The ascendance of self-declared socialist Zohran Mamdani of New York City as this year’s highest-profile Democratic candidate is threatening to drag down the Democrat running for governor in neighboring New Jersey, who has sought to cast herself as more moderate.
With a double-digit polling lead, Mr. Mamdani is on pace to win his race against embattled former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday and become the next mayor of New York City.
Meanwhile, the gubernatorial campaign of New Jersey Democratic nominee Mikie Sherrill has been much closer than a candidate in a traditionally blue state would like.
Polling averages show Ms. Sherrill with a roughly three percentage-point lead over Republican rival Jack Ciattarelli.
One of the most reliable pollsters, the Trafalgar Group, puts the race even closer, showing Ms. Sherrill with a one-point lead.
With the New Jersey race close to or within the margin of error, the Mamdani effect may prove to be an unwelcome last-minute X factor.
A Ciattarelli campaign spokesman said Mr. Mamdani was looking to New Jersey as a model for how he intends to govern the Big Apple.
“Mamdani has said that he wants to make New York City’s tax policy more like New Jersey’s, which tells you how bad New Jersey’s tax policy is, right? And this is a tax policy that Mikie Sherrill supports,” Ciattarelli campaign spokesman Chris Russell told The Washington Times.
“You know, we have the highest business taxes in America. We have some of the highest income taxes in America. We have the highest property taxes in America … New Jersey Democrats have been so far to the left and so out of touch that they’ve made New Jersey a place that a socialist admires,” Mr. Russell said. “And Mikie Sherrill is part and parcel of that crowd in Trenton.”
The Washington Times reached out to the Sherrill campaign for comment.
Mr. Mamdani told New York’s PIX11 in August that he “absolutely” supported Ms. Sherrill’s bid for New Jersey governor.
Ms. Sherrill’s attitude toward the New York City race has been more ambivalent.
In July, she offered tentative support for Mr. Mamdani in an interview with NBC Philadelphia. “If he’s the Democratic candidate, which it sounds like he is, I assume I will [support him],” she said. “If he’s going to be working on efficient government, that’s something very interesting to me.”
But she has since appeared to backpedal, saying at an October candidate forum, “I am not getting engaged in that race, because I’m completely focused on New Jersey. I’m going to let the people of New York decide that race.”
That has not stopped the New York race from coming to Ms. Sherrill’s doorstep.
Concerns over growing antisemitism on the far left may have motivated Orthodox Jewish leaders in Ocean County, New Jersey, to unite for the first time in state politics to endorse Mr. Ciattarelli.
“She’s constantly stuck her thumb in the eye of Jewish residents of the state and tried to, again, appease the far-lefts in her party — whether that is AOC or Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar,” Mr. Russell said of Ms. Sherrill’s embrace of anti-Israel “Squad” members in Congress.
A spokesman for Ms. Sherrill’s campaign told another publication earlier this year that she “has always supported Israel’s defense, advocated for release of the hostages [held by Hamas] at every turn, and spoken out strongly against antisemitism before and after” the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Mr. Russell cited reports that Ms. Sherrill quit the moderate Blue Dog Coalition during a 2023 schism over rebranding itself as the more bipartisan “Common Sense Coalition.”
In response to the Ciattarelli campaign’s efforts to label her a Mamdani Democrat, Ms. Sherrill’s campaign has sought to counterpunch by highlighting her Republican rival’s off/on relationship with President Trump.
Mr. Ciattarelli has the support of the president, but he has been unable to get a firm commitment from him to help fund the Gateway Tunnel, a project to expand railway access between New York City and New Jersey.
“He understands it’s important to the region,” Mr. Ciattarelli said several times this week as a reporter pressed him on whether Mr. Trump would pledge financial support.
