Both candidates are banking on getting the most passionate voters in their corner in what could be among the lowest-turnout-elections in state history. | AP Photo In N.J. governor’s race, both candidates steer clear of center

The Democrat running to replace Gov. Chris Christie calls himself “proudly progressive.” He wants to legalize recreational marijuana, raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and make New Jersey a “sanctuary state.”

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.

Guadagno pounced the moment Murphy uttered the words, accusing her opponent of standing up for criminals. She relayed graphic details of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants — in particular, the execution-style slayings of three students in a Newark school yard a decade ago.

The next day, she released an aggressive attack ad that accused Murphy of having the backs of “deranged murders.” It drew immediate comparisons to the racially-charged Willie Horton ads of 1988, in which supporters of Republican George H.W. Bush accused Democrat Michael Dukakis of freeing a murderer.

Guadagno didn’t back off and has been beating that drum ever since, even holding a press conference last week to focus on the issue. She also recently embraced gun-rights advocates and called for reinstating the death penalty.

She has found herself defending against accusations she’s using race to draw an emotional reaction from voters.

“The fact that I have said I want to protect the people of New Jersey against anyone who would commit a violent crime against anyone in New Jersey — I somehow have become a racist?” Guadagno said during a recent speech to a pro-gun group.

Then there’s Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive and former U.S. ambassador to Germany. Guadagno has labeled him a tax-and-spend liberal, and he hasn’t done anything to prove her wrong.

In late August, as the general election was about to get into full swing, Murphy’s campaign revealed it would raise taxes at least $1.3 billion a year to pay for his commitments. Those include pledges to increase state aid to local school districts “immediately” and fully fund the state’s public employee pension system at some point in time. Murphy sums up his plans by saying he wants to create a “stronger, fairer economy that works for every family.”

Murphy would create a new tax on millionaires and increase taxes on corporations. He wants to legalize recreational marijuana in his first 100 days. And he wants to make New Jersey the second state to have a government-run bank, an idea first implemented out of a populist uprising in North Dakota a century ago but not attempted since.

But Murphy hasn't moved to the left so much as he’s stayed there, sticking by much of what he promised during the Democratic primary as he faced a several other liberal opponents. But he’s also dug in, turning talk of working toward free community college into a pledge to achieve it, and then taking the stronger stance on immigration.

Those close to Murphy, a Massachusetts native, say these are all ideas in which he truly believes. He had an evolution on marijuana, at one point opposing its legalization until he saw it as a social justice issue. Other left-of-center ideas were not hard for him to embrace, supporters say.

To Republicans, his liberalism is almost jarring.

Christie, speaking to reporters last week, said he didn’t think Murphy could move any further to the left.

“What's more for him to say?” Christie asked. “To just admit he's a socialist?”

Carl Golden, who served as a spokesman for former GOP governors Tom Kean and Christie Whitman, said he could not recall a candidate for governor in New Jersey who was as starkly liberal as Phil Murphy. He jokes that Murphy is “running a hell of a primary.”

“He is an unashamed left of center candidate,” Golden said. “He has not backed away from any of his positions and he hasn’t modified them or clarified anything.”

Murphy’s campaign staff doesn’t disagree, saying he would “never change his views, his values, or his priorities to win an election” and that Guadagno is “shape-shifting into whatever she thinks gives her a shot to gain a few points in a campaign.”

For her part, Guadagno has acted as if nothing has changed. Her campaign said she’s always been concerned about violent, undocumented immigrants and that she’s “talking about the Main Street issues middle class families care about, like lowering property taxes and keeping them safe.”

There are still issues on which Guadagno remains a moderate — and can still be timid about supporting Trump. And Murphy is far from being a Democratic socialist.

“I wouldn’t say she’s going full Trump and he’s going full Bernie," said Krista Jenkins, executive director of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind Poll.

There are some 800,000 more Democrats in New Jersey than Republicans, but the governor’s office has been fair game for either party. Since 1969, voters have backed a GOP candidate in seven races and a Democratic candidate in five.

Most Republican statewide candidates run to the center in New Jersey. Christie did that in 2009 and managed, against the odds, to unseat Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine and then win re-election with more than 60 percent of the vote.

“He got people of all kinds of stripes to the polls,” Matt Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University, said of Christie. “Murphy and Guadagno recognize that’s not happening for them.”

Instead, both candidates are banking on getting the most passionate voters in their corner in what could be among the lowest-turnout-elections in state history.

Guadagno's campaign has openly admitted as much. Adam Geller, Trump’s campaign pollster in Wisconsin and Michigan last year, claimed to have recorded a 7-point Murphy lead as public opinion polls stay in the double digits. Chris LaCivita, a national campaign consultant for Guadagno, said in a “memo” that disinterest in the race could present an advantage.

“We are anticipating an election whose turnout could be even lower than the gubernatorial election of 2013,” he wrote. “With Democrats uninterested and unenthusiastic about their standard bearer, Phil Murphy will go even further to the left to assuage those special interests that he really is one of them.”

Less than 40 percent of registered voters turned out in the 2013 election between Christie and Democratic state Sen. Barbara Buono, the lowest of any race for governor.

Murphy has said repeatedly he’s not taking anything for granted and that his supporters can’t get complacent, even as most polls show him up by about 15 points.

Trying to rile up his base last week, he turned to former President Bill Clinton, who told a union hall Guadagno is hoping Democrats stay home and that her message on immigration can “scare the living daylights out of people.”

“This whole deal is coming down to whether you think it’s important enough to show up, or whether you’re willing to roll the dice one more time and see if the state’s fate should be decided by people who’d rather divide,” Clinton said.