Essex County Democratic Committee Chairman Leroy Jones commands one of the GOTV operations that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy would like performing with all-hands-on-deck ferocity on Election Day next week.

So what does the chairman tell that person he runs into on the street in his hometown of East Orange who shrugs off the election and conveys no feeling for the contest or the Democratic candidate?

“It’s simple,” Jones told InsiderNJ. “You point them south. You look at the nation’s capital and tell them, ‘that’s why Phil Murphy is important to New Jersey, so that we avoid another national disaster like that.’ Kim Guadagno is not too far away from that. She didn’t support Donald Trump for obvious reasons – he’s toxic. But she’s the lieutenant governor of Governor Chris Christie, who is inexplicably tied to Donald Trump. Kim Guadagno means more of the same of what we’re getting from the nation’s capital.”

InsiderNJ asked Jones if he sees Guadagno as a public figure who demonstrates lack of fitness for the governor’s office by virtue of having served as Christie’s number two. Will her professional formation during the Christie years essentially prep her to comfortably live under an amplified Trump?

“Absolutely,” said the Democratic chair of New Jersey’s most Democratic county. “She wasn’t independent from Christie. She had no voice. She was a lapdog. He said ‘cut a ribbon’ and she said ‘where are the scissors?’ He said ‘jump’ and she said ‘how high?’ Of course she showed some divergence with the governor [on the gas tax and statehouse renovation], but by then it was too late. She wears that.”