Dustin Racioppi

State House Bureau, @dracioppi

It may be hard to fathom after such a wild and grueling 2016 presidential campaign, but it's now primary season in New Jersey and the race to succeed Governor Christie is about to gain momentum.

The Democratic primary was expected to be a brawl between the north and south. But suddenly it instead offers the prospect for an upset similar to the party's nomination battle this year for president, with a Bernie Sanders-supporting legislator seeking to defeat a moneyed favorite with ties to President Barack Obama. And no one quite knows yet how the Republican primary for governor is going to shape up, except that whoever ultimately wins faces long odds in retaining control of the executive branch.

Not only is Christie facing historically low poll ratings, but not since Alfred Driscoll succeeded Walter Edge in 1947 has a Republican been elected to replace a Republican governor in New Jersey, a dubious historical marker for this race. Before David Wildstein was known as the admitted felon who devised the George Washington Bridge lane closures that derailed Christie's political career, he went by the online pseudonym Wally Edge in homage to the 36th governor.

On top of all that, reliably blue New Jersey has become even more Democratic since Christie, a Republican, edged out the incumbent, Jon Corzine, for governor in 2009. Since that race, the Democratic Party has added 310,000 registered voters to the rolls, more than double what the GOP has done.

At the center of it all in 2017 is likely to be the same singular force who has commanded New Jersey's attention for the past seven years: Christie.

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"The most interesting thing about 2017 is that the outgoing governor has the most influence over almost the entire race. For the Republicans, it's hard to escape the Christie legacy," said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. "He is an albatross around the neck of every Republican trying to succeed him. They're trying to escape from being tied to him."

Indeed, the declared Republicans — a small field — have either distanced themselves from Christie or attached themselves to Donald Trump, whose unorthodox and controversial candidacy led him to victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Joseph Rullo, a businessman from Ocean County, asks voters on his website to elect him to "Make NJ Great Again," a variation of Trump's campaign slogan, while Nutley Commissioner Steve Rogers said in announcing his own campaign last week that "what we have to do is we have to do is bring the power back to the people, as Donald Trump has."

Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, from Somerset County, is running as a Republican antidote to Christie. Unlike most of his colleagues in the Legislature, Ciattarelli has voted several times to override Christie's vetoes and called for him to resign. "We desperately need public servants who are solutions oriented, not politically motivated," Ciattarelli says on his website.

The Republican field may still grow. Joe Piscopo, a former "Saturday Night Live" cast member who now hosts a morning radio show, said he is very seriously considering a run, while Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick has been named a possible candidate. Neither has taken any visible steps indicating he is seriously considering a gubernatorial bid.

The most-watched Republican yet to announce is Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who, after years of quietly working in Christie's shadow, has recently opposed him publicly on policy and political issues. She said she is taking the holidays to decide whether she will run for governor. Her entry in the race would make her the party favorite for the nomination, but seven years at the side of Christie will do her few favors with an electorate overwhelmingly against him.

A primary between Guadagno and Ciattarelli would likely be competitive, strategists say, but the real challenge will come in November's general election.

"For a Republican at this point to look at this race with any hope of being successful in November, that person's got to be looking at it with a great deal of concern," said Carl Golden, a political analyst who worked on the campaigns — and served in the administrations — of Republican Govs. Tom Kean Sr. and Christie Whitman. "It doesn't strike me as a Republican year. It's the Democrats' to lose."

Christie himself has acknowledged the challenges facing his party, but he has not publicly said that he is one of them. In a speech to New Jersey business leaders in December 2015, Christie chastised his audience for taking Republican leadership for granted by playing "footsie" and "kissy-face" with Democrats on policy issues. He warned them of what he sees as costly consequences of electing a Democrat to succeed him, and recalled the elections of the past three decades in which Republican governors, beginning with Kean, have been elected for two terms and then replaced with Democrats.

"You get complacent again, history will repeat itself," Christie said. "It's waiting out there for us. I don't have a crystal ball. I just read history and I've lived it my whole life here."

Christie has not always been able to help Republicans in New Jersey, despite his prowess at raising money and helping to win GOP elections across the country. When he won re-election in a landslide, his party picked up one seat in the Legislature.

The Democratic candidates who have declared so far have all separated themselves from the once-popular governor, whose 18 percent approval rating heading into his final year is a point higher than the worst recorded in modern state history.

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Democratic front-runner Phil Murphy, a former ambassador to Germany under Obama, has spent two years assuring voters in emails and prominent internet ads that Christie and his focus on running for president have been a detriment to New Jersey and that as governor, he, Murphy, "will have your back." But as a major fundraiser who earned many millions as an executive at Goldman Sachs, Murphy must work to overcome the negative stigma his résumé may present to voters and its similarities to that of Corzine's. Corzine was seen as unpopular and voted out of office.

Murphy wasn't expected to be the front-runner heading into 2017, but he ascended swiftly earlier in the fall when the two leading contenders, Senate President Stephen Sweeney of Gloucester County and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, announced they would not seek the party's nomination. Their unexpected withdrawals before the race had even begun sapped the primary of what was expected to be a hard-fought contest between the rival ends of the state.

Murphy has deep pockets and has locked up the crucial support of all 21 county party leaders who award candidates the coveted top billing on the primary ballot — the county line — but he faces a challenge. John Wisniewski, a 20-year assemblyman who led the legislative investigation of the George Washington Bridge lane closures, is the only established Democrat so far to buck party leadership to run in the primary. Wisniewski, one of Christie's most vocal critics, is pairing his work as co-chairman of the investigative panel with his role on the Sanders campaign for president to pitch himself to voters as a crusader for the working class fed up with lobbyists and big money in Trenton. Wisniewski has signaled an intent to wage a Sanders-style campaign against Murphy, telling supporters at his campaign kickoff last month, "I don't come from Wall Street ... my roots are on Main Street."

Wisniewski lacks Murphy's money and organizational support, but political strategists anticipate he will make the primary competitive, with a chance to echo the populist message of the presidential race and spoil what many view as Murphy's coronation.

"The biggest piece of conventional wisdom in Trenton right now is that the next governor's going to be a Democrat," said Dworkin. "So Phil Murphy, by virtue of being the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, is in fact the presumptive governor of New Jersey."

If the 2016 race was instructive, though, observers of the governor's race in New Jersey will take conventional wisdom with a dose of skepticism. There are 11 months until the election, a lifetime in politics, and there is always the possibility for upset.

"When you look at the presidential election and you look at the governor's approval rating and some of the polls numbers about the direction of New Jersey, it's definitely attractive for a candidate to portray themselves as an outsider," said Phil Swibinski, vice president of Vision Media Marketing, a Secaucus firm that works on political campaigns.

"More importantly, authenticity is what voters are really looking for, and they want somebody to talk straight to them," he said. "That's what drew a lot of people to (Christie). ... I think that's something a lot of candidates can emulate."