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Ciatarelli, a former state councilor and establishment-backed candidate, beat three other Republican candidates — engineer Hirsch Singh, Reverend Phil Rizzo and former Franklin mayor Brian Levine — to win the party’s nomination.
While he was the front-runner in Tuesday’s GOP contest, Ciattarelli now faces a battle against Murphy, the favorite in this year’s race. The incumbent governor, who ran in the Democratic primaries unopposed, is well placed to break the New Jersey streak that began in 1989 with the election of a governor from the party opposing the incumbent, a year after Joe Biden won the state with 16 percent. points.
Ciattarelli was by far the best-funded candidate in the Republican race, raising $7 million while none of his competitors reached the million dollar mark. With the endorsement of all Republican organizations in the state’s 21 counties, he also benefited from first place on the ballot.
During the campaign, Ciattarelli focused mostly on how he would deal with Murphy, highlighting tax policies and the Democratic governor’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But his campaign indicated that it viewed his history of criticizing former President Donald Trump as a weakness: Ciattarelli attended the “Stop the Steal” rally, garnering the support of Representative Jeff Van Drew, a former non-partisan Democrat who has become a staunch Trump ally. .
Ciattarelli also described his main rival, Singh, as a “fake MAGA candidate” in an ad, in which his campaign portrayed Singh as an opponent of law enforcement officers and highlighted a 2014 Facebook post in which Singh wrote in response to Eric Garner’s murder “Police terrorism must stop”.
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