The Guadagno campaign had already signaled in recent weeks that it was starting to view the race in Trump-like terms, and that it expected few would head to the polls next month. | Getty In race to replace Christie, GOP nominee Guadagno takes hard right turn

The sleepy race to replace New Jersey Gov. Christie Christie, steeped until now in talk of property taxes and job creation, is taking a sudden, hard right turn as the GOP nominee borrows a page from President Donald Trump’s playbook.

Down in the polls by double digits and struggling to raise enough cash to keep her campaign competitive, Kim Guadagno — the state’s two-term lieutenant governor and a former county sheriff — began speaking last week in graphic detail about rapes and murders committed by undocumented immigrants.


On the surface, Guadagno’s new attack appears aimed at energizing Trump supporters and possibly turning away any soft supporters of Democratic nominee Phil Murphy who happen to have strong opinions on immigration. Such an approach would assume a very low turnout election, given that the president’s approval was at 33 percent in a recent poll of likely voters.

In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a wide margin, such a pivot runs against conventional political wisdom. Most Republican statewide candidates move to the center in a general election in New Jersey. Christie did that in 2009 and managed, against the odds, to unseat Gov. Jon Corzine and win over Democrats before the end of his first term.

During a debate last Tuesday, Guadagno said Murphy would have defended a “child rapist” who took part in the 2007 execution-style killings of three teenagers in Newark. Then she rolled out an attack ad in which the narrator said Murphy would have the “backs of deranged murderers.”

By Thursday morning, Guadagno was on "Fox & Friends," warning that Murphy’s policies — namely his pledge to make New Jersey a “sanctuary state,” if necessary — “would be very dangerous for everyone.”

The decision to play to the right quickly reframed the race, putting an abrupt end to what had been a clumsy campaign-trail dance between a candidate who has pledged to cut property taxes and another who has promised to create a “fairer” economy for all.

The move marks a dramatic change of direction for Guadagno, who has avoided mentioning Trump throughout the race and openly worked to court Latino voters. She kicked off her campaign at a Mexican restaurant, named a Cuban refugee as her running mate and has landed other Latino surrogates.

She also has tried to appeal to moderates by pledging to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which Christie had eschewed, and said she supports the state’s Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

Asked about the change of direction, her campaign acted as though it were business as usual.

“Kim has always been opposed to sanctuary cities, so nothing new about that,” spokesman Ricky Diaz said.

Guadagno, after spending most of the race relentlessly focused on property taxes, now appears to be abandoning the center on several issues. In addition to her push on immigration issues, she also said she wouldn’t touch the state’s strict gun laws and, in last week’s debate, called for a return of the death penalty in some extraordinary cases.

In recent weeks, the Guadagno campaign had already signaled that it was starting to view the race in Trump-like terms, and that it expected few would head to the polls next month.

The campaign hired Adam Geller, Trump’s campaign pollster in Wisconsin and Michigan, to handle internal polling. And Guadagno earlier this month released a “memo” in which Chris LaCivita, a national campaign consultant, claimed public polls showing Murphy up by more than 13 points were wrong; they had measured a 7-point lead for the Democrat.

He said public pollsters aimed their surveys at “suppressing the GOP vote.” LaCivita cited polling data showing that neither candidate had been “fully defined with the electorate” and noted that many other topics were dominating the news.

“Herein lies our opportunity,” he wrote. “We are anticipating an election whose turnout could be even lower than the gubernatorial election of 2013. 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 state Sen. Barbara Buono, the lowest of any race for governor.

It remains unclear whether Guadagno can even afford to make any impact with the new TV ad. Campaign finance data out last week showed her with less than $1 million on hand — a fifth of what Murphy had. Asked about where the ad was running and how much was being spent, a spokesman would say only: “As with our other ads, we’re not going to discuss TV buy details.”

The Republican Governors Association, which is said to have raised more than $2 million in New Jersey with Christie’s help this year, has put much of its focus on Virginia, the only other state with a gubernatorial election in 2017. While it had gone up with ad buys in support of Guadagno, it hasn’t run anything yet picking up on this immigration issue.

RGA spokesman Jon Thompson declined to say whether the group plans to push back on the sanctuary state discussion but called the topic “a very important issue for many New Jersey voters.”

“If Phil Murphy is going to embrace sanctuary cities in the state, voters have a right to know about it before they cast their ballot,” Thompson said.

Experts doubt such an effort to win over New Jersey voters by harping on immigration will actually benefit Guadagno. Some see it as an admission that things aren’t going well for the Republican — a Hail Mary, so to speak.

Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said it “does smell of desperation.”

Murray said he thinks Guadagno’s dramatic move may be designed to attract national Republican attention — and maybe even a tweet or two from the president.

“That might be the purpose of this,” he said. “Lighting a beacon to get national Republicans to turn their attention to this race.”

There haven’t been any clear signs that it has worked. The president tweeted on Friday about sanctuary cities, but he made no mention of Guadagno or even a race for governor in New Jersey.

That attack, however, has riled up Democrats — a sign they believe her approach will hurt rather than help Guadagno.

The TV ad relays details of the 2007 Newark schoolyard killings and flashes the photo and name of an undocumented immigrant who was convicted of the murders. The ad uses out-of-context remarks by Murphy to suggest he would have the “backs” of those types of people.

The claims drew a swift condemnation from the Democratic establishment in New Jersey and beyond, with many saying the Republican nominee was “race baiting” and “fear mongering." Murphy tweeted that the ad was “racist.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, joining Murphy on the campaign trail Thursday, said it marked the “return of Willie Horton,” a reference to an infamous attack ad run by a group supporting Republican George H.W. Bush in the 1988 presidential campaign that inaccurately accused Democrat Michael Dukakis of freeing a murderer.

The liberal editorial board at The Star-Ledger — the state’s largest newspaper — called the ad “a cheap attempt to whip up the most ugly and unfounded fears of unauthorized immigrants.”

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker said the ad is “reprehensible and repugnant” and “belongs in the gutter.” He called Guadagno “a really good person” who took some bad advice.

And more than a dozen liberal groups, including several representing minorities, rallied outside Guadagno’s campaign office in Long Branch on Friday.

As much as the advertisement galvanized liberals, it did not appear to offend Latino supporters of the lieutenant governor — at least not those close to her.

Her running mate, Woodcliff Lake Mayor Carlos Rendo, released a statement that said he and Guadagno “understand we must have the backs of law abiding New Jerseyans and law enforcement over violent criminals, and we both stand by the ad.”

Jose Arango, a Latino who is the Republican chairman in solidly blue Hudson County, said nothing about the messaging strategy offending him.

Guadagno, he said, doesn’t have a problem with legal immigration, just “that we have to be careful of who we have in the state of New Jersey.” He said law enforcement at the local level should be cooperating with federal authorities.

“We’re not against minorities,” he said, noting he is a member of a minority group. “It’s not as if we’re creating a racial issue. We are a country of laws. We have responsibilities.”

By Sunday, it was clear Guadagno was not giving up on her new messaging strategy. She spoke behind closed doors to a gun group and released a recording of the speech shortly after it ended. She bragged about being the first sheriff in the state to join a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiative that allows state and local law enforcement to enter into a partnership with the agency “in order to receive delegated authority for immigration enforcement within their jurisdictions."

“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," she told the group. "I somehow have become a racist?"

Matt Friedman contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the state Senate was not up for re-election in 2013. Both houses of the Legislature faced re-election that year.