021 bid for governor, his campaign said his former company, Galen Publishing, had printed educational material about painkillers for medical professionals.
This time, Sherrill’s dig stirred Ciattarelli to attack her for not walking at her Naval Academy commencement ceremony – the school’s punishment for not reporting classmates who were caught in a cheating scandal. That detail was in her military records.
“I got to walk at my graduation,” Ciatterelli said.
The National Guard
Trump has deployed the National Guard in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, both Democratic-run cities, to crack down on crime and disorder. The president says he’ll also send members of the military to cities as “training grounds.”
“Military members should not be on our streets – it makes people feel less safe,” Sherrill said. The use of soldiers for such purposes, she said, is “unacceptable.”
Ciattarelli said any U.S. president “won’t have to worry about these things” in New Jersey because as governor, he would scrap bail reform, revoke the state’s sanctuary status for undocumented immigrants and appoint a tough-on-crime attorney general and county prosecutors.
“We will be a law-and-order state again, and there will be a consequence for truly unlawful behavior,” Ciattarelli said.
A light note
The candidates, asked to reveal some of their favorite places and activities, centered on family.
Sherrill said she loves Montclair, “where my home is.” At one time, she said, she used to “dread” going to her children’s sports games but now “I really do enjoy that.”
Ciattarelli said he is fond of Raritan, “where my grandparents immigrated 100 years ago” from Italy. On Sunday mornings, he said, he relishes “making the gravy.”
“I want to be transparent,” he said. “It’s gravy, not sauce. It’s macaroni, not pasta.” With his family, he said, “we’ll have a Sunday dinner together.”
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Editor’s note: Reporters Brooke Holzhauer and Isabella Burke are interns for NJ State House News Service. Holzhauer is a William Paterson University junior majoring in broadcast journalism. Burke is a Rutgers University senior majoring in journalism and minoring in entrepreneurship.
