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New Jersey Republican players are awash in a sea of optimism regarding the 2025 gubernatorial campaign.  This is due to the closer than expected margin in the Garden State between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the November presidential general election.  This optimism may be very misplaced, however, depending on the actions of the incoming Trump administration.

If, for example, Trump conducts a major deportation of undocumented immigrants, affecting the lives of thousands of New Jersey Hispanics or makes large reductions in Social Security or Medicare benefits, the result will be a massive backlash against the New Jersey Republican Party. The 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial election will then become a referendum on such Trump administration policies, which would virtually ensure a Democratic gubernatorial victory.

Yet aside from this, the NJGOP has a major electability problem regarding its three major gubernatorial candidates.   State Senator Jon Bramnick is the most electable GOP candidate in the general election, but unwinnable in the primary. Radio host Bill Spadea could well prevail in the primary, but in the general election, he is a certain loser.  While Jack Ciattarelli is the putative frontrunner, his past tergiversations and equivocations regarding Donald Trump have resulted in substantial losses of credibility among both MAGA and mainstream GOP primary voters. A brief analysis of all three candidates follows.

Jon Bramnick

Bramnick has been an outstanding state legislator for over two decades.  He has maintained a coherent and comprehensive center-right political philosophy throughout his tenure.  His ethics are unimpeachable, and his competence as a lawyer is outstanding.  His knowledge of state government is topflight, and he has the knowledge and administrative and people skills to be an outstanding state governor. If nominated, he would have a very good chance of being elected.

The day before Election Day 2024, I opined to a friend that if Trump lost the national election to Kamala Harris, Bramnick could emerge as the leading New Jersey Republican gubernatorial prospect for the post-Trump era.  As the leading anti-Trump New Jersey opinion journalist, I admired his courage and incisiveness in refusing to support Donald Trump, his party’s candidate for president in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Unfortunately for Bramnick, Donald Trump won in 2024.  He will remain the avatar of the Republican Party until discredited by events.  As long as Trump retains that status, Jon Bramnick cannot win a statewide New Jersey Republican primary.

Bill Spadea

Spadea has two major assets that could enable him to win the Republican primary.  First, he will have the support of the overwhelming majority of MAGA voters.  Second, he has the endorsement of George Gilmore, the powerful and effective chair of the Ocean County Republican Committee.  The combination of a large victory in Ocean County, which will have the largest vote in the 2025 GOP primary, plus a majority of MAGA voters throughout the state could enable Bill Spadea, with his not insubstantial communication skills and charisma, to prevail in the 2025 NJGOP gubernatorial primary.
There are aspects to Spadea which actually make him more likable than Trump.   The Donald is anti-intellectual and communicates a negative sense of empathy which appeals only to a voter’s grievance and anger.  Spadea projects a hopeful Reaganesque empathy to voters and also possesses a healthy degree of historical intellectualism.  Also, unlike Trump, Spadea is neither racist nor a misogynist.  He is without personal or financial scandal and leads a monogamous lifestyle.

Yet due to his vehement anti-abortion choice stance, Spadea would be doomed in the 2025 gubernatorial general election.  Abortion choice is a third rail of New Jersey politics.  Rather than deemphasizing his anti-abortion choice views a la Chris Christie in the 2009 election, Spadea has made them the centerpiece of his campaign.  Such a positioning is anathema to the great majority of women voters and consigns Bill Spadea to a landslide general election defeat.

Jack Ciatarelli

In the 2017 Republican gubernatorial primary, Jack Ciatarelli ran as a principled anti-Trump candidate and won my admiration.  Unfortunately, unlike Jon Bramnick, Ciattarelli proved to be a man whose ambitions vitiated his principles.

A column I authored during the 2021 campaign described Ciattarelli’s obsequious efforts to appease and appeal to MAGA voters, even going so far as to attend a MAGA Stop-the-Steal rally.   These efforts only won him the mistrust of both MAGA and mainstream GOP voters.

There is a pac group in this election, Kitchen Table Conservatives, independent of Ciatarelli but with the obvious objective of defeating Spadea, Ciatarelli’s principal primary opponent, on the grounds that Spadea is insufficiently pro-Trump.  Such efforts will undoubtedly result in abysmal failure.  One may be harshly critical of Spadea on various grounds, but not of being insufficiently pro-Trump.

I am not saying that Ciattarelli absolutely cannot win either a primary or general gubernatorial election. The mistrust factor does persist, however, and hampers both his nomination and general election chances.

The electoral problems facing Ciattarelli, Bramnick, and Spadea raise the incentive for Bergen County State Senator Holly Schepisi to run for governor. She is the most electable gubernatorial prospect in the New Jersey Republican Party.   She is everybody’s favorite for the GOP Lieutenant Governor nomination, but she has not yet ruled out a gubernatorial run.

On the issue of Trump, Holly has maintained a consistent position of unenthusiastic, but never disloyal support.  This makes her acceptable to all wings of the GOP in the primary and the prospective candidate least likely to be negatively impacted by any downturn in Trump’s approval ratings in the general.  On abortion, she has taken a sensible centrist position, defending a woman’s right to choose while willing to consider common sense restrictions.

There are two major benefits that a Schepisi gubernatorial candidacy would bestow on the NJGOP.  First, she would give the GOP a solid chance to carry Bergen County in the general.  Indeed, her political heritage is with the Bergen County Cary Edwards Republicans. The late Cary Edwards would have been a great governor had he been elected in 1989 or 1993.  Second, more than any other candidate, she gives the Republicans a fighting chance to garner a greater share of the vote of white college educated women.

Prior to the 2019 general election, I authored a column effusively praising Schepisi for both her governmental and attorney skills.   She would make an outstanding governor of New Jersey.  To run, however, she will have to soon decide to enter the primary in order to raise sufficient funds and hire staff.

Alan J. Steinberg of Highland Park served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. He graduated from Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin Law School.  He is the host of the Dynamic Political Centrism podcast, published on Substack.

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