My intellectual mentor on New Jersey politics was a man I most deeply admired, the late Steve Salmore.  He and his wife, Barbara were the authors of New Jersey Politics and Government, an absolutely indispensable work for those seeking a genuine understanding of Garden State political issues.

Throughout the years I knew Steve, we talked by telephone almost every day.  His passing in September, 2005 was a deeply personal blow to me.  When Barbara asked me to speak at his memorial service, it was both a supreme honor and an opportunity to console myself.

Steve was the best psephologist I ever met.  He had remarkable insight into every campaign, particular those in New Jersey.  His favorite axiom was “Candidates get the campaigns they deserve.”

My dearly beloved, Steve, with all due respect, here in New Jersey, in this gubernatorial election year of 2021, we have clear, convincing, and compelling evidence that this axiom is not always true.

Republican gubernatorial front-runner Jack Ciattarelli is a good and decent man with the intellect, intelligence, and issue incisiveness necessary to become a successful New Jersey governor.  He has a magnificent family to whom he is supremely loyal.

In fact, it was Jack’s wife, Melinda, who gave the 2021 Ciattarelli campaign its highpoint to date.  At the primary campaign debate held earlier this week with Jack’s closest competitor, Hirsh Singh, Melinda found herself face to face with King Penna, the Singh campaign manager.  Penna began to harass Melinda Ciattarelli in a manner that would have justified Jack’s flattening him. (Check out: Fireworks behind the scenes of the NJ101.5 debate this week Opinionhttps://nj1015.com/fireworks-behind-the-scenes-of-the-nj101-5-debate-this-week-opinion/)

Melinda Ciattarelli could well handle herself, however.  She responded by calling Penna an “imbecile” and an “arrogant asshole,” an accurate anatomical reference.  If only Jack would use such colorful and descriptive language to describe Donald Trump, who is currently being fitted for an orange suit by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and apparently, members, past or present of the Allen Weisselberg family, with the new favorite song of “Flipper.”  https://youtu.be/EifnM3pRLdQ

You would think that according to the Salmore axiom, a candidate with all Jack Ciattarelli’s positive attributes would merit a good, effective campaign.  Indeed, his insurgent campaign in 2017 against the then Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno was a thing of beauty of which I wrote most positively.  https://www.insidernj.com/message-ciattarelli-matters/

And in 2017, Jack Ciattarelli was a breath of independent fresh air, creatively issue oriented and distinguished by its total independence from both Donald Trump, whom he then accurately referred to as a charlatan and an embarrassment, and the hero of Beachchairgate, Chris Christie.

By contrast, in 2021, Jack Ciattarelli‘s primary gubernatorial candidacy has been the most ineffective and counter-productive campaign in modern New Jersey political history.   The main feature of this campaign has been Ciattarelli’s pathetic and shameful obeisance to Donald Trump and his adoring Jonestown-like Kool-Aid drinking followers, known as the MAGA mob.

Obviously, Ciattarelli thinks he cannot win the primary in 2021 unless he is perceived as paying total tribute to The Donald and his MAGA minions.  What Ciattarelli seems to fail to understand is that this is a price not worth paying.  If the GOP gubernatorial candidate is viewed as a Trump acolyte, which Ciattarelli now appears to be, there is not a chance in hell of his defeating incumbent Governor Phil Murphy.  Assuming Jack Ciattarelli does win the primary, his embrace of Donald Trump and MAGA in 2021 makes the New Jersey GOP Gubernatorial nomination a prize not worth having.

Ciattarelli has also engaged throughout the campaign in silly sloganeering, referring to Phil Murphy as “not New Jersey.”  That is absolute absurd nonsense – throughout their adult lives, Phil and Tammy Murphy have been the consummate model New Jersey citizens, engaging themselves in a wide variety of New Jersey civic causes.

What is DECIDEDLY NOT New Jersey is Donald Trump and the MAGA mob whom Ciattarelli now politically embraces, even to the extent of attending a “Stop the Steal” rally, of which Jack claimed to have no knowledge of its purpose.

The degree to which Ciattarelli and his campaign appear to live in mortal political dread of Trump and the MAGA mob was brought home to me by a Ciattarelli mail piece I received last weekend.

I regarded the Hirsh Singh and Phil Rizzo MAGA-loving campaigns as political clown shows, not worthy

of response.  I did not take seriously public polls that would show either Singh or Rizzo within striking distance of Ciattarelli.

Evidently, the internal polling of the Ciattarelli campaign must show Singh or Rizzo poised to score an upset victory in the 2021 GOP gubernatorial nomination sweepstakes. Hence, the Ciattarelli anti-Singh mail piece this past weekend, in which Jack boasts of having voted for Donald Trump’s reelection and blasts Barack Obama for his foreign policy.  Obama is revered in the African-American community in New Jersey, where Trump is despised.  In the general election, Ciattarelli will have as much chance of getting substantial African-American support as I would have of getting Shiite Muslim support in Teheran.

All this was a matter of Ciattarelli political misjudgment.  There was one issue, however, in which the Ciattarelli political misjudgment rose to the level of political malpractice – political misjudgment so profound that it raises questions regarding Ciattarelli’s capacity to govern, especially with regard to his messaging and issue prioritization.  That was the issue of the Donald Trump inspiration of the January 6, 2021 insurrection in the nation’s capital and the need to have an independent commission investigate same.

As Charles Stile reported two days later on January 8, Ciattarelli pinned the blame on both parties for creating the “hyper partisan rhetoric that” inflamed not only the Capitol riot, but the violent protests in cities last year.

“No one is innocent here. We need a bipartisan, zero-tolerance policy on this behavior — both in word and action,” he said in a statement. “As someone aspiring to be governor and the leader of our state, I am committed to leading the way and making New Jersey a model for how our country can move forward.”

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/charles-stile/2021/01/07/us-capitol-riots-nj-republicans-condemn-violence-trump/6585714002/

Now this response was a shameful political catastrophe, in which Ciattarelli appears to condone both Trump’s defiance of the rule of law and his extremism.

Ciattarelli has claimed that he was unaware of the circumstances of the insurrection at the time he made these comments.  It is now nearly five months, however, since Jack made these statements.  Why has Ciattarelli still not corrected these pathetic responses?

This morning, the Republicans in the United States Senate filibustered a proposal for the creation of an independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection.  This is a moment of supreme disgrace for both the Republican Party and their acolytes in the media who authored exercises in sophistry, defending the GOP opposition to the formation of the proposed commission.

Yet it offers an opportunity for Jack Ciattarelli.

He can at long last correct his grossly incorrect initial statements regarding the insurrection by ascribing to Trump his well-deserved blame for same.  And he can give himself at least some small measure of credibility by stating his disagreement with the Senate filibuster and his strong advocacy of the creation of an investigatory commission.  If he at least supports the commission creation, he can claim to be following the example of former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, who has issued a letter advocating the commission formation.  That, Jack, is REAL Jersey.

I doubt that Jack will do this, however.  He has become a political prisoner of the MAGA mob and lives in dread of their giving the nomination to Hirsh Singh.

That’s unfortunate.  Jack will win the Republican nomination he rendered worthless by his submissiveness to the Donald.  I see little possibility of Jack Ciattarelli defeating Phil Murphy in the general election, even if he issues these corrective statements.  But at least he will have some chance of avoiding a landslide of historic proportions.

Otherwise, Jack Ciattarelli has as much chance of defeating Phil Murphy as Floyd Patterson had of defeating Sonny Liston.  And for the rest of his political life, as Marlon Brando said in the movie, On the Waterfront, Jack will have to say, “I could have been a contender.”

Alan Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.