The mayor of Bergen County, New Jersey’s fifth-largest municipality, formally switched parties on Thursday, announcing his support for Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli.
Garfield Mayor Everett E. Garnto Jr. said he felt compelled to leave the Democratic Party, declaring that “the state is broken.” His announcement came during a rally at a Garfield gymnasium, where several hundred people gathered to hear from both Garnto and Ciattarelli, the New Jersey Globe reported.
“For the last seven and a half years, [Gov.] Phil Murphy’s policies have left us with sky-high taxes, soaring electric bills, and less safe communities,” Garnto said. “New Jerseyans deserve better. Jack Ciattarelli is ready to turn this state around.”
Garnto noted that he supported Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. A former school board member, he also spent twelve years as president of the Garfield Police Benevolent Association Local 46.
Trump won Garfield by about nine points in 2024, while Murphy narrowly carried the town by three points in the 2021 gubernatorial race.
Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman, will face U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) in the November general election. He also highlighted the backing of Dover Mayor James P. Dodd, a Democrat, arguing that such endorsements reflect growing frustration among moderate Democrats with state party leaders.
With Democrats holding a sizable registration edge, Ciattarelli acknowledged he will need strong support from independents and defecting Democrats to prevail, the outlet reported.
“It’s not just Republicans who are crying out for change,” Ciattarelli told the crowd. “It’s unaffiliated, independent voters and yes, even moderate Democrats who’ve come to the realization that this current administration has failed.”
Garnto’s endorsement comes as GOP primary runner-up, radio host Bill Spadea, continues to withhold his support for Ciattarelli. On the Democratic side, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who finished second in the primary, endorsed Sherrill on Wednesday.
Ciattarelli downplayed the impact of endorsements, saying they would not determine the outcome of the race.
“I do think at the end of the day, and I think the mayor would agree, it’s [about] what the candidate does,” Ciattarelli told reporters. “And what I do each and every day is get up and down this state and press the flesh.”
Meanwhile, Trump is changing the face of this long-time Democratic stronghold in ways that many people believed was not possible.
A May poll conducted by Emerson College/Pix 11/The Hill found that New Jersey voters approve more of the president than they do of Murphy, Breitbart News reported on the heels of a survey that shows Republicans making big gains in the state during the age of Trump.
It showed that the president was even with Murphy, with both having a 47 percent approval and disapproval rating.
In the same poll, the Democratic governor only had a 40 percent approval rating and a 45 percent disapproval, with 15 percent of those polled having no opinion on him.
And the president, who was bested by then-Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by 14 points in 2016, closed the gap significantly in the 2024 presidential election, where former Vice President Kamala Harris defeated him by only 5.9 points.
“Trump’s rise in New Jersey is more than a polling quirk—it is a symptom of the deeper disillusionment of a forgotten electorate. Compared to his dismal 38% approval in 2020, Trump has gained nearly 18 net points in five years. The self-anointed progressives who run Trenton and dominate Newark, Camden, and Paterson may have the numbers on paper, but they are losing the pulse of the people,” Jason Corley, a pollster for Quantus Insights, said.
“In the 2024 presidential contest, Kamala Harris eked out a 5.91% victory in New Jersey—a stunning 10-point drop from Biden’s 2020 margin. That’s a 10.1% swing toward the Republican ticket, second only to New York in the nation,” Corley added.
“Trump flipped counties long assumed to be safe for Democrats: Gloucester, Passaic, Atlantic, Cumberland, and even Morris. This wasn’t a surge so much as a shift—a groundswell building under the feet of a party too preoccupied with cultural crusades and regulatory overreach to see the ground cracking beneath them,” he said.