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    Gov. Murphy’s Republican Foe, Jack Ciattarelli, Will Concede

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    It took nine days. But Mr. Ciattarelli is expected to acknowledge on Friday that he has lost the race for governor of New Jersey.Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican vying to unseat Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, will concede defeat on Friday, acknowledging that there is no chance he can overcome the 74,000-vote gap now separating the candidates, according to two people close to his campaign.The Associated Press and other national news outlets had declared Mr. Murphy, a first-term Democrat, the winner a day after the Nov. 2 election when he held a roughly one percentage point advantage over Mr. Ciattarelli.Over the last nine days, Mr. Murphy’s lead only grew as mail and provisional ballots were slowly tallied in liberal-leaning strongholds, prompting Democratic strategists to accuse Mr. Ciattarelli of stoking distrust in the election system as he used the inconclusive race results to raise campaign funds.Mr. Murphy’s campaign manager, Mollie Binotto, criticized the delay as an “assault on the integrity of our elections,” and the governor called it “dangerous.”Still, Mr. Murphy’s relatively narrow win jolted Democratic Party leaders and suggested an erosion of support among suburban and independent voters as the party prepares for what will be an uphill battle to retain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.Some Democratic lawmakers in swing districts in New Jersey are expected to face stiff challenges from Republicans eager to reverse Democratic gains.By Thursday, Mr. Murphy’s lead had reached 2.9 points — a full percentage point greater than the margin of victory in Virginia, where the former Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, conceded his race against a Republican businessman, Glenn Youngkin, the morning after polls closed.Earlier this week, Mr. Murphy said that the convention of a losing candidate accepting and conceding defeat goes to the heart of “what it is to be an American.”“It’s bigger than winning or losing,” he said.New Jersey’s vote count was unusually slow this year. The delays were blamed on a learning curve linked to new electronic voting equipment and the high volume of paper mail ballots, which represented about one-fifth of the total vote and had to be counted manually, starting on Election Day.Mr. Ciattarelli had maintained that it was statistically possible he could come within one point of Mr. Murphy after the approximately 70,000 emergency provisional ballots were counted, a threshold at which his campaign said it would consider asking a judge to authorize a recount.But it became clear on Thursday that the gap was unlikely to shrink significantly, campaign officials said, even though emergency provisional ballots in a handful of counties had not yet been evaluated or counted.Mr. Ciattarelli is expected to appear at 1 p.m. on Friday in Raritan, N.J., where he lives, to formally concede defeat.Mr. Murphy’s campaign had no immediate comment. More

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      How Likely Is a Democratic Comeback Next Year?

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      The election results from last week reconfirmed a basic reality about American politics: For either party, holding the White House comes with significant power, but in off-year elections, it is often a burden.Democrats hoped that this year would be an exception. By trying to focus the electorate on Donald Trump, they sought to rouse the Democratic base. This approach would also avoid making elections a referendum on President Biden and his approval ratings, which have sagged after months of struggles with the Afghanistan exit, Covid, gas prices, inflation and congressional Democrats.In other words, Democrats hoped that the usual rules of political gravity would not apply. But we should not be surprised that the familiar force endured.Republicans performed well in races across the country — most notably in the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey, states that Mr. Biden won by double digits in 2020. Vote counts are still being finalized, but it appears they shifted almost identically toward the Republicans compared with 2017, the last time those governorships were on the ballot — margins of about 11 points. Virginia provides a striking example of how often the presidential party does poorly — the White House party candidate has now lost the gubernatorial race in 11 of the past 12 elections.Unfortunately for Democrats, political gravity is also likely to act against them in 2022 — and they face real limits on what they can do about it.There were signs of Democratic decline in all sorts of different places. The suburban-exurban Loudoun County in Northern Virginia is an example. Terry McAuliffe carried it, but his Republican rival in the governor’s race, Glenn Youngkin, campaigned aggressively there on education issues and basically cut the margin compared with 2017 in half. Places like Loudoun are where Democrats made advancements in the Trump years. To have any hope of holding the House next year, the party will have to perform well in such areas.Turnout in terms of raw votes cast compared with the 2017 gubernatorial race was up all over Virginia, but some of the places where turnout growth was smallest included Democratic urban areas and college towns.But Republicans had no such trouble: Their turnout was excellent. In New Jersey, the county that saw the biggest growth in total votes compared with 2017 was Ocean, an exurb on the Jersey Shore, which Gov. Phil Murphy’s Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, won by over 35 points.Democrats have also struggled in rural areas, and the results last week suggest that they have not hit bottom there yet. In the Ninth Congressional District in rural southwestern Virginia, Mr. Youngkin performed even better than Mr. Trump did in 2020.This combination — even deeper losses in rural areas paired with fallout in more populous areas — would be catastrophic for Democrats, particularly in the competitive Midwest, where Mr. Biden in 2020 helped arrest Democratic decline in many white, rural areas but where it is not hard to imagine Democratic performance continuing to slide.Like this year, the fundamentals for the 2022 midterms are not in the Democrats’ favor. Midterms often act as an agent of change in the House. The president’s party has lost ground in the House in 37 of the 40 midterms since the Civil War, with an average seat loss of 33 (since World War II, the average is a smaller, though still substantial, 27). Since 1900, the House has flipped party control 11 times, and nine of those changes have come in midterm election years, including the last five (1954, 1994, 2006, 2010 and 2018). Given that Republicans need to pick up only five seats next year, they are very well positioned to win the chamber.It is not entirely unheard-of for the presidential party to net House seats in the midterms. It happened in 1998 and 2002, though those come with significant caveats. In ’98, President Bill Clinton had strong approval in spite of (or perhaps aided by) his impeachment battle with Republicans and presided over a strong economy; Democrats had also had lost a lot of ground in the 1994 midterm (and made only a dent in that new Republican majority in 1996). They gained a modest four seats.In 2002, Republicans were defending a slim majority, but they benefited from President George W. Bush’s sky-high approval rating following the Sept. 11 attacks and decennial reapportionment and redistricting, which contributed to their eight-seat net gain.So against this political gravity, is there anything Democrats can do? The passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill as well as the possible passage of the party’s Build Back Better social spending package could help, though there is likely not a significant direct reward — new laws aren’t a magic bullet in campaigning. But a year from now, Democrats could be coming into the election under strong economic conditions and no longer mired in a high-profile intraparty stalemate (the McAuliffe campaign pointed to Democratic infighting as a drag).Factors like gas prices and the trajectory of Covid may be largely beyond the Democrats’ influence, but it is entirely possible that the country’s mood will brighten by November 2022 — and that could bolster Mr. Biden’s approval rating.When parties have bucked the midterm history, they’ve sometimes had an unusually good development emerge in their favor. If there is any lesson from last week’s results, it is that the circumstances were ordinary, not extraordinary. If they remain so, the Democratic outlook for next year — as it so often is for the presidential party in a midterm election — could be bleak.Kyle Kondik is the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics and the author of “The Long Red Thread: How Democratic Dominance Gave Way to Republican Advantage in U.S. House Elections.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why Ciaterrelli Refuses to Concede NJ Governor's Race

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      Gov. Phil Murphy’s Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, was trailing by about 65,500 votes. He is waiting for 70,000 provisional ballots to be counted.Hours after polls closed in the unexpectedly tight race for New Jersey governor, the Democratic incumbent, Philip D. Murphy, and his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, took the stages at their campaign parties and said it would take more time for the results to be finalized.A new system of voting, which utilized electronic poll books and did not permit the more than half-million mail-in ballots to be tallied until Election Day, had bogged down the count.Six days later, Mr. Ciattarelli, who trails Mr. Murphy by about 65,500 votes, or about 2.6 percentage points, according to The Associated Press, has yet to concede — even though The A.P. has declared Mr. Murphy the winner.Mr. Ciattarelli’s campaign stressed that there was no evidence of fraud, and he has warned his Republican supporters against “falling victim to wild conspiracy theories or online rumors.” Officials with Mr. Ciattarelli’s campaign said on Monday that they were waiting until all mail and provisional ballots were counted, a process they expected to be completed within two days.Still, that has not stopped Mr. Murphy’s campaign from criticizing Mr. Ciattarelli.“Assemblyman Ciattarelli is mathematically eliminated, and he must accept the results and concede the race,” Mr. Murphy’s campaign manager, Mollie Binotto, said Monday in a statement. “His continuing failure to do so is an assault on the integrity of our elections.”An election lawyer for the Ciattarelli campaign, Mark Sheridan, acknowledged that it was unlikely for Mr. Ciattarelli to pull ahead in the vote count. But he said it was possible Mr. Ciattarelli could come within 1 point of Mr. Murphy — the threshold at which he said it would be prudent to ask a judge for permission to conduct a recount.At the same time, Mr. Sheridan sought to distance Mr. Ciattarelli from former President Donald J. Trump’s postelection “stop the steal” strategy that made disproved claims of voting fraud and led to the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.“We’re not hearing any credible accounts of fraud or malfeasance,” Mr. Sheridan said.“I’m not looking to be Rudy Giuliani standing in front of a mulch pile,” he added, referring to Mr. Trump’s lawyer, the former mayor of New York, who had his law license temporarily suspended after a court ruled that he made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while fighting the results of the 2020 election.But Mr. Sheridan did stress that it was important for “every vote to be counted.”Despite the likelihood that Mr. Murphy will win a second term, the narrow margin has been a jolt to Democrats and suggested that they will face a steep climb to try to retain their hold on Congress in next year’s midterm elections.The governor’s race was one of several where candidates were waiting to concede until after the results were finalized.New Jersey’s second most powerful lawmaker, Steve Sweeney, who lost his State Senate seat to a relatively unknown Republican candidate, Edward Durr, had not conceded the race as of Monday afternoon. The Associated Press called the race on Thursday morning, as Mr. Durr maintained a 2,298-vote lead over Mr. Sweeney with all precincts counted, and by the weekend it had become a punchline on “Saturday Night Live” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}On Sunday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Durr and encouraged him to “have fun with it,” according to a clip of the call posted on Facebook.At the heart of the delays were election technology used for the first time in New Jersey, enabling voters to cast ballots early, in person, over nine days.The system used poll books that required an internet connection; in some cases, poll workers were confused by the new process. (At one polling location, for example, workers had not turned on the Wi-Fi router, an election lawyer said.)Boards of election across the state also struggled to hire enough people to oversee Election Day voting, leading the state to offer an extra $100 to entice workers.A spokeswoman for the secretary of state has maintained that the problems were not widespread, but they did lead to long lines at some polling sites, creating frustration that spilled out on Twitter. It also prompted a last-minute effort by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the state’s League of Women Voters to extend voting hours on Tuesday by 90 minutes. A judge rejected their request.“There’s not been one suggestion of any hint of a fraud problem,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “What’s going on is a really agonizingly slow count.”Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      Will Murphy Turn to the Center After Barely Winning Re-Election in N.J.?

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      The Democratic governor won re-election in a surprisingly close race that has raised questions about his ability to enact liberal measures on gun control and abortion.For much of his first term, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey governed his largely suburban state as a steadfast liberal, winning an increase in the minimum wage, a tax hike on the wealthy and the legalization of marijuana.But when he ran for re-election this year on that unabashedly left-leaning record, Mr. Murphy, a Democrat who just weeks ago seemed destined for an easy victory, came surprisingly close to losing to a conservative Republican, Jack Ciattarelli.Mr. Murphy’s narrow victory, combined with a Republican upset in the Virginia governor’s race and Republican gains in the New Jersey State Legislature, suggest the nation’s political winds may have shifted rightward. And that has raised a major question in Trenton: Will Mr. Murphy still push forward with liberal initiatives on issues like abortion and gun control, as he had once planned?Republicans and even some Democrats say a left-leaning agenda will face stiff opposition, predicting that Mr. Murphy and Democratic legislators will become increasingly mindful of independent suburban voters whose party loyalty is famously fluid and whose political ideology tends toward the center.The key to courting those voters will be to focus on “affordability,” some officials say, in particular, containing the state’s property taxes, which are among the nation’s highest.“This is not that complicated,” said Assemblyman Jon M. Bramnick, a Republican who was elected Tuesday to the State Senate. “Most people are kind of in the middle.”But where moderates may see the need for a course correction and heightened attention to issues like the cost of living and safe streets, Mr. Murphy’s progressive allies speak mainly of opportunity.On Tuesday, voters in South Jersey ousted the state’s second most powerful lawmaker, the Senate president, Steve Sweeney, a Democrat who was also Mr. Murphy’s main political rival. Mr. Sweeney’s loss simultaneously created an unexpected power vacuum in the State House and eroded the influence of the most conservative region of the state — without making a significant dent in the Democrats’ majority in Trenton.That could clear an easier pathway for the governor’s unfinished legislative priorities, some analysts and legislators say. Despite losing some seats, Democrats will still control both houses of the Legislature.“Politically, it’s an incredible opportunity for Murphy,” said Julia Sass Rubin, a professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. “Sweeney keeping his seat and Murphy winning by 10 would be nowhere near as good.”Still, the day after the election, few Democrats were talking much about Mr. Murphy’s most contentious policy goals: codifying abortion rights to protect against the possibility of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade; expanding gun control laws to allow victims to sue gun manufacturers; reducing long mandatory sentences for nonviolent crimes.“We’re going to obviously revisit what we’ve been doing,” said Senator Nick Scutari, a Democrat from northern New Jersey who led the fight to legalize marijuana in the state and is seen as a contender to become the next Senate president.Mr. Scutari, a former municipal prosecutor in Linden, N.J., said he expected more discussion about “kitchen table issues.”“Making sure there’s a strong economy,” he said. “Good strong job prospects. Making sure the taxes are stable and we do provide services because of those taxes.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}George E. Norcross, an insurance executive and powerful Democratic power broker strongly allied with Mr. Sweeney, said the most potent issue in New Jersey has always been taxes.“If you look at New Jersey history from a political way, you see Democrats and Republicans alternating as governors, and it always happens over the same issue, which is taxes,” Mr. Norcross said. “It’s taxes, taxes, taxes. And people move back and forth between parties in that regard, and that’s the way in which it historically has happened.”George Helmy, Mr. Murphy’s chief of staff, said the governor’s economic agenda had always been rooted in making life more affordable for working families.But he said he anticipated the party “wanting to focus more” on bread-and-butter economic issues, as well as better communicating the benefits of Mr. Murphy’s progressive policies for working-class families.“I think we need to continue to focus on the affordability picture and the progress we’ve made for working families,” he said.“People need to hear that message more,” he added. “We have to be more focused on speaking to what we have delivered for working families and the bold vision going forward.”On Thursday, Mr. Murphy spoke at a convention in Atlantic City, N.J., organized by one of his strongest allies, the New Jersey Education Association.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. 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      Did Ciattarelli Lawn Signs Predict his New Jersey Election Performance?

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      I told people on Monday that I thought Jack Ciattarelli would do better in the race for governor of New Jersey than the polls were indicating. My unscientific rationale was that Mr. Ciattarelli, the Republican challenger, had many more lawn signs than Gov. Phil Murphy where I live, northeastern Bergen County. I would estimate that Mr. Ciattarelli had at least 10 times as many signs.Mr. Ciattarelli did lose, but by only about 1 percentage point, defying a Rutgers-Eagleton poll showing him 8 percentage points down in late October. That didn’t make my lawn sign theory correct, of course. But the result was surprising. So I decided to look into the matter more closely.One theory might be that lawn signs influence election outcomes by increasing candidates’ name recognition. There might have been some of that going on. A 2016 study in the journal Electoral Studies by Donald Green, a political scientist at Columbia University, pooled the results of four experiments that involved placing lawn signs in randomly selected voting precincts and found that the signs had a small but not negligible effect — “probably greater than zero,” as he put it, “but unlikely to be large enough to alter the outcome of a contest that would otherwise be decided by more than a few percentage points.”Another theory might be that lawn signs are a sensitive indicator of voters’ preferences: If you care enough to have a sign in your yard, you probably care enough to vote for the candidate and maybe get others to do so. (Handmade signs presumably convey even more conviction.) In the 2016 presidential race, Michael Koenig of ABC News saw signs that Donald Trump would win — literally, about 20 lawn signs for every Hillary Clinton sign he encountered while bicycling through the countryside of swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.Professor Green told me by email that there is “a long history of trying to use the preponderance of lawn signs as a quasi poll to predict outcomes.” One study he sent me, from a 1979 issue of the journal Political Methodology, analyzed seven political races in a small, unnamed California city in 1978. It found that “candidates with the greatest number of signs received the greatest number of votes in six of the seven races.”In the U.S. presidential election of 2012, another study, by an undergraduate researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, found a high correlation in Eau Claire between the numbers of lawn signs for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and the candidates’ vote totals by ward.Keith Srakocic/Associated PressI’d call that research inconclusive. What’s conclusive is the sea change in the vote in northeastern Bergen County between the presidential election of 2020 and this year’s election for state and local offices. Using data from the Bergen County Board of Elections, I totaled up the votes from seven of the county’s 56 boroughs: Alpine, Closter, Cresskill, Demarest, Northvale, Norwood and Tenafly. These boroughs range from prosperous to outright rich. (The median listing price of houses for sale in Alpine is $5.7 million, according to Realtor.com.)In 2020, Joe Biden walloped Donald Trump in these boroughs, capturing 61.9 percent of the vote to Mr. Trump’s 36.6 percent. This year, according to early results that don’t include write-ins and provisional ballots, Mr. Murphy got 49.6 percent of the vote to Mr. Ciattarelli’s 50.3 percent.To me that says two things: Mr. Trump is highly disliked in the area, and Mr. Ciattarelli didn’t suffer by association with him. Mr. Ciattarelli’s signature issue was cutting taxes and reallocating state school aid, which now largely goes to troubled urban schools, to what he described as “struggling suburban, shore area and rural schools.”I’d like to say that my lawn sign detector was picking up on that big swing in voter preference. On Wednesday, though, I came upon another possible explanation for the profusion of Ciattarelli signs. I spoke with Richard Kurtz, a wealthy real estate investor who owns property in Alpine. He’s the chief executive of the Kamson Corporation of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., which owns and operates apartment complexes in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. He told me that he bought more than 100,000 Ciattarelli signs and had them put up all over the state, including on his own apartment properties.“I met Jack four or five months ago and I said, ‘This is a solid citizen,’” Mr. Kurtz told me. “His keen interest in the state. Everything he wants to do is positive, most of all lower taxes and do the right thing.”Campaign signs on property in Alpine, N.J., owned by Richard Kurtz, a real estate investor.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesAs for the signs, he added: “For some reason I always remember in my experience of voting, lawn signs are so special. If I had more time and energy, I would have liked to do even more.”Mr. Kurtz said that a man who works for him part-time put up dozens of signs on a heavily traveled stretch of Closter Dock Road in Alpine where Mr. Kurtz owns a sprawling property once owned by descendants of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. It was that stretch of signage that first caught my attention. “They probably overdid it here in Alpine,” Mr. Kurtz said with a laugh.When I told Professor Green about the Kurtz blitz, he thought of comparing vote totals in precincts where Mr. Kurtz put up signs on his properties with precincts where he didn’t to see if the signs made a difference. “That would be a lot of fun,” he said, imagining getting a nice research paper out of it. But since Mr. Kurtz spread the signs all over the state, that experiment won’t be possible.What originally looked to me like an indication of a groundswell of support for Mr. Ciattarelli doesn’t look so grass-roots anymore. On the other hand, Mr. Kurtz wasn’t responsible for all of those Ciattarelli signs I spotted. I’d say my lawn sign theory may still have something to recommend it.Peter Coy (@petercoy) writes a regular newsletter about economics for Opinion. You can sign up for his newsletter here.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Philip Murphy Wins Narrowly in N.J. Governor's Race

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      The victory over Jack Ciattarelli, which ended Democrats’ 44-year re-election losing streak in the state, was far tighter than polls had predicted.Gov. Philip D. Murphy is the first Democratic governor to be re-elected in New Jersey in more than 44 years. His campaign focused on his record during his first term and his left-leaning approach to governing.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesPhilip D. Murphy, a New Jersey Democrat whose aggressive approach to controlling the pandemic became a focal point of the bid to unseat him, narrowly held onto the governor’s office in an unexpectedly close election that highlighted stark divisions over mask and vaccine mandates, even in a liberal-leaning state.With roughly 90 percent of the vote tallied, Mr. Murphy was ahead of his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, by less than 1 percentage point when The Associated Press called the race just before 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday after a protracted count. The bulk of the outstanding votes were in Democratic strongholds.For Democrats who had long assumed Mr. Murphy’s victory was assured even as the national electoral picture darkened, the 24 hours after polls closed proved tense: Mr. Ciattarelli at one point held a substantial lead.Every public opinion poll throughout the campaign had showed that Mr. Murphy would coast to an easy victory. But Mr. Ciattarelli hammered away at the state’s high taxes and polarizing issues such as whether schools should teach about systemic racism, and he repeatedly asserted that Mr. Murphy’s tough Covid rules were undermining personal liberty.Democratic strategists began whispering about a vague sense of anxiety that only intensified after rank-and-file Republicans turned out in force to the second debate in South Jersey in mid-October.Mr. Murphy’s narrow victory — and a key loss in the Virginia governor’s race — were widely interpreted as ominous signs for Democrats, potentially signaling voters’ dismay with President Biden, fears about the economy and pushback on cultural issues that were central to some G.O.P. campaigns. Still, a win by any margin was considered a significant milestone. Mr. Murphy, a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive, is the first Democrat in more than four decades to be re-elected in the largely suburban state.“You know, we just had the most ‘New Jersey’ experience,” Mr. Murphy said, joking about his protracted victory during a speech to supporters in Asbury Park late Wednesday night. “I was on my way someplace, and it took us longer to get there than we planned.”At the end of the contentious race, Mr. Murphy sounded a conciliatory note.“If you want to be governor of all of New Jersey, you must listen to all of New Jersey. And New Jersey, I hear you,” Mr. Murphy said.Mr. Ciattarelli did not immediately concede, and a spokeswoman wrote on Twitter that it was “irresponsible” to declare a winner in the close race.Mr. Murphy, 64, had campaigned largely on his first-term record and his unabashedly left-leaning approach to governing a state where there are nearly 1.1 million more registered Democrats than Republicans.The pandemic, which has killed about 28,000 residents, hobbled much of the region’s economy and disrupted the education of 1.3 million public school students, persisted as the campaign’s defining issue.Mr. Murphy used executive orders to enforce some of the country’s strictest rules to curb the spread of the virus. Just before Memorial Day he was one of the last governors to repeal an indoor mask mandate. As new cases of the highly contagious Delta variant spiked during the summer, he was among the first to require teachers to be vaccinated or submit to regular testing.The coronavirus pandemic was the defining issue of Mr. Murphy’s first term.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesResidents surveyed in polls and academic studies gave Mr. Murphy some of his highest marks for the way he responded to the pandemic.But Mr. Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman, made Mr. Murphy’s edicts a centerpiece of his campaign, using ads and stump speeches to attack vaccine mandates and mandatory masking in schools, and blaming Mr. Murphy’s lockdown orders for hurting small businesses and keeping students out of school for too long.Lindsey Laverty, 31, said it was Mr. Murphy’s mask and vaccine mandates that made her vote against him.“We need to get back to freedom and choice,” she said Wednesday in Somerville, N.J.The pandemic was by no means the only issue. Mr. Ciattarelli drove home a Wall Street-versus-Main Street theme and homed in on a 2019 comment by Mr. Murphy about taxes. “If you’re a one-issue voter and tax rate is your issue, either a family or a business — if that’s the only basis upon which you’re going to make a decision,” Mr. Murphy said, “we’re probably not your state.”Mr. Ciattarelli’s campaign plastered parts of the comment across billboards, on Facebook and in television ads all over the state.Mr. Murphy appeared to significantly underperform President Biden’s 2020 showing in highly educated suburban counties that had favored Democrats in the Trump era — the kind of counties that were central to the Democratic takeover of the House in 2018, including in New Jersey.“What’s changed in recent weeks is that President Biden’s approvals have taken a hit as the national mood has shifted,” said Michael Soliman, a veteran of New Jersey Democratic politics, referencing Mr. Biden’s weak poll numbers. He said Democrats — both progressive, like Mr. Murphy, and more conservative, like Steve Sweeney, the Democratic leader of the State Senate, who was still locked in a close race on Wednesday — were feeling the effect of that shifting national playing field.Michael DuHaime, who was the lead strategist for the Republican former Gov. Chris Christie’s victories in 2009 and 2013, said former President Donald J. Trump’s absence from the ballot returned some voters to the G.O.P. fold.“They didn’t like Donald Trump. It’s pretty simple. It wasn’t some endorsement to go far left,” Mr. DuHaime said.At campaign stops over the last week, Mr. Ciattarelli displayed a Boston Bruins jersey emblazoned with Mr. Murphy’s name as he reminded supporters of the governor’s Massachusetts roots and his white-shoe investment banking pedigree.In the end, more voters appeared to support the approach taken by Mr. Murphy, who in his first term established New Jersey as one of the most progressive states in the nation.Over the last four years, he locked in a deal to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15, raised the tax rate on income over $1 million and legalized marijuana. He made community college free for students in households with incomes of less than $65,000, restored voting rights to people on probation or parole, and authorized drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants.Results trickled in slowly after polls closed Tuesday at 8 p.m. from Democratic strongholds like Essex and Camden Counties, skewing the early totals and making it clear that the race would be far tighter than expected.Central to the delay in calling the race was the number of outstanding mail and provisional ballots.New Jersey did not permit local election officials to begin “preprocessing” ballots this year until Election Day, causing a backlog of more than 520,000 mail ballots to be counted in a single day. New voting equipment used to enable voters to cast ballots early, in person, also caused confusion; in some cases, voters had to use emergency provisional ballots to cast their votes — adding to the volume of ballots to tally.All 120 legislative seats were also on the ballot. Democrats were expected to retain control of Trenton, but did appear to be on track to lose several seats — including one held by Mr. Sweeney.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      Election Day Silver Linings!

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      Walking to the polls on Election Day, I suddenly had a vision of all my neighbors trying to break out of the doldrums by voting for Curtis Sliwa for mayor.Sliwa was the nominee of the desperate, massively outnumbered New York City Republican Party, and while he has plenty of conservative positions on issues like mandatory vaccinations (no), he is better known as an animal lover who has 17 cats in a studio apartment he shares with his wife.On Tuesday, Sliwa’s big moment involved an attempt to bring a kitty into the polling site. It was one of several dust-ups between the candidate and the election workers that ended with his ballot jamming the scanning machine.At about that point I suddenly wondered: What if this guy wins? It was not an outcome most people had ever considered, for obvious reasons. But gee, the country was in such a foul mood, the status of the Biden administration so subterranean. The image of Congress wasn’t really much better than that apartment full of cats. What if, just to show their profound irritation, the voters went Sliwa?Didn’t happen. The winner, Eric Adams, a Democrat, is a former police officer who ran a smooth campaign about his plans for reforming crime-fighting in New York. Early results suggest Sliwa will be very, very lucky to get a third of the vote. I am sharing this because I know a lot of you need some happy political news to tell friends over the weekend.Some Possible Post-Election Conversational Strategies for Liberal Democrats:— Find a few next-generation stars to burble over, even if they just got elected to your town’s zoning board of appeals.— Funny stories about other cats.— Ranting about Joe Manchin.Perhaps you noticed that, just before Election Day, Senator Manchin called a press conference to announce that he wasn’t sure he could support Joe Biden’s social services program because of his concern about the “impact it’ll have on our national debt.”Given Manchin’s super-status as a Democratic swing vote, we certainly have to pay attention to his fiscal conservatism and obsession with the national debt. After we stop to muse — just for a minute — that his state, West Virginia, gets about $2.15 in federal aid for every dollar its residents send to Washington.But back to the positive side of the elections — or at least the less-depressing-than-originally-perceived side. That big governor’s race in Virginia, won by the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, was maybe the worst blow of the evening for Democrats. But when you’re having those dinner table conversations — or, hey, drinking heavily at a bar — be sure to point out that the loser, Terry McAuliffe, is a former Virginia governor. His state seems to have a real problem with chief executives who hang around, and there’s a law that makes it impossible for a sitting governor to run for re-election. McAuliffe was trying for a comeback after his enforced retirement — a feat that’s been achieved only once since the Civil War.Didn’t work. Will you be surprised to hear that Donald Trump is taking credit?The other governor’s race, in New Jersey, was way more dramatic than expected, with incumbent Philip Murphy fighting off a surprisingly strong challenge from Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman. Very possible this one could still be in recount purgatory during the holidays.I really hope Murphy, a rather fearless leader in the war against Covid, is not being punished for vaccine mandates and mandatory school masking, which Ciattarelli complained about endlessly. Or that the irritable voters wanted to get back at their governor for remarking, a few years ago, that if you’re a person whose only concern is tax rates, New Jersey is “probably not your state.”Ciattarelli reportedly spent about $736,000 running that quote in a 10-day broadside of ads. But I’ll bet most New Jersey voters accept the governor’s view, however grudgingly. Almost all of them must have some state concerns besides taxes — schools? Street lighting? The end of black bear hunting?Fortunately, you won’t be expected to argue that Tuesday was one of the great days in the history of American democracy. Otherwise, some detail-oriented colleague might mention that a House district near Columbus was won by the chairman of the Ohio Coal Association.Yeah, and Minneapolis failed to pass its public safety program. It seems that Seattle will end up with a new law-and-order mayor rather than criminal justice reform.On the other hand, there were loads of stories to remind you how our country, for all its multitudinous failures to live up to the American dream, still also manages to come through. A lot. Boston elected its first woman and first person of color as mayor. Pittsburgh and Kansas City, Kan., each elected its first Black mayor. Cincinnati chose an Asian American mayor, and Dearborn, Mich.’s next mayor is going to be an Arab American Muslim.Cheer up, people. We made it through another election. Take the holidays off from politics if you want. Just ignore the new flood of emails asking you to donate to some worthy candidate’s quest for a House seat in 2022. What’s the rush? You’ll hear from them again next week. And the week after that. …The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      New Jersey’s Governor’s Race is Too Close to Call

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      Gov. Philip D. Murphy pulled ahead of his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, on Wednesday in the race for governor of New Jersey, a contest that was still too close to call and was emboldening national Republicans. Mr. Murphy, a Democrat in his first term, trailed by more than 50,000 votes at one point after the polls closed on Tuesday night, an unexpected deficit in a race that a recent Monmouth University poll had him leading by 11 points. But Mr. Ciattarelli’s once significant lead had evaporated as results trickled in from Democratic strongholds, especially those in northern New Jersey like Essex County, which includes Newark. With 88 percent of the expected vote counted, Mr. Murphy led by 1,408 votes as of 10 a.m. on Wednesday, according to tallies reported by The Associated Press.By dawn on Wednesday, Democrats expressed optimism that Mr. Murphy would survive once all the votes were counted.Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey, predicted that Mr. Murphy would win during an appearance Wednesday on CNN while acknowledging the restlessness of voters.“My takeaway overall in this election is that people want action,” Mr. Gottheimer said. “They want results, and they deserve results.”At about 12:30 a.m., both candidates took the stages at their election-night parties to tell supporters that the results of the contest would not be clear until all provisional and vote-by-mail ballots were counted.“We’re all sorry that tonight could not yet be the celebration that we wanted it to be,” said Mr. Murphy, surrounded by his family in Asbury Park’s Convention Hall. “But as I said: When every vote is counted — and every vote will be counted — we hope to have a celebration again.”Mr. Ciattarelli, 59, said much the same thing, but appeared far more relaxed after outperforming every public opinion poll conducted during the campaign in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 1.1 million voters.“We have sent a message to the entire country,” Mr. Ciattarelli told supporters gathered in Bridgewater. “But this is what I love about this state, if you study its history: Every single time it’s gone too far off track, the people of this state have pushed, pulled and prodded it right back to where it needs to be.”At 4 a.m., the candidates remained in a statistical dead heat, with about 12 percent of votes still uncounted.Regardless of who wins, the razor-thin margin has made clear just how divided voters are about the tough policies Mr. Murphy imposed to control the spread of the coronavirus, and his liberal agenda on taxation, climate change and racial equity.Mr. Murphy, a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive and ambassador to Germany, had campaigned on the unabashedly left-leaning agenda he pushed through during this first term.But the defining issue of the campaign was the pandemic, which has killed about 28,000 residents, hobbled much of the region’s economy and disrupted the education of 1.3 million public school students.Mr. Murphy was one of the last governors to repeal an indoor mask mandate and among the first to require teachers to be vaccinated or submit to regular testingMr. Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman, made Mr. Murphy’s strict pandemic edicts a centerpiece of his campaign. The Republican opposed Covid-19 vaccine mandates and mandatory masking in schools, and he blamed Mr. Murphy’s early lockdown orders for hurting small businesses and keeping students out of school for too long.Kevin Armstrong and Lauren Hard contributed reporting. More

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      Catch up on Election Day results from around the United States.

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      The governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey and the New York City mayoral election were among the highlights.After voters elected President Biden and pushed Republicans fully out of power in Washington, the party rebounded with a strong election night on Tuesday, highlighted by Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia’s governor’s race.Here is a run-down of election results from some of the closely watched races around the country on Tuesday.Virginia governor’s raceBusinessman Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who struggled to generate enthusiasm among liberals at a moment when conservatives are energized in opposition to Mr. Biden.The victory by Mr. Youngkin, a first-time candidate in one of only two gubernatorial races before next year’s midterm election, may provide his party with a formula for how to exploit President Biden’s vulnerabilities and evade the shadow of former President Donald J. Trump in Democratic-leaning states.New Jersey governor’s raceFormer Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, a moderate Republican, surprised many analysts with a strong showing in the race for governor in New Jersey against Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat seeking a second term who was ahead in most public polling before Tuesday’s contest.The race was too close to call early Wednesday.New York CityIn the city’s mayoral race, Eric Adams, a former police captain and Brooklyn borough president, easily dispatched his long shot Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, to become only the second Black person elected mayor in the city’s history.And Alvin Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney. He will become the first Black person to lead the influential office, which handles tens of thousands of cases a year and is conducting a high-profile investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business.Boston mayor’s raceMichelle Wu easily defeated City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George to become the first woman, first person of color and first person of Asian descent to be elected mayor in Boston. The city has been led by an unbroken string of Irish American or Italian American men since the 1930s.Minneapolis police ballot itemMinneapolis residents rejected an amendment that called for replacing the city’s long-troubled Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety, The Associated Press projected.The ballot item emerged from anger after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd last year, galvanizing residents who saw the policing system as irredeemably broken. More