It’s almost as if New Jersey Republican candidate for Governor Jack Ciattarelli is afraid to hit Phil Murphy where it will hurt the most, in the face.
Instead of focusing on the issues that are important to residents of New Jersey, high taxes, business closures, the nation’s highest pandemic rates, and jobs which are full-frontal assaults, Ciattarelli today threw another swing and miss at the governor.
Today, Ciattarelli dropped an ad targeting Phil Murphy’s 2017 response to the alleged sexual assault by staffer Katie Brennan by a key Phil Murphy cabinet member.
Now, don’t get us wrong, we were on top of this story when it happened, but this narrative isn’t going to get voters out of bed, in their car and into the voting booths on Election Day. It was as total waste of public taxpayer dollars, which funds the Ciattarelli campaign.
Ciattarelli is nearly 20 points behind Murphy in the polls, but Ciattarelli, who is borderline Democrat himself appears to be more afraid of losing the few moderate Democrats who might vote for him, than he is concerned about solidifying New Jersey’s conservative base, which he’s going to need if he wants to win this.
The problem is Ciattarelli is being guided and managed by a team of anti-Trump, anti-Conservative pansies who are afraid to get in the mud with Phil Murphy on key issues that will rev up the conservative base, many of whom want to punish Ciattarelli for his anti-Trump position.
Those issues are gun control, Murphy’s undying allegiance to President Joe Biden, skyrocketing gas taxes to which Ciattarelli is also to blame, Murphy’s follow-the-leader pandemic response with disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Murphy’s immigration sanctuary state. Did we leave out property taxes? School funding?
It’s now nearly two months before the election and Ciattarelli pulls Kate Brennan out of the bag? As Joe Biden would say, “c’mon man”.
It’s almost as if Ciattarelli doesn’t want to win. He has been silent on the Governor’s open arms invitation to possibly thousands of Afghan refugees vetted in just a few hours at the gates of the Kabul Airport. Now, yes, it is America’s duty to care for those who Murphy and the Democrat Party abandoned this month, but is the nation’s most densely populated state the best place to resettle these refugees?
Ciattarelli has also been silent on the Biden Border Crisis. New Jersey is the final destination for thousands of illegal immigrants, crossing the U.S. border without checks and without proper health screening.
No, we get a Katie Brennan commercial.
Meanwhile, Ciattarelli’s arch-nemesis, former President Donald J. Trump showed Jack how to destroy your opponent today with a new ad criticizing Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal.
Only 20% of Americans approve of Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal and you would expect a Republican candidate for Governor to mention it at least once in his travels.
Ciattarelli’s biggest uphill battle in November won’t be convincing moderate Democrats to vote for him in Elizabeth and Jersey City, because they won’t. It’s going to be convincing the millions of people in New Jersey who still back President Trump, a man Ciattarelli has called “a charlatan who is unfit to be president” and “an embarrassment to our country”.
Whether you believe those statements or not, the problem Ciattarelli faces is that millions of Republican voters do not agree with him. While elections are not won on social media, the conservative social media sphere on most platforms is not favorable to Ciattarelli.
There’s deep-seeded anger over how Jack savaged his Republican counterparts in the primary. Ciattarelli threw more punches during the primary campaign against Hirsh Singh and Phil Rizzo than he is against Phil Murphy, leaving many to question whether this year’s election is really an election between a Republican and a Democrat or two Democrats.
Jack Ciattarelli demanded respect from conservative voters. To date, he has not asked for it or even worked for it. Instead, he’s been focusing on low-hanging fruit, business groups, Republican clubs and attending meetings with people he knows are already in his corner.
What Ciattarelli needs to do is fire his entire campaign team and stop being afraid to actually walk and talk like a Republican. It didn’t work for Bob Hugin. It didn’t work for Kim Guadagno. It didn’t work for Rik Mehta. It also didn’t work for the ten of twelve congressional candidates whose seats are now in the hands of Democrats.
At this point Phil Murphy looks like he’s going to get away with all he has done, because of the incompetence and arrogance of his opponent and his opponent’s entire campaign staff.
Jack, take a few minutes and get a lesson on campaigning from that charlatan who is unfit to be President, not that never-Trumper advisor you’re dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into in Jackson. Katie Brennan is not a 2021 election issue. It’s inside baseball.