With no incumbent in the race, next year’s contest to replace Philip D. Murphy as governor of New Jersey was never going to be dull.
But wild-card factors that might have seemed far-fetched a year ago have combined to unleash something rare in the state: a competitive race with an unpredictable outcome.
The list of well-known contenders for the seat already includes two members of Congress, the mayors of New Jersey’s two largest cities, the longest-serving State Senate president and the head of a powerful teachers’ union. Two other candidates cut their teeth in the State Legislature. There is also a popular far-right radio host and a former state senator running as “Ed the Trucker.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s surprisingly strong showing in November in reliably Democratic New Jersey and a sweeping change to the rules for conducting primary elections have undone many of the state’s old political assumptions, leaving even seasoned observers riveted.
“It sure is different from the script we’re used to,” said Peter J. Woolley, director of the School of Public and Global Affairs at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
The field of candidates is unlikely to thin significantly before June’s Democratic and Republican primaries, where the winning margins are expected to be narrow.
“There’s an incentive in this race for people to stay in,” Professor Woolley said, “because there’s going to be an element of luck.”
At this point eight years ago, Mr. Murphy, a political novice with few allies in Trenton, had secured enough support among county Democratic Party bosses that his election seemed all but assured.
But the 2025 election will play out in a vastly different political atmosphere. Mr. Murphy is prohibited by law from immediately seeking a third term, and a court-ordered overhaul of the state’s primary election ballots has made it more difficult for party leaders to quickly anoint a favored candidate.
That change, which prohibited party officials from giving their preferred candidates a prominent spot on the ballot, was pushed by New Jersey’s new U.S. senator, Andy Kim. Mr. Kim’s victory was fueled in part by anti-corruption sentiment after his predecessor, Bob Menendez, was indicted and ultimately convicted of trading political favors for bribes.
The backlash also ensnared the state’s first lady, Tammy Murphy, who was assailed by claims of nepotism as she competed for Mr. Menendez’s Senate seat. Her candidacy’s early air of inevitability collapsed under pressure, and she dropped out before a federal judge ordered county clerks to redesign the state’s primary ballots, depriving party leaders — and their favored candidates — of a pathway that for decades had reliably led to victory.
Next year’s primaries will be the first statewide contests held under the new system.
And the outcomes are likely to echo far beyond New Jersey.
New Jersey and Virginia are the only states with off-year races for governor, and their results are scrutinized for clues about voter sentiment every four years, ahead of the congressional contests.
Adding to the uncertainty are the gains that Mr. Trump, a Republican, made in New Jersey compared with 2020. Though he did not win the state, he lost by far less than he did against President Biden. Mr. Trump even managed to earn more votes than Vice President Kamala Harris in 12 of the state’s 21 counties, up from the seven counties he won in 2020 — a potentially encouraging sign for Republicans in 2025.
There is no shortage of pressing state-based policy concerns, including how to increase racial equity within the state’s highly segregated public school system and where to build desperately needed affordable housing.
Still, because of its timing, the race for governor is often overshadowed by national issues and interpreted as a referendum on the party in charge in Washington. In 2021, for example, unpopular policies tied to the Covid-19 pandemic contributed to Mr. Murphy’s relatively narrow, three-point re-election margin.
With Mr. Trump laying groundwork for what is likely to be a highly polarizing return to the White House, Democrats are hopeful they will benefit in a left-leaning state where they hold a 900,000-voter advantage.
“He casts sort of a spell on everything,” said Ruthi Zinn Byrne, who runs a marketing firm in New Jersey and was married to a former Democratic governor, Brendan Byrne, of Mr. Trump’s ability to energize supporters — and detractors.
Still, candidates on both sides of the aisle are for now struggling to find ways to break away from the 10-person pack as voter fatigue from November’s presidential contest lingers.
“There seems to be a general sense of exhaustion,” said Jean Sinzdak, associate director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
“It’s hard to break through the noise,” she added.
Early attempts to attract attention six months ahead of the primaries have offered bursts of political theater.
Two candidates began buying billboard advertising more than a year before the race and at least one created a bogus website using an opponent’s name in order to disparage him. The drone hysteria gripping the state has proved fertile ground for other contenders. One even faked a Spotify playlist to amp up his street cred with Bruce Springsteen fans.
Here are 10 of the most prominent candidates, in their order of entry into the Democratic and Republican primaries:
Democrats
Steven Fulop
Mr. Fulop, 46, has been mayor of Jersey City, a booming urban hub opposite Manhattan, since 2013. He has rolled out a series of policy papers since April 2023, when he became the first candidate to enter the race. In ads, he has stressed his service in the Marine Corps, his leadership of the state’s second-largest city and his willingness to break with party bosses in the fight to abolish the primary ballot design.
Stephen Sweeney
Mr. Sweeney, 65, was the State Senate’s longest-serving president until he lost re-election in 2021 to an underfunded challenger in a stunning upset. Mr. Sweeney, the only Democratic candidate who lives outside of northern New Jersey, has since founded a public policy center at Rowan University. An ironworker by trade, Mr. Sweeney became known in the Senate for his focus on fully funding the state pension system and for his leadership in passing a law that restructured public school funding.
Ras Baraka
Mr. Baraka, 54, has spent a decade as mayor of Newark, the state’s largest city, where he has led a push to boost development without gentrification. He is running as an unabashed progressive with a focus on housing affordability and what he calls tax equity. He has proposed lowering taxes for poor and working-class residents of New Jersey and adding additional taxes for the state’s wealthiest families, including a “mansion tax” on sales of homes valued at $3 million or more.
Sean Spiller
Mr. Spiller, 49, a former mayor of Montclair, N.J., has been president of a powerful teachers’ union, the New Jersey Education Association, since 2021. A super PAC with ties to the union has committed $35 million to the race and has for months been flooding mailboxes with literature about Mr. Spiller and buying billboard and print ads. Mr. Spiller, who was born in Jamaica, played hockey at Rutgers before becoming a science teacher.
Josh Gottheimer
In 2016, Representative Gottheimer, 49, won a House seat that for decades had been held by Republicans in a district that at the time straddled some of the most conservative and liberal parts of New Jersey. Mr. Gottheimer, a lawyer who has worked for the Federal Communications Commission and Microsoft, is a chairman of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and has been a leading opponent of New York’s congestion pricing plan. He promised to be New Jersey’s “lower taxes, lower costs” governor during his campaign announcement, held in a diner.
Mikie Sherrill
In 2018, Representative Sherrill, 52, was part of a so-called blue wave of Democrats who won a majority of House seats in the midterm elections after Mr. Trump became president. A former Navy helicopter pilot and lawyer who worked for the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, Ms. Sherrill has focused on defending reproductive rights. She was the first member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation to publicly urge President Biden to step aside and not run for re-election.
Republicans
Jon Bramnick
Mr. Bramnick, 71, a moderate state senator who moonlights as a stand-up comedian, has for years been open about his disapproval of Mr. Trump. He has stressed civility and sponsored legislation requiring lessons on coping with grief in high school. He has represented a largely affluent suburban district in the Legislature since 2003 and has argued that only a centrist like himself has a shot at winning in November, given the Democrats’ enrollment edge.
Jack Ciattarelli
Mr. Ciattarelli, 63, a former state assemblyman who was known as a moderate, is running his third campaign for governor after coming within about three points of unseating Mr. Murphy in 2021. He beat primary candidates further to his right that year to win the nomination, and he is again trying to appeal to Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters without alienating the party’s more centrist base in New Jersey.
Edward Durr Jr.
Mr. Durr, 61, served for two years in the State Senate after his stunning 2021 defeat of Mr. Sweeney, then the Senate president, during an election in which Republican turnout surged as voters angered by pandemic-related rules flocked to the polls. Mr. Durr, who drives a truck for a furniture store, embraced the label “Ed the Trucker” as he ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2023 against an opponent who highlighted sexist and anti-Islamic comments he made years ago on social media.
Bill Spadea
Mr. Spadea, 55, a conservative radio host, is making his third run for office. Mr. Spadea, a former Marine who has also hosted a Fox television show, has said that Mr. Trump failed during his first term by not firing Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the lead members of the White House’s coronavirus task force, and not shutting down the F.B.I. He is now working to cast himself as a standard-bearer for the president-elect — “pro-life, pro-Second Amendment and pro-Trump.”
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