Ciattarelli carefully threads needle on Trump in NJ gov’s race

OLD BRIDGE, NJ — GOP gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli took on one of his rival’s most potent attacks against him — his alliance with President Trump — during a lively rally in the middle of the state this week.

“If you get a flat tire on your way home, it’s President Trump’s fault,” Ciattarelli quipped to roaring laughter from the crowd, regurgitating a frequent line in his stump speech.

“There is nothing she won’t blame on the president,” he said, referring to Democratic foe Rep. Mikie Sherrill.

Ciattarelli was largely preaching to the choir on the chilly night as the audience, which included some MAGA-hat wearers, was overwhelmingly Republican.

Trump has loomed large over the race and has been one of Sherrill’s great sources of ammunition against Ciattarelli, marking a contrast from the Republican hopeful’s failed gubernatorial run four years ago, when Trump had somewhat faded into the background after his 2020 election loss. Ciattarelli lost his 2021 race by about 3 percentage points.

Now Ciattarelli is forced to walk a fine line of not alienating Trump’s fervent supporters, who he needs to win, while simultaneously refraining from embracing him too much and scaring off moderates, who are also paramount to his success.

“If Trump wasn’t in the White House, Ciattarelli would be up by 12 points,” Sherrill’s former Democratic primary foe, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, observed to reporter David Cruz on his “Hold That Thought …” podcast earlier this month.

Last year, Trump had spooked Democrats by impressively finishing about 6 percentage points behind former Vice President Kamala Harris in traditionally blue New Jersey, dramatically closer than his roughly 16-point loss there in 2020.

But the president is still underwater with current New Jersey voters, with a 40% approval to 56% disapproval rating, while Dem Gov. Phil Murphy is hovering at a 45% approval to 47% disapproval rating, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll.

During their final debate in early October, Ciattarelli and Sherrill were given the thorny question of grading Trump and Murphy, the men whom the two candidates have used as boogeymen against each other.

Ciattarelli gave Trump a glowing “A,” while Sherrill carefully gave Murphy a “B.”

“That’s a difficult question for Ciattarelli, because he’s got to say A because he doesn’t want to upset Donald Trump. But Donald Trump is not popular in New Jersey,” said Dan Cassino, a politics professor and executive director of the Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll, to The Post at the time.

“He really does have to kind of try to obfuscate and try and talk around that, and that’s tough for him.”

Ciattarelli has repeatedly been forced to navigate some of Trump’s policies that are unpopular locally, such as his deployment of the National Guard in numerous cities across the country and the scrapping of federal funding for the local Gateway Tunnel project, the latter of which the GOP hopeful has publicly opposed.

While Sherrill has campaigned or made plans to stump with her party’s top political stars, such as ex-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), and, on Saturday, former President Barack Obama, Ciattarelli has not had an in-person rally with Trump in the homestretch.

Instead, he did a telerally with Trump last week. Trump has also blasted out Truth Social posts urging his supporters to back Ciattarelli.

Ciattarelli, when pressed by The Post whether Trump was hurting him at all, insisted, “Not one bit.

“And by the way, he improved by over 10 points in New Jersey ’20 compared to ’24. And he’s done some really good things for New Jersey,” the Republican candidate said.

Ciattarelli pointed to Trump’s fight against New York’s congestion pricing and signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to increase the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap as examples of positive moves for New Jersey.

“The motivating factor here is the failure of the current administration,” Ciattarelli stressed, referring to Murphy. “It’s been a failure across the board.”

Backers of Ciattarelli agree.

“The president doesn’t have a lot of effect on the state of New Jersey,” said voter Bill Montanaro of Spring Lake.

“In New Jersey, in all honesty, I’m tired of the carpetbagger governors we’ve had,” he said. “We had [Jon] Corzine from Illinois. We got this hack from Massachusetts, Murphy, who’s an idiot.

And now we got another carpetbagger from Virginia,” he said of Sherrill, who was born in the Old Dominion state.

Gerald Murphy, 62, from Essex County, who has been to at least 15 Ciattarelli events, said the efforts to bring Trump into the New Jersey governor’s race are tiring.

“[They’re] trying to blame Donald Trump,” he said. “No, take Donald Trump out of the picture. What have the Democrats here in New Jersey done for people?

“They give the black community a hamburger, hot dog, chicken. ‘And I’ll see you in four years for your vote again.’ Enough is enough,” said Murphy, who is black.

He had been a registered Democrat for over two decades before switching to the GOP last year.