In a gubernatorial race seen by some analysts as a bellwether to the first months of the Trump presidency, voters in New Jersey’s gubernatorial primary backed a Republican vigorously pushing gas and nuclear generation to face a Democrat who favors solar to meet growing electricity needs. 

Republican Jack Ciattarelli handily beat four other candidates in the June 11 primary, taking two-thirds of the vote to win by more than 45 points. He will face Democrat Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who took 34% of the vote in a six-way primary that she won by 14 points. 

The matchup will determine who heads a usually Democratic state that, under incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, emerged as one of the most aggressively progressive clean energy states and now is struggling with a predicted dramatic shortfall in electricity generation.   

Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman and small-business owner and a Trump-endorsed Republican, opposes many of the clean energy policies Murphy pursued in his two terms. In his acceptance speech, Ciattarelli called Sherrill “Phil Murphy 2.0,” adding that putting her in the governor’s office would mean “four more years of offshore wind farms and rising electricity bills.” 

But Sherrill, a three-term congresswoman who is a former federal prosecutor and Navy helicopter pilot, has yet to embrace Murphy’s full-on, clean energy policies, which some analysts see as contributing to Murphy’s decline in popularity. In the last gubernatorial race, in 2021, Murphy beat Ciattarelli by just three points, down from his seven-point margin four years earlier.  

When he took office in 2018, Murphy launched a major offshore wind initiative, pledging to develop 11 GW of wind projects off the Jersey Shore in the next two decades, which now largely has stalled. He created a community solar program, developed incentive programs for electric vehicles and chargers, and pushed for the state to electrify buildings. He also backed the adoption in New Jersey of California’s advanced clean trucks and cars rules. 

Offshore Wind Ban

How that helps or hinders Sherrill is unclear, as polls show voters are less interested in clean energy than in the past. A nationwide Pew Research Center survey released June 5 found Americans less supportive of wind and solar, mainly due to declining Republican interest. 

Ciattarelli, on his website, says he will ”ban offshore wind farms from being built off our coast and along our Jersey Shore.” He has pledged to withdraw New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). And he would “repeal unrealistic and unaffordable state mandates and timelines regarding electric vehicle sales, household appliances, home renovation and home construction.” 

He also said he will create a new Energy Master Plan that “promotes an all-of-the-above energy policy,” in contrast to the heavy promotion of electrification in Murphy’s 2019 Master Plan and again in a new draft master plan unveiled this year. (See NJ Releases Electrification-focused Energy Master Plan.) 

Ciattarelli said in an op-ed that he would invest “in safe, clean natural gas and nuclear until emerging renewable energies are more practical and affordable.”  

Ciattarelli, a certified public accountant, served three-and-a-half terms as a state assemblyman, after periods on the town council and as a county commissioner. He ran two medical publishing companies, one of which he founded and the other he co-founded, and has four children. 

In November, Ciattarelli sent a letter to the Democratic candidates demanding they “publicly pledge that you will not seek to continue Gov. Murphy’s energy policies if elected, and you will end state support for EV mandates and offshore wind.” 

Permitting Issues

In the primary campaign, Sherrill, who called Ciattarelli a “Trump lackey” in her acceptance speech, was muted in talking about her energy platform, offering few specifics. Yet she was endorsed by two of the state’s largest environmental groups, the Sierra Club and the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, which called her the “strongest candidate” to take on Ciattarelli and said it expects her to help “achieve a 100% clean energy future by 2035.” 

Sherrill, who also has four children, spent 10 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy. She was a prosecutor in the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s office and was elected to Congress in 2018. 

Sherrill has said the state “needs a comprehensive strategy to address climate change,” and pledged to take “bold action at the state level to invest in clean energy like solar, which is one of the cheapest energy sources to develop.” 

When the federal government announced in January 2022 that it would auction the offshore wind areas in the New York Bight, Sherrill called it a “crucial step” in the state meeting its potential. 

“Between the steps New Jersey has already taken,” and the federal government’s support for offshore wind, “New Jerseyans are sure to see the economic, ecological and energy-saving benefits of wind power,” she said in a release at the time. 

She has cast the state’s inability to advance its wind projects as a “failure of permitting and regulation in our state.”  The state’s first approved projects, Ocean Wind 1 and 2, fell apart in October 2023 when developer Ørsted withdraw, citing financial and supply chain obstacles. 

The developer of the state’s next-most advanced project, Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, petitioned the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) earlier in June to terminate the Offshore Renewable Energy Certificates, saying Trump’s Day 1 action targeting offshore wind development had forced it to cancel contracts and lay off staff. (See Developer Shelves Atlantic Shores, Seeks to Cancel ORECs.) 

“Virginia has been able to move forward with an offshore wind farm that is so far along the federal government cannot pull it back,” Sherrill has said. “We, because of many regulatory and permitting problems, took way too long. That cost us.” 

The state has “to get more clean power to the grid if we’re gonna drive down utility costs,” she says, but her most frequently mentioned plan is to push for increased investment in the state’s solar capacity. 

Energy Shortage Forecast

The race is unfolding as New Jersey, like other states, faces what New Jersey officials and PJM predict will be a dramatic shortfall in electricity generation, in large part — according to PJM — due to the closure of fossil-fuel generators at a faster pace than clean energy sources come online. Another driving factor is rising demand growth from the shift to EVs, building electrification and the expected needs of data centers. (See N.J.’s Power Future Clouded by Data Center Uncertainty.) 

That shortfall has manifested itself in a 20% hike in the average New Jersey electricity bill, which took effect June 1, and has angered legislators and squeezed ratepayers. 

Assessing the race, Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, said: “I think we can expect a robust discussion about where New Jersey goes from here in terms of bolstering our supply and where we get it.” 

“Jack Ciattarelli will surely be pointing the finger at Gov. Murphy,” he said. He expects Sherrill to “point out that New Jersey is far from alone in experiencing these price increases. In fact, Ohio ratepayers are facing electric hikes of the same magnitude, even though their permitting policy is decidedly an obstacle to wind development.” 

Sherrill, in a recent campaign interview, blamed PJM for being slow to connect new energy sources. 

“As a governor, I would hold PJM accountable, much like you see Josh Shapiro doing,” she said referring to the Pennsylvania governor, who filed suit against PJM over price hikes. The effort resulted in an agreement that PJM would cap capacity prices. (See PJM, Shapiro Reach Agreement on Capacity Price Cap and Floor.) 

Sherrill has said the rate hikes are “unacceptable” to households and businesses. 

“You’re going to start to see businesses move away if they have such high utility costs,” she said in an interview before the election. She pledged to be a governor who gets “power into the grid, having the amount of power we need, while at the same time driving down costs for consumers.” That would include working to “pressure regional grid operators, controlled by big oil and gas CEOs, to plug in clean energy projects to the grid,” her platform states. 

Ciattarelli released an ad saying the hike is the result of “Murphy’s radical agenda.” In an interview at the time, he said he would seek to begin his term as governor by “cleaning house” at the BPU, which regulates the state’s energy sector. 

Rate Mitigation

Rasmussen said Murphy — by releasing a plan to mitigate the increase for taxpayers — may have taken some of the wind out of Republican efforts to use ratepayer anger over the issue in the election. Murphy’s $430 million plan will give $100 to all ratepayers and an additional credit of $150 to low- and moderate-income taxpayers. 

“Republicans had hoped customers would be feeling the pain of the recent rate increases from PJM’s annual commodity pricing,” he said. 

Ray Cantor, deputy chief government affairs officer for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, one of the state’s largest business groups, said the organization has not taken a position on Murphy’s hike mitigation strategy but is looking for the next governor to address the long-term energy capacity problem. 

“Generation is the key,” he told NetZero Insider in an email. “We need to reform permit and approval systems so we can put generation online expeditiously. We have put in place policies that discourage generation, both nuclear and natural gas. That needs to change. 

“We want the candidates to take realistic positions on energy. While goals are helpful to focus efforts, mandates often distort the market, increase costs and have unintended consequences.  We want an all-of-the-above energy policy that encourages nuclear power and natural gas, at least until there are technologically sound and cost-effective lower carbon replacements.”