The race for governor of New Jersey features the largest field in decades. The candidates have never been more accomplished or better funded. The results could be a bellwether for midterm congressional elections.
But first, the candidates must figure out how to make themselves heard — over each other and amid a backdrop of unmatched upheaval in Washington.
That’s a particular challenge for the Democratic contenders, who include two members of Congress, two big-city mayors and two union leaders.
“To have six Democrats, all who could pretty legitimately have a chance — that’s really rare,” said Kristoffer Shields, director of the Eagleton Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University.
All of the candidates have made clear their opposition to President Trump’s funding cuts and attempts to enact mass deportations. To stand out from the crowd, each has also tried to hone a unique message ahead of the state’s June 10 primary. Here’s how each Democrat is trying to carve a path to victory.
‘They don’t see us’
Even Ras Baraka’s opponents praise his oratorical skills and note with self-deprecating humor how hard it can be to follow him in a debate lineup.
A spoken word poet with a verse featured in Beyoncé’s new concert tour video, Mr. Baraka has claimed a liberal lane in the Democratic primary race. After a presidential election in which voters took a sharp rightward turn, Mr. Baraka, the mayor of Newark, has no real company on the far left.
He speaks of New Jersey’s highly segregated schools and a racial wealth gap that by one estimate has doubled since 2020. He describes the Trump administration’s immigration arrests as “kidnapping Black and brown people off the street” and says racism is a cause of the state’s high rates of maternal mortality among Black women.
In a speech last week, he questioned how Democratic leaders could continue to depend so heavily on minority voters while failing to address their most basic and urgent needs.
“They don’t see us,” said Mr. Baraka, who is Black. “If you don’t see me, you can’t solve my problems.”
Mr. Baraka, 55, also points to his role in the economic progress of Newark, the state’s largest city, and his efforts to build affordable housing and tamp down crime rates. His three terms as mayor, he tells audiences, have prepared him to scale that success statewide.
In polls, he has frequently ranked at the front of the pack, jockeying with several other candidates for second place.
Yet he has also faced blunt questions about whether a left-leaning Democrat can win in November against what is certain to be a well-financed Republican nominee in a state where Mr. Trump fared far better in his third race for president than in his first two.
An internal memo from his chief strategist, Bill Hyers, offered a response. Voter enthusiasm to elect the state’s first Black governor, he wrote, would be expected to drive up turnout in November where Democrats will need it most: heavily populated urban corridors where voting has lagged in the last two statewide elections.
“Democrats have the opportunity to ensure a 2025 win,” Mr. Hyers wrote, “without having to worry about the fickle nature” of suburban voters.
Attention to Detail
Steven Fulop wants voters to know that he has done his homework.
He was the first person to announce his candidacy two years ago. And he has since issued a series of policy papers that run more than 10 pages each and lay out his platform in detail.
Since 2013, he has been the mayor of Jersey City, the state’s second-largest city. Like Mr. Baraka, he has said his municipal experience would be an asset in the state capital.
Opponents have noted that his campaign accounts are filled with donations from developers. And he has faced criticism in Jersey City from residents upset by his willingness to forge ahead with costly plans to bring an outpost of Paris’s Pompidou Center to the city, even after the state revoked funding.
In ads, Mr. Fulop has embraced an “anti-corruption” message similar to one that helped to propel Andy Kim to the U.S. Senate last year after the stunning fall from grace by one of the state’s longtime Democratic leaders, Robert Menendez, a former senator ultimately convicted of taking bribes.
At 48, Mr. Fulop is the youngest candidate in the race. He has emphasized his anti-establishment streak, his Jewish heritage and his willingness to quit a Wall Street finance job after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to join the Marines.
“I viewed it as a partial payment for citizenship,” he said of his military service.
Unlike the other candidates, Mr. Fulop is running with a ticket of candidates for the State Legislature. His strategists hope that a handful of spirited legislative races, particularly in districts in Hudson and Bergen Counties, help to boost Mr. Fulop.
Fighting Back Against Trump
For months, Josh Gottheimer has stuck to a disciplined and streamlined policy platform: making New Jersey more affordable. He has vowed to cut taxes by “nearly 15 percent” and emphasized his efforts in Congress to “claw back” federal funding for New Jersey.
Then, last week — in a television ad created largely with artificial intelligence — he stepped shirtless into a boxing ring and punched Mr. Trump.
Every candidate has, to a degree, focused on the Republican administration in Washington. But Mr. Gottheimer’s ad was the most provocative display of just how large a role the president was likely to play in November’s general election in a state where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 800,000 voters.
The ad also appeared to portray as a virtue a trait sometimes held out as a knock against Mr. Gottheimer, who in the more than eight years that he has represented New Jersey’s Fifth Congressional District has become known as an aggressive and sharp-tongued politician. A demanding boss, he has regularly ranked near the top of a list of legislators with the highest staff turnover in Congress.
“He’s tenacious and tough — especially if someone messes with our families, and that’s not something he shies away from,” his campaign manager and former chief of staff, Chelsea Brossard, said. “That’s what he thinks Jersey needs right now.”
In Washington, Mr. Gottheimer has been a leader of a bipartisan caucus of moderates, and he was an early opponent of New York’s new congestion pricing tolls. He was the only Democrat in New Jersey’s congressional delegation to support the Laken Riley Act, which directs the authorities to detain and deport undocumented immigrants who are accused, but not convicted, of certain crimes.
Mr. Gottheimer has made efforts to win support from ultra-Orthodox Jews, who have built thriving communities in Ocean, Bergen, Hudson and Union Counties and often vote as a bloc.
He is also the only candidate from Bergen County, which has the state’s second-highest number of registered Democrats, after Essex.
Early in the campaign, Mr. Gottheimer was mocked after he released a fake Spotify playlist that made it look like his most-played songs were Bruce Springsteen hits.
Last week, he took a step toward re-establishing his Springsteen street cred in a state where the rock icon holds Everyman appeal: He was endorsed by Stevie Van Zandt, a guitarist in Mr. Springsteen’s E Street Band.
A Mother and a Pilot
Mikie Sherrill has not strayed far from a carefully curated image as a mother and Navy helicopter pilot trained “to run toward the fight.”
As the front-runner in every poll taken since March 2024, she has not had to.
Her campaign logo is a helicopter, and she appears in ads in a bomber jacket. At forums, Ms. Sherrill — the only woman in the race — notes that two of her four children will follow in her footsteps next month when they enter the United States Naval Academy, her alma mater.
At a forum in Newark, she linked her opposition to the Trump administration to the Naval Academy, noting that books by Maya Angelou and other writers had been ordered removed from a library at the school because their subject matter was seen as being related to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion topics. “They are allowing two copies of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ to stay on the shelves, but removing Maya Angelou. So you can study why Hitler decided to commit genocide but you can’t hear why the caged bird sings,” she said, alluding to Ms. Angelou’s autobiography.
Ms. Sherrill, 53, who has represented New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District since 2019, has more support from county Democratic Party bosses than any other candidate.
That used to be enough to win elections in a state that for decades gave candidates backed by local party leaders an often insurmountable advantage by putting them in a preferred spot on the ballot. But after a lawsuit by Senator Kim, a federal judge ordered an end to the practice.
Her spot at the front of the pack has made her a target.
Mr. Baraka went to Montclair, where she lives, to release a 10-point critique. Mr. Fulop questioned the degree to which her campaign has emphasized her military service. And Steve Sweeney, a former State Senate president who is also running for governor, set up a website criticizing her for accepting $31,500 for her congressional races from a political action committee linked to SpaceX, an aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, an influential Trump aide.
In March, as protests outside Mr. Musk’s Tesla car stores grew, Ms. Sherrill’s aides said that she had donated $31,500 to a food bank.
An Immigrant Background
One of the first things that Sean Spiller tells potential voters is that he is an immigrant, born in Jamaica, before pivoting to the 15 years he spent as a high school science teacher.
In 2021, Mr. Spiller, 50, was elected president of the New Jersey Education Association, one of the state’s largest labor unions.
He has raised only a nominal amount of campaign cash on his own, and is the only prominent candidate to fail to hit the minimum $580,000 threshold to qualify for matching state election funds.
His candidacy is nonetheless extraordinarily well funded.
A super PAC supported largely by schoolteachers’ dues has committed to spend as much as $35 million to help elect Mr. Spiller and has promoted his candidacy in extensive advertising.
Mr. Spiller has noted that other campaigns have turned to real estate developers and Wall Street bankers for contributions. By sidestepping that funding stream, he has said, he will avoid being beholden to their interests if elected.
At public appearances, he often speaks about the need to defend immigrants like his parents. “It’s personal to me,” Mr. Spiller said at a forum last month.
Mr. Spiller served one term as mayor of Montclair, N.J. Before he left office last year, the township faced a lawsuit from its chief financial officer, who said she had been harassed after questioning why part-time workers were taking advantage of benefits meant only for full-time employees.
In a deposition tied to the lawsuit, which ended in a settlement, Mr. Spiller declined to answer hundreds of questions, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Mr. Spiller said that he had “followed the advice” of the township’s human resources department and its lawyer “pertaining to any benefits available to myself and others.”
“Fundamentally, I have always believed that health care is a right for every single New Jerseyan, and that’s what I will fight for as governor,” he said in an email.
South Jersey Candidate
Mr. Sweeney is the only candidate from South Jersey. And he is appealing most directly to voters who, like him, have worked “with their hands.”
“His father was an ironworker, so he was an ironworker,” an ad says about Mr. Sweeney, a vice president of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers.
At forums, he notes that he never graduated from college yet rose to become State Senate president, one of the three most powerful positions in Trenton.
Mr. Sweeney’s political career was cut short in 2021, when he lost re-election in an upset to Edward Durr Jr., a largely unknown Republican who ran on a shoestring budget.
Mr. Sweeney’s defeat was also seen as a major blow to George Norcross III, a onetime Democratic power broker who has been a friend of Mr. Sweeney since childhood and who had helped to steer his career.
Mr. Sweeney, 65, is the only prominent Democrat who has said he would eliminate the state’s Immigrant Trust Directive, a policy targeted by the Trump administration for criticism. The directive limits the types of voluntary assistance that law enforcement officers may provide to federal immigration authorities.
Polls show Mr. Sweeney trailing in the race, but with so many well-known candidates from northern New Jersey competing for the same base of support, geography could provide an advantage.
On the campaign trail, he has focused on his role in Trenton in raising the minimum wage and adopting paid sick leave and his efforts on behalf of the disability community.
“You can complain about things,” he said at the first debate, “or you can do something about it.”
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
The post How 6 Democrats in a Consequential Governor’s Race Are Vying to Be Heard appeared first on New York Times.
