'The year after we elect a new president, the governor's race in New Jersey takes on added significance. Voters from this very diverse, highly suburban state will choose which party to empower, giving us a signal of where our politics goes next. Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill holds a roughly eight-point lead in the polls, but Republican Jack Cittarelli overperformed expectations back in 2021. Now he's back. He doesn't have to face an incumbent this time. And he has the endorsement of President Trump. David Wildstein is considered one of the best observers of New Jersey politics. He was the mayor of Livingston, ran the Port Authority under Chris Christie, you may remember the whole Bridgegate scandal, and now he's editor-in-chief of the New Jersey Globe. They're one of hosts of the first gubernatorial debate this weekend at Rider University, and David is here with his insider's view of the race. I'm David Chalian, CNN political director and Washington Bureau Chief. And this is the CNN Political Briefing. David Wildstein, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

My pleasure. Thank you.

I wanted to start because I think a lot of the listeners of this podcast who love politics may not be clued in to the New Jersey gubernatorial race yet. I'm a native New Jerseyan, so I like to pay attention to New Jersey politics, but you are the expert at observing it. And I'm wondering if you can just give us a broad overview as we head into the first gubernatorial debate, which I know you're going to be on the panel asking questions of the candidates. What is your sense right now of what this election is about?

So it depends from which candidate you're looking at, Jack Cittarelli wants this campaign to be about state issues, and Mikie Sherrill wants it to be Washington, D.C. She wants it be about national issues. And they're both on television talking about what they want to talk about.

We all know it, New Jersey's a mess. And all Mikie Scherr wants to talk about is President Trump. Come on, what does the president have to do with rising property taxes and higher electricity bills?

'This is now going to be a chance to see if Jersey voters want their governor to govern on state issues or whether they're so hyper-focused on national that it's going to creep into Jersey.

So let's dig down on that for a second. So tell me what national issues is Mikie Sherrill focusing her campaign on?

Yeah, so I'd say it's Donald Trump, Donald Trump and Donald Trump.

We can also be the state that sets a gold standard for protecting rights and freedoms. And we know they'll be under attack from Donald Trump's Washington.

She is hitting Cittarelli on his connection to the president, talking about the big beautiful bill and she's mobilizing her base and her base is suburban women and as you know in New Jersey, it's urban voters.

The Quinnipiac poll out this week that shows Sherrill, I think, up eight points over Cittarelli in this race. It showed a couple of interesting things to me. One, it showed that of all the issues asked, the number one issue for Jersey voters, 30% say taxes, 14% say ethics and government. Nothing else gets to double digits. A, did that issue matrix surprise you? And B, to your initial point, voters kind of split on what the most important issues are, depending on what kind of voters they are.

Yeah, it does. And it's, you know, the Quinnipiac and, and I'm not, you know, I, I've become just completely skeptical of polling, uh, in this race since the primary, but, uh they're all in this same range of six to eight points and it's always taxes. It's always taxes. And I, you know, David, I'm doing New Jersey politics 52 years. This is my 14th gubernatorial election. It is the 14th time that candidates from both parties have promised to cut taxes. And I guess I've just grown to be disappointed by their ability to do that. You know, sometimes Dave, I wonder whether voters, they care about taxes, but they're so accustomed to the promise of cutting taxes that they just don't have any expectation that the candidate actually will. You know you're always gonna pick up taxes on polling but I just am now questioning whether voters really think, whether it's a Democrat or Republican, that they get into office and are going to be able to deliver on what they promise.

So that's a bit on the issue agenda for voters that we see in this race. And as you say, what the candidates are sort of selling to voters. Can you just give us a little bit more about each of these candidates, who they are, what they're about, and how they sort of square up against each other?

Sure, I mean, Mikie Sherrill flipped a congressional seat based upon a phenomenal resume. Annapolis grad, Navy helicopter pilot, federal prosecutor, mother of four, she's running on that. Her ads literally have her flying a helicopter.

The Navy taught me, in a crisis, you either find a way or make one. For governor, Navy helicopter pilot, Mikie Sherrill.

Cittarelli is running as a guy who's term limited himself as a local, county, and state official. He talks heavily about his private sector business experience, and he talks about how he's going to be the first CPA to be governor in New Jersey.

We saw Donald Trump get a little closer in this state, narrow that margin there against Kamala Harris in 2024. We saw that unbelievably close gubernatorial race four years ago in 2021. I mean, New Jersey, it's still a blue state, right? Or is it moving a little purple?

It's clearly moving purple and it wasn't that way eight years ago. Wasn't that way just a couple of years ago, there were more than a million more Democrats than Republicans in New Jersey. Now that number's down to 800,000, which is still an astronomical edge, but New Jersey likes Republican governor. So, New Jersey has not elected a Republican to the US Senate since 1972. Only Hawaii has gone longer, and 48 other states have since elected a Republican, yet in the last 14 gubernatorial elections Democrats have won seven and Republicans have won seven. So, New Jersey is a state, it's a blue state that likes a Republican governor, not much unlike, sometimes, Maryland or Massachusetts.

We're gonna take a quick break. We're going to have a lot more with David Wildstein in just a moment.

So you've described in our conversation here, each candidate is trying to shape the turf to their advantage and sort of what issues they wanna fight on here. Cittarelli, you said, wants to keep it local and state focused and Mikie Sherrill more national focused. I guess my question to you is, do you have a sense if the national political environment does impact the political terrain in New Jersey?

It definitely does, and we saw that four years ago in the governor's race. Republicans were more motivated to come out and vote, you know, we're dealing, as we've talked about before, the media markets of Philadelphia and New York dominating, so you have sort of the specter of the New York City mayor's race, and Mamdani might have higher name ID in the northern part of the state than Mikie Sherrill or Jack Cittarelli.

How does that make Mikie Sherrill feel?

You know, she endorsed him, and then she didn't endorse him, and the problem is not many people really know about it, but yeah, it makes her feel really, really uneasy.

I did notice in the Quinnipiac poll, on the measure of enthusiasm, Cittarelli has a bit of an edge. His voters, according to the Quinnupiac poll are more "very enthusiastic" about supporting him than are Sherril's voters in terms of those that say they're "very enthusiastic" to support her. Does this match with your assessment of what you're seeing on the ground and do you think that perhaps this moment that we find ourselves in after this horrific event with the killing of Charlie Kirk, if that might be a motivating factor for Republicans who want to engage in this political fight?

'Yeah, I absolutely think that, and Jack Cittarelli's only chance with the kind of registration edge he's facing. So, we're seeing a lot of enthusiasm among the Republicans. We're seen what New Jersey Democrats have struggled for the last few cycles on getting urban voters out. The knock and drag doesn't work. Republicans have taken to in-person early voting. They still don't love vote by mail, but in New Jersey last year, 49% of all votes were cast in advance of election day. That plays into it too. And I'll tell you something happened just this week, and I think it's really interesting. Cittarelli did a digital ad where he came off more conservative on LGBTQ issues. Than he has been in his previous campaigns. I think his calculation is that he can overcome an 800,000 vote deficit, an advantage of Democrats over Republicans in New Jersey by saying it's easier for me to pull out, you know, 2,000 Republicans that vote in federal election years than it is for me to convince 500 independents to vote for me and not for Sherrill.

I mean, I would call that the Donald Trump theory of politics.

Yeah, exactly. It's exactly it. And by the way, that's how Cittarelli came so close last time, is you had a surge of typically non gubernatorial election year voters on the conservative side that didn't like some of the restrictions Phil Murphy had put on the state during COVID.

'Do you think of Jack Cittarelli as sort of a MAGA Trump-aligned conservative and his history through navigating being aligned with Trump in a more blue-leaning state like New Jersey?

'It's a great question, because that's part of the bizarreness of New Jersey this year. Cittarelli was a "Never Trumper." He would not vote for Trump in '16. He didn't support him in '20. In '24, he was there, but I think Cittarrelli has seen that he needed to do that. And the question, you know, big question for this election is - Cittarelli did everything he had to do to win that primary, to put aside a challenge. I think one of the questions is, did he go so far into the MAGA camp that he can't come back out of it right now?

And so my last question for you, and I'm not asking you to reveal what questions you plan to ask on Sunday night, but what do you, what do you hope voters get out of the debate? What is the dynamic between these two that you anticipate as they take the stage together for their first debate?

I think they barely know each other and they only have these two debates. So I think what Mikie Sherrill is going to need to do is show that she has a mastery of state issues, that she's ready for this job, not that she won't be ready, but whether she's on day one. I think Cittarelli, whether it's six, seven, or eight points, we've seen all three recently in polling, I think he's going to have to punch at her. And I think he's going to have to punch at her in a way that Frank Lautenberg punched at Millicent Fenwick when they were in for the U.S. Senate. I remember, and I'll tell this in a very condensed form, but I remember when Lautenburg started hitting at Fenwick, who was, by the way, everybody loved Millicents Fenwick. She was just beloved by the state. When Lautenberg started going negative, and really harsh negative, people were saying, Frank, what are you doing? You can't punch Millicent Fenwick. And if he didn't do that, he wasn't going to win. We'd have never heard of him. And I think you're going to see a little bit of that in Cittarelli. I'm waiting to see if he does that. I think he's got to go really tough at Sherrill and try and knock her off her stride and make the case that he's the one that, you know, regardless of a political party, regardless of who's endorsed him, that he is the guy that voters really want there if they think there's any chance at all at lowering taxes or any of these other things they want done.

David Wildstein, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me on.

That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much listening.