Nj Republicans Put Trump And Immigration At Center Of Gov Primary

The path for a Republican to occupy the New Jersey governor’s mansion may run along the nation’s southern border.

New Jersey is around 2,000 miles from Mexico, but immigration is a focus in the state’s Republican primary for governor — and the issue is shaping up as a key fight over which candidate can win over the Donald Trump-loving base.

The two top GOP candidates are aligning themselves with the Trump administration's strict immigration agenda — with one welcoming limits to birthright citizenship and another considering using the National Guard to prevent migrants from arriving in the state.

New Jersey has one of the largest immigrant populations in the nation. And a Republican governorship could be a drastic departure from incumbent Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy’s "sanctuary state" approach, with candidates vowing to rescind public benefits for undocumented immigrants and promising to work with federal officials to carry out Trump’s immigration agenda.

Nearly all of the state's six Democratic candidates for governor have expressed support for continuing sanctuary state policies but to varying degrees. One Democratic candidate, former Senate President Steve Sweeney, has vowed to repeal New Jersey’s policies that limit state and local police’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

The focus on immigration politics does not come as a surprise given the Republican primary’s main focus of showing support for President Donald Trump, who came within 6 points of winning New Jersey in 2024 and has made curtailing immigration a cornerstone of his new administration. Trump himself could upend the race if he chooses to endorse a candidate.

Paramount for gubernatorial conservatives is ending the Murphy administration's Immigrant Trust Directive, which is colloquially known as New Jersey’s “sanctuary state” policy. The directive limits state and local cops’ cooperation with federal immigration officials with some exceptions like if immigrants are convicted or charged with a “violent or serious offense.”

“I'm sure some on the left in the coming months will try to argue that this is a federal issue,” said Matt Rooney, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. “Well, Phil Murphy made it a New Jersey issue. Every single governor and mayor around the country that declared their jurisdiction a sanctuary state made it a state and local issue.”

During this year’s first — and so far only — GOP gubernatorial debate, three candidates pledged to end the “sanctuary state” policy as a “day one” priority: former Assemblymember Jack Ciattarelli, the 2021 GOP nominee for governor who is running for a third time; former radio host Bill Spadea; and former state Sen. Ed Durr. Another GOP candidate, state Sen. Jon Bramnick, said on the debate stage that his first day priority was to end sanctuary cities.

While the race is still ramping up, Ciattarelli is viewed as the front-runner in limited public polling. And despite New Jersey’s Democratic leanings, Republicans have won the governor’s mansion here largely over perennial frustration with the state’s high cost of living — and Republicans are now betting that a focus on state-level immigration policies will help, too.

“Candidates should be talking about the issues that are most important to the people,” Ciattarelli said in an interview with POLITICO. “President Trump talked about this issue all throughout the campaign, and he won the popular vote, he won the seven swing states, he won the Electoral College.”

The GOP candidates are not only promising conservative immigration policy, but questioning their opponents’ commitment to clamping down on immigration.

During Tuesday’s debate, Ciattarelli tried to undermine Spadea’s hardline positions by noting that Spadea has previously supported amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

Spadea pledged his “unwavering support” in a letter to Trump border czar Tom Homan and highlighted comments Ciattarelli made saying “we are not going to deport 14, 15 or 16 million people that came to this country that are undocumented” — arguing Ciattarelli is opposed to Trump's deportation plans. Ciattarelli made those comments during a 2021 debate — before Trump announced his third run for the presidency.

Ciattarelli once called Trump a “charlatan” in 2015 but endorsed his most recent run for office — and is also endorsing his immigration agenda. Ciattarelli said in the interview that his administration would work with the Trump administration on deportations and he supports deploying the military at the southern border. And he has applauded Trump for doing “the right thing” in his efforts to limit birthright citizenship, which comes as New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin is joining other Democratic states to kill the executive order.

“I've never believed that birthright citizenship should mean that people enter this country illegally, give birth and that baby is an American citizen,” Ciattarelli said in a recent podcast interview.

Ciattarelli has supported pro-immigrant policies in the past. As an assemblymember in 2013, he voted to support legislation signed by GOP former Gov. Chris Christie that allows in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants at the state’s public universities. And in his 2021 run for office, he said during the GOP primary that he would undercut a state law allowing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants — although he later supported it during a general election debate.

When asked during the most recent debate whether he would repeal the law to allow drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants, Ciattarelli gave a thumbs up — drawing raised eyebrows from his opponents.

“Jack changed pretty quick on that one, baby,” Bramnick quipped from the debate stage.

Speaking with reporters after the debate, Ciattarelli suggested he was waiting to see what Trump’s deportation plans entail before making a decision on drivers licenses.

“I’ll support whatever [Trump is] gonna do with his final mass deportation plan,” he said. “But if there are people here who are not going to be deported, we need to know who they are. And the way to do that is with a government-issued ID.”

And on college tuition for undocumented immigrants, he seemed open to keeping it in place but stopped short of explicitly endorsing it.

“I'm not one for penalizing the children of illegal immigrants who have been brought here under no power of their own,” he told POLITICO.

The support for driver’s licenses and college tuition for undocumented immigrants has become fodder for Ciattarelli’s top opponent in the primary, Spadea, who has highlighted those positions in ads and during the GOP debate.

In an interview, Spadea said he supported rolling back virtually all state programs that extend public benefits to undocumented immigrants, saying that the “the only acceptable number is zero.” Some benefits he supports eliminating for undocumented immigrants include drivers licenses, elective health care, college tuition and legal services the state provides to people facing deportation.

Spadea’s propsal would be an all-of-government approach, too. While a Murphy-era law prohibited local government and private jails from holding immigrant detainees — which is the subject of ongoing litigation — Spadea told POLITICO he envisioned county jails being “revenue centers” by detaining immigrants, which several Democratically controlled New Jersey counties previously took advantage of. And Spadea said he would support the state’s National Guard, under the state’s control, getting involved in immigration activities.

“I believe we're going to need to leverage and use the National Guard to help us here,” he said. “I mean, it can be anything from helping the local mayors turn buses [of migrants] around that are coming in from other states.”

Spadea said Texas and Florida were policy models. He supports emulating a Florida law that requires hospital patients to list their immigration status; while such a policy does not prevent immigrants from receiving care, it has raised concerns that it could be a deterrent for immigrants going to the hospital.

But Spadea’s extensive time as a media personality and pundit may be coming back to haunt him in the primary: A Super PAC allied with Ciattarelli has been highlighting Spadea saying in 2018 that he’s a “a little more liberal than my conservative friends” on immigrant issues.

“I do believe in amnesty and a pathway to citizenship for people that want to be here, working hard, not criminals,” Spadea said in 2018.

It’s a view Spadea has held in the past. During his unsuccessful 2004 run for Congress, a student newspaper covering a debate Spadea participated in described him as saying he supported a “general amnesty to working illegal immigrants because the costs of deporting them all would be too great.” POLITICO could not obtain a recording of the debate.

Spadea told POLITICO his 2018 comments about a pathway to citizenship were taken out of context, arguing that he believed at the time that Trump’s immigration policies were working — now, Spadea said, there were more immigrants that came in during the Biden administration. After his trip to the border, “now there is no other position to take but to say everyone must be deported,” Spadea said. “How can you now tell the difference between a child who is being used in a human trafficking way and a kid that was … brought here and grew up in the system?”

Rescinding some benefits would likely require legislation from New Jersey’s Democratically controlled Legislature, which would be difficult to pass. Bramnick said in an interview that he would support rolling back benefits like driver's licenses and college aid for undocumented immigrants but that he would not proactively push for it.

“It's not going to be my number one priority to try to scale back benefits, but if it came to my desk, I certainly would sign it,” said Bramnick. “That's an unlikely scenario.”

Bramnick is known as a moderate Republican but has a conservative voting record in the Statehouse on immigrant issues. He also said he “would not get in the front of” federal officials seeking to expand immigration detention in the state and has voted against drivers licenses, providing in-state college tuition and tuition assistance for undocumented immigrants.

“If the federal law says the person is here illegally, why would I grant them rights?” Bramnick said

Durr, a truck driver who famously beat the state’s longest-serving Senate president in an upset, said in an interview that he “fully support[s] the immigration policies of President Trump.” But he added that the two top candidates in the race — Spadea and Ciattarelli — were being inconsistent.

“Now that Trump is in office, they're both trying to align themselves as full MAGA when they've been on both sides of Trump,” Durr said. “They've both ridiculed them and they've both praised them, and they've been on both sides of the immigration issue. … Whether people agree with my stance, at least my stance has always been consistent.”