BERGEN COUNTY, NJ – New Jersey candidate for governor Jack Ciattarelli went to bed last night with a sizable lead in Bergen County and a nearly 20,000 vote lead over Governor Phil Murphy.
By 10:30 am, Bergen County, which had previously been reported as having 100% of the votes counted late last night, flipped to Phil Murphy. In fact, Murphy was up in the county by 11,000 votes.
That raised a lot of questions for voters who were left baffled with the overnight vote shift, even some claiming possible election fraud.
Now, Murphy has an overall lead of 7,000 plus votes against Ciattarelli by 10:30 am with blue counties reporting votes are still left to be counted.
Votes are left to be counted in Passaic, Essex, Mercer, and Burlington Counties, all currently leaning in favor of Murphy. For Ciattarelli, there are still some outstanding votes reported to be left in Monmouth County which has reported 97.2% of districts. That could bring in more votes, but most likely not enough for Ciattarelli to rebound at this point against the large numbers in the North Jersey Democrat counties.
Today, Cittarelli campaign consultant Chris Russell blamed the New Jersey media and pollsters for what could turn out to be his candidate’s fall at the finish line after running neck and neck all night as votes were tallied.
“It’s time for some accountability and hard questions. Anyone who thinks that the cacophony of stories drilling home bogus polling numbers for months does not have an impact on turnout, fundraising, etc. – likely for both parties – is kidding themselves,” Russell bemoaned today on Twitter.
Russell has expressed his disappointment with the news media reporting on polls conducted by Monmouth University, Eagleton, Fairleigh Dickinson, and others that showed Murphy ahead by 6-10%.
Russell claims those polls and that reporting hurt his ability to raise more money and claims those reports disenfranchised Republican voters who may have seen the race as hopeless. Russell did not mention his candidate’s anti-Trump stance that turned off many conservative voters throughout the race or the candidate’s simple messaging that failed to identify who Ciattarelli was, except that he wasn’t Phil Murphy.
Unlike Glenn Youngkin who soundly defeated his opponent Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, Ciattarelli did not have the public support of the former President. In a last-minute push, Trump urged his supporters to vote for Youngkin. No such message came from the former President for Ciattarelli.
It’s probably because Ciattarelli has called Trump a “charlatan who was unfit to be president” and this summer personally blamed Trump for the breach at the U.S. Capitol.
In the end, Russell was unable to inspire enough voters to vote for his candidate over Murphy, who is arguably one of the worst governors in New Jersey history. The loss would be a failure of epic proportions for the New Jersey Republican establishment and Murphy would be the first Democrat to win re-election in more than 40 years.