Jack Ciattarelli hammed it up this week, cooking pork roll on a griddle in MetLife Stadium’s parking lot and dishing out sandwiches to Giants and Eagles fans tailgating before the “Turnpike Tussle” matchup.
The Republican candidate for New Jersey governor used the Garden State’s favorite breakfast food as a prop to drive home the point that he’s the born-and-bred “Jersey guy” residents need — not Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Virginia-born transplant who recently committed “blasphemy” by claiming the name “pork roll” is “gross” and should only be called “Taylor ham.”
“These are ready! Where’s our rolls?” said a grinning Ciattarelli as he lifted the piping-hot eats with his hands and a spatula, and placed them in a tin pan.
“We owned a restaurant! We know what to do!” he boasted, drawing cheers.
Two days earlier, Ciattarelli unleashed the pork roll controversy during a campaign rally in the seaside town of Manahawkin.
He questioned Sherrill’s Jersey cred while boasting the GOP has a rare and good chance to flip the state red — by grabbing the governor’s seat and seizing control of the state Legislature in a traditionally blue state where Dems outnumber Republicans by nearly 900,000 voters.
“She wants you to think she’s a Jersey girl, [but] doesn’t that thing she did the other day on pork rolls prove different?” Ciattarelli told roughly 300 supporters Tuesday at Element restaurant. “She also wants you to think that she’s moderate; she’s no moderate!
“We’ve seen this before,” he said. The Dems “brought in [ex-Gov.] Jon Corzine from Illinois. That didn’t work out so well. They brought [term-limited Gov.] Phil Murphy here from Massachusetts. This isn’t working out so well.”
“She’s not from New Jersey, so I got a really simple idea: How about we elect the Jersey guy!” roared Ciattarelli, drawing big cheers.
“The Ciattarellis have been here for over 100 years. Three generations of us have owned our own businesses and achieved our American dream right here in New Jersey.”
Ciattarelli’s campaign is heating up, just like his polling and fundraising — which show he is neck and neck with Sherrill.
The energy and optimism was palpable during the campaign stops — he made more than 25 this week — witnessed by The Post. The President Trump-backed Republican greeted tens of thousands of New Jerseyeans and promoted his tough-on-crime, business-friendly agenda.
The week included Ciattarelli picking up crossover endorsements from Democratic pols, marching in parades, attending a black pastor’s forum in Clifton, participating in a rally on the Wildwood boardwalk, meeting with business leaders and courting potential donors.
The former state assemblyman who repped Hunterdon County in central Jersey briefly slowed down the frantic pace Wednesday to prepare for his second debate with Sherrill, a four-term congresswoman and ex-U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, later that evening.
However, once the televised debate began, things got even more frantic — and personal.
Sherrill, 53, accused Ciattarelli, 63, of profiting off the opioid epidemic — and “kill[ing] tens of thousands of people by printing misinformation” through his former medical publishing company.
Ciattarelli fired back by accusing Sherrill of lying in an act of desperation, telling her, “Shame on you!”
He then referenced the growing scandal surrounding Sherrill’s military record by sniping, “I got to walk at my college graduation.”
The two candidates butted heads on nearly every issue, including the federal government shutdown, Trump, and how to bring down New Jersey’s high cost of living.
The only thing they agreed on: New Jersey should remain the lone state where drivers can’t pump their own gas.
When asked about Ciattarelli’s claim that she’s “no Jersey girl,” Sherrill — who moved to the Garden State in 2010 — accused the Republican of being “out of touch.”
“I think New Jersey voters care about somebody who’s going to fight for them, and I think they know it’s me,” the Montclair resident told The Post following the debate.
Ciattarelli throughout the week continued to highlight key scripted points he’s made throughout the campaign, including that he would sign executive orders prohibiting sanctuary cities in New Jersey and requiring all government workers to return to their offices and stop working remotely post-pandemic.
He also guaranteed to end cashless bail, provide parents with the right to ensure their children receive “age appropriate curriculum” in schools, and to implement a new “energy master plan” that includes repealing “unaffordable” state mandates on electric vehicles.
“And here’s the best part of that energy master plan. You ready? At the supermarket, you’re getting back your plastic bags,” Ciattarelli told more than 300 supporters at Mamma Vittoria catering hall in Nutley on Monday, drawing huge cheers.
“I can say I am lowering taxes. I get a nice round of applause. I say I am bringing back the plastic bags, it brings down that house everywhere every single time — every single time!”
Ciattarelli also vowed to follow through on his threat to slap a “reverse congestion pricing” fee on all New York vehicles entering the Garden State if he wins — unless New York Gov. Hochul puts the brakes on the $9 fees most drivers have paid since January to enter Manhattan below 60th Street.
And he made it known he’s not happy about some airlines telling passengers landing at Newark Airport “Welcome to New York” upon arrival.
“The first thing I’m going to do [as governor] is call the CEO of United Airlines, and I’m going to remind him that he’s a tenant of ours at the Port Authority,” Ciattarelli said. “When you land in New Jersey, it will say, ‘Welcome to New Jersey.’”
Giacchino Michael “Jack” Ciattarelli was born in 1961 in Sommerville and raised in the working-class borough of Raritan, where his parents owned a bar and restaurant.
A grandson of Italian immigrants, Ciattarelli built two businesses, including a medical publishing company, Galen Publishing, which he sold in 2017. He’s earned $14.9 million and paid almost $4 million in taxes since 2012, according to the New Jersey Monitor.
Ciattarelli, who earned a master’s degree in finance from Seton Hall University, first got into politics in the early 1990s, serving on the Raritan Borough Council. He got the political itch back a decade later and was elected to the Somerset County Board of Freeholders, where he sat from 2007 to 2011.
Ciattarelli then served in the state Assembly from December 2011 to January 2018, and at times was reportedly a harsh critic of Trump and fellow Republican then-Gov. Chris Christie.
He sought the Republican nomination in the 2017 gubernatorial race but lost. He ran for governor in 2021 – this time as the Republican nominee – but lost a tight race to Murphy.
He has four adult children with his ex-wife, Melinda. The couple divorced in 2024.
Ciattarelli was on a roll Thursday night, roaming MetLife Stadium’s parking lot for more than an hour, meeting, greeting and posing for photos with hundreds of tailgating football fans before the Giants upset the Eagles 34-17.
“He’s incredible!” gushed Giants fan Susan Christopoulos of Morris Plains. “I’m definitely voting for him. I was so excited to meet him.”
“That was great!” declared Wendy Hamlin, a health insurance broker from Lincoln Park, after devouring one of the pork rolls Ciattarelli cooked up and then posing for photos with her favorite candidate.
“I am very supportive of him,” she added. “I am so aligned with everything he stands for.”
Her pal and fellow Giants fan, Toni Anne Raymond of Hawthorne, also said she’s a huge Ciattarelli supporter but added he’s dead wrong when it comes to pork rolls — at least in the northern part of the state.
“He is not allowed to call it pork rolls here,” she said. “In North Jersey, we call it ‘Taylor ham,’ and in Central and South Jersey, they call it ‘pork rolls.’”
Others congratulated Ciattarelli over what they felt was a decisive win for him in Wednesday’s debate.
One tailgater even got a huge chuckle out of Ciattarelli by quipping he and his pals got wasted playing a drinking game while watching the debate — because they did shots every time Sherrill said “helicopter” or dissed Trump.
Ciatarelli later boasted he’s “absolutely” locked up the “sports-fan” vote.
“Across the board, it’s been great,” he told The Post. “People all across New Jersey, no matter who they root for: Mets, Yankees, Giants, Eagles — they want change.”
While Ciattarelli was leaving MetLife Stadium, his campaign team tried to deliver a clothesline tackle to Sherrill — from a keyboard.
The campaign sent out an email blast saying Ciattarelli plans to file a defamation lawsuit over “inflammatory” allegations Sherrill made during Wednesday’s debate by claiming Ciattarelli profited off the opioid epidemic.
Sherrill’s campaign responded by releasing a statement ripping Ciattarelli’s for trying to “hide behind a lawsuit” and “not to take responsibility.”
Ciattarelli ended the long day of campaigning by heading to an event in nearby North Bergen.
There he picked up a key crossover endorsement from the township’s Democratic mayor, ex-state Sen. Nicholas Sacco.
“The welfare and well-being of our residents are more important than party lines,” said Sacco, a longtime Hudson County power broker and fourth Democratic mayor in the state to support Ciattarelli for governor during the campaign.
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