His Republican challenger is hammering home the dangers of violent undocumented immigrants, setting aside the traditional New Jersey GOP campaign staple of cutting property taxes.
Together, in one of the first statewide races of the Trump era, Democrat Phil Murphy and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno are demolishing the conventional wisdom that centrists win in New Jersey. It could be a sign of what’s to come in 2018 as both parties increasingly forsake the middle in favor of energizing and turning out the farther reaches of the party base.
“You have a state that is pretty stiffly polarized at this point,” Rick Wilson, a national GOP consultant, said of the landscape in New Jersey. “We’re kind of past that era of middle ground-ism.”
For Guadagno, who's down in the polls by double digits, that means targeting a small but, she hopes, loyal segment of the electorate in what is sure to be a low-turnout election next Tuesday. Murphy, after a primary in which one of his opponents proposed single-payer health care and others also tacked the left, still seems intent on proving his liberal bona fides.
The division between the two candidates hadn’t been that acute until recently. Guadagno, a former county sheriff and federal prosecutor, had avoided talk of Trump, pledged to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and shied away from most lightning-rod issues. She had harped on taxes to the point of exhaustion, pledging not to seek a second term if she doesn’t reverse increases in New Jerseyans' property tax bills.
Then came the first of two debates earlier this month, and a promise from Murphy to fight for undocumented immigrants and, if required, make New Jersey a sanctuary state.
