Paid to lose: Inside the big industry of losing elections within the New Jersey Republican party

Phil Stilton

Jack Ciattarelli may have lost the race for governor, but that doesn’t matter much to those who ran his campaign. That’s because throughout the ordeal, Ciattarelli spent $13 million dollars on his general election campaign. During his primary election campaign, Ciattarelli spent $6.9 million.

In total, to lose his election to Governor Phil Murphy, Ciattarelli distributed nearly $20 million to his campaign consultants and staff. Of that, $12.8 million was given to him as matching public funds by the state of New Jersey. In reality, Jack’s loss to Phil Murphy cost New Jersey taxpayers $12.8 million.

While it’s difficult for Republicans to win major elections in a predominantly Democrat New Jersey, power brokers know they need to play it safe. After all, when the dust settles, they realize they have no power in New Jersey and still must rely on the goodwill of state Democrats to get public contracts to survive from election cycle to election cycle.

Now, a call from within the Republican party is exposing the underbelly of GOP politics in New Jersey, the massive industry that has sprung up around losing Republican candidates.


The goal is to back the candidate who can reach the public matching fund threshold. From there, the campaign receives a windfall of free public money to keep party insiders gainfully employed and well paid.


Today, Kelly Ann Hart, Executive Director of the Sussex County Republican Committee became the first GOP party office holder to speak out about the practice.

“Year after year, the same insider consultants who dominate the GOP in New Jersey produce the same results: They lose,” Hart said. “They failed to pick-up legislative seats while Chris Christie was Governor. They’ve lost Republican strongholds like Burlington and Somerset Counties. They’ve lost every Republican congressman in New Jersey except one. And they’ve failed to win back congressional seats that voted for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020.”

Hart says the party instigates heated primary elections such as those between Ciattarelli and his opponents Hirsh Singh and Phil Rizzo. Each candidate fought hard to reach the matching fund threshold to get the free state money, but in the end, Ciattarelli was the only one to hit that mark, giving him a huge financial advantage over his conservative opponents.

Director Hart said the time has passed to stop blaming Donald Trump as most of the GOP consultants are died-in-the-wool never Trumpers. You would never know it. They remain silent, and behind the curtain, pushing their words into the mouths of candidates that are paying them handsomely.

“They instigate primaries for the revenue it produces and then fail to win those primaries. Just ask former Assemblywoman Betty Lou DeCroce,” Hart added. “Like the RINOs they are, whenever they are confronted with the disparity between their profits and their losses, they blame Donald Trump. It is his fault, not their fault, ignoring the fact that they started losing long before Trump ran for President. This is Nick DeGregorio’s team. Their words in his mouth.”

Hart said campaign consultants like Chris Russell, owner of Checkmate Wins, and one of the primary beneficiaries of the failed Ciattarelli campaign don’t care about losing because they are never held accountable. Russell will claim victory in 2021 by winning the easy races in Republican strongholds, but he is never held to account for the major losses he was responsible for in the party.

And again, the party will keep writing millions of dollars in checks to consultants like Russell, who put profits over principles and ignore the party base because after all, right-wing loons are bad for business.

“They are never held to account for their losses because the institutions that should hold them to account – like the NJGOP – are revolving doors used by the insider consultant cabal as places to warehouse their friends and relations. Meanwhile, New Jersey Republicans just keep losing, ” Hart said. “There was a time when a surging Republican tide would have carried both Virginia and New Jersey. No longer. Now, while Virginia surged to capture three statewide offices and the Legislature, New Jersey managed a few seats, some by accident. Half the gains for Republicans in the State Senate came from a race in which the insider consultants played no part. It was all down to the surge, a surge they failed to expand.”

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She accused Ciattarelli’s consultants of not listening to the people of New Jersey and allowing the GOP’s high-paid consultants instead to run a campaign that is both safe for their reputation and profitable for their business. Now, she feels they are setting up another candidate for failure.

“Already, DeGregorio’s handlers are using the same cookie-cutter language employed in their failed Hugin for Senate campaign. In common with the Hugin race, instead of policies, the campaign is leaning heavily on the candidate’s biography,” she said. “Instead of a platform of ideas and solutions, DeGregorio is offering the same tired old gimmicks that have been employed for a decade. DeGregorio’s website is big on image but void of policy specifics. It doesn’t even have an issues page, just a biography and a way to send money. A lot of this isn’t Nick DeGregorio’s fault. He’s been recruited by the team that’s been digging the grave of New Jersey Republicans for the better part of a decade. It doesn’t look like they’ll stop until they hit rock bottom.”

A former opponent of Ciattarelli’s Joe Rullo said the gig is up for Russell.

“What will be Jack Ciaterelli and his campaign manager Chris Russell top excuses for election results?” Rullo said today after it was announced that Ciattarelli would concede from the race without a recount or election audit.

“I heard the whole Jack Ciaterelli recount was all to delay his concession to Murphy so the conservatives would be cooled off from the 4th statewide loss,” Rullo said.

Rullo also blamed the GOP establishment and county chairmen for putting profits ahead of winning elections. In 2021, Jack Ciattarelli received the state GOP nomination dispute receiving just 49% of the approval of voters. Combined, his opponents Singh and Rizzo received 51% of the vote. This was due in part to financial power struggles between competing GOP consultants eyeing the matching funding prize of public tax dollars.

“The last 4 statewide establishment candidates were rigged by the NJ GOP establishment and we must remove those responsible at all cost including cease and desist orders from rigging future primaries including 8 Congressional seats in 2022 and petition to remove them from leadership,” Rullo said. “The NJ GOP organization should be forced through court remedy to finance the transition to open primaries instead of bank rolling through matching funds and donors loser after loser. No more back door meetings by 30 or so people to decide who the Republican nominees are for millions of Republicans by rigging ballot positions with fake rigged predetermined conventions.”

Shore News Network reached out to Russell for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

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