The Most Electable NJ GOP Gubernatorial Prospect – Holly Schepisi
New Jersey Republican players are awash in a sea of optimism regarding the 2025 gubernatorial campaign. This is due to the closer than expected margin in the Garden State between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the November presidential general election. This optimism may be very misplaced, however, depending on the actions of the incoming Trump administration.
If, for example, Trump conducts a major deportation of undocumented immigrants, affecting the lives of thousands of New Jersey Hispanics or makes large reductions in Social Security or Medicare benefits, the result will be a massive backlash against the New Jersey Republican Party. The 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial election will then become a referendum on such Trump administration policies, which would virtually ensure a Democratic gubernatorial victory.
Yet aside from this, the NJGOP has a major electability problem regarding its three major gubernatorial candidates. State Senator Jon Bramnick is the most electable GOP candidate in the general election, but unwinnable in the primary. Radio host Bill Spadea could well prevail in the primary, but in the general election, he is a certain loser. While Jack Ciattarelli is the putative frontrunner, his past tergiversations and equivocations regarding Donald Trump have resulted in substantial losses of credibility among both MAGA and mainstream GOP primary voters. A brief analysis of all three candidates follows.
Jon Bramnick
Bramnick has been an outstanding state legislator for over two decades. He has maintained a coherent and comprehensive center-right political philosophy throughout his tenure. His ethics are unimpeachable, and his competence as a lawyer is outstanding. His knowledge of state government is topflight, and he has the knowledge and administrative and people skills to be an outstanding state governor. If nominated, he would have a very good chance of being elected.
The day before Election Day 2024, I opined to a friend that if Trump lost the national election to Kamala Harris, Bramnick could emerge as the leading New Jersey Republican gubernatorial prospect for the post-Trump era. As the leading anti-Trump New Jersey opinion journalist, I admired his courage and incisiveness in refusing to support Donald Trump, his party’s candidate for president in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
Unfortunately for Bramnick, Donald Trump won in 2024. He will remain the avatar of the Republican Party until discredited by events. As long as Trump retains that status, Jon Bramnick cannot win a statewide New Jersey Republican primary.
Bill Spadea
Spadea has two major assets that could enable him to win the Republican primary. First, he will have the support of the overwhelming majority of MAGA voters. Second, he has the endorsement of George Gilmore, the powerful and effective chair of the Ocean County Republican Committee. The combination of a large victory in Ocean County, which will have the largest vote in the 2025 GOP primary, plus a majority of MAGA voters throughout the state could enable Bill Spadea, with his not insubstantial communication skills and charisma, to prevail in the 2025 NJGOP gubernatorial primary.
There are aspects to Spadea which actually make him more likable than Trump. The Donald is anti-intellectual and communicates a negative sense of empathy which appeals only to a voter’s grievance and anger. Spadea projects a hopeful Reaganesque empathy to voters and also possesses a healthy degree of historical intellectualism. Also, unlike Trump, Spadea is neither racist nor a misogynist. He is without personal or financial scandal and leads a monogamous lifestyle.
Yet due to his vehement anti-abortion choice stance, Spadea would be doomed in the 2025 gubernatorial general election. Abortion choice is a third rail of New Jersey politics. Rather than deemphasizing his anti-abortion choice views a la Chris Christie in the 2009 election, Spadea has made them the centerpiece of his campaign. Such a positioning is anathema to the great majority of women voters and consigns Bill Spadea to a landslide general election defeat.
Jack Ciatarelli
In the 2017 Republican gubernatorial primary, Jack Ciatarelli ran as a principled anti-Trump candidate and won my admiration. Unfortunately, unlike Jon Bramnick, Ciattarelli proved to be a man whose ambitions vitiated his principles.
A column I authored during the 2021 campaign described Ciattarelli’s obsequious efforts to appease and appeal to MAGA voters, even going so far as to attend a MAGA Stop-the-Steal rally. These efforts only won him the mistrust of both MAGA and mainstream GOP voters.
There is a pac group in this election, Kitchen Table Conservatives, independent of Ciatarelli but with the obvious objective of defeating Spadea, Ciatarelli’s principal primary opponent, on the grounds that Spadea is insufficiently pro-Trump. Such efforts will undoubtedly result in abysmal failure. One may be harshly critical of Spadea on various grounds, but not of being insufficiently pro-Trump.
I am not saying that Ciattarelli absolutely cannot win either a primary or general gubernatorial election. The mistrust factor does persist, however, and hampers both his nomination and general election chances.
The electoral problems facing Ciattarelli, Bramnick, and Spadea raise the incentive for Bergen County State Senator Holly Schepisi to run for governor. She is the most electable gubernatorial prospect in the New Jersey Republican Party. She is everybody’s favorite for the GOP Lieutenant Governor nomination, but she has not yet ruled out a gubernatorial run.
On the issue of Trump, Holly has maintained a consistent position of unenthusiastic, but never disloyal support. This makes her acceptable to all wings of the GOP in the primary and the prospective candidate least likely to be negatively impacted by any downturn in Trump’s approval ratings in the general. On abortion, she has taken a sensible centrist position, defending a woman’s right to choose while willing to consider common sense restrictions.
There are two major benefits that a Schepisi gubernatorial candidacy would bestow on the NJGOP. First, she would give the GOP a solid chance to carry Bergen County in the general. Indeed, her political heritage is with the Bergen County Cary Edwards Republicans. The late Cary Edwards would have been a great governor had he been elected in 1989 or 1993. Second, more than any other candidate, she gives the Republicans a fighting chance to garner a greater share of the vote of white college educated women.
Prior to the 2019 general election, I authored a column effusively praising Schepisi for both her governmental and attorney skills. She would make an outstanding governor of New Jersey. To run, however, she will have to soon decide to enter the primary in order to raise sufficient funds and hire staff.
Alan J. Steinberg of Highland Park 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. He graduated from Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin Law School. He is the host of the Dynamic Political Centrism podcast, published on Substack.
…. and what if Trump is successful? Never considered in an Alan Steinberg column.
“Unless there is an unforeseen event occurring between now and Election Day, the decisive victory of Kamala Harris in the debate this past Tuesday put her on an irresistible road to the White House.
“The key moment in the debate signaling Trump’s political demise was his claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio are stealing and eating dogs and cats. This statement has created an irrebuttable presumption that Donald Trump is a person of unsurpassed mendacity, a hater of People of Color on the level of a Ku Klux Klansman, and a person of remarkable stupidity. He is now an individual of total ridicule.”
“All signs now point to a clear and decisive Joe Biden reelection victory.
“Trump’s recent New York State criminal conviction in the “hush money” case, the civil court finding of his rape of E. Jean Carroll, his long irrefutable record as a racist, including his defamation of the Central Park Five, his documented discriminations against people of color as a Brooklyn landlord in the 1970s , and the recent report of his use of the N-word as a producer of “The Apprentice,” all prove his manifest unfitness for the presidency. Yet what dooms him to defeat is his rapidly diminishing advantage over Biden on the management of the economy, which has been narrowed in the polls from eleven to four percent. Consumer confidence is now up by 4.5 points, further signifying the end of the public perception of Trump as a more effective economy manager.
“And yesterday, Trump proved himself to be politically unfit for the presidency as well. He established himself as a political dunce by trashing the GOP convention city of Milwaukee as a “horrible city.” This guarantees his loss in the vital swing state of Wisconsin.”
“Now you have the ultimate trifecta of evil: Donald Trump, racist, rapist, and felon. And does any level-headed person believe that America will elect as president a racist rapist and convicted felon?
“Not a chance. Trump’s political career is over. As I predicted before this case was heard, the felony conviction will make Trump a certain loser in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – independent, undecided voters will turn against him overwhelmingly. Trump cannot be elected in 2024 without winning one of these three states.”
Alan Steinberg has been wrong on every count regarding the 2024 Presidential Election–WON BY DONALD J. TRUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s called JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE. Steinberg should be canned for being an irrelevant commenter who is beholden to the Deep State (e.g., he was a bureaucrat for G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney; yes, the same Dick Cheney who made a lightly veiled threat that we need to stop Trump by any means possible–including assassination). Cheney’s daughter, Liz, said the same thing, while she ran a criminal-enterprise J6 committee where she tampered with, concealed and destroyed evidence of the committee when it became apparent that Trump was going to win the presidential election.
Joe Biden was debunked as brain-addled candidate who was/is non compos mentis. So was Kabala Kamala Harris. Harris had no redeeming qualities other than she “slept her way to the top”. She showed exactly who she was in her post-Hawaii vacation TV comments–She’s a drunkard, cocaine snorter, and mentally disturbed.
Alan Steinberg is an irrelevant author/commenter who needs to be investigated for election interference and election fraud by the incoming Trump-appointed New Jersey U.S. District Attorney.
Calling Steinberg a journalist is an insult to anyone with a keyboard. He’s a leftist…masquerading as that loathsome of all creatures – a moderate Republican….which is a group of wanna be politicos who want to be liked more than they want to be effective – in the same vein as Bramnick is a mushy moderate who did next to nothing in Trenton for years except collect a paycheck and make bad jokes . Does Steinberg he really know anything about Holly Schepisi, or did Holly’s father pay him to write this drivel?
I recall an episode of On the Record with Michael Aron when Holly Schepisi told of a relative’s experience at an emergency room with all the surprise billing, the out of network difficulties and the separate billing by the ER doctors. This of course had been known by anyone with a heartbeat because it had been common knowledge and a miserable experience for many for years. Yet the Blonde Smile was shocked, yes shocked that something like this existed. Just another clueless elected official. Good to see the republicans gave her a new image, some tutorials on life and a dye job to make her look ‘smarter’ took hold or just enough for her to keep her seat.
Commenter No. 1,2,3,4—-our evening commenter from Pennsylvania has returned.
JUST WONDERING……..Thomas Jefferson 1776 has commented in the past that his grandchildren live in Pennsylvania and are doing very well in school.
If you are the parent of these PA children, you must be very proud, AND rightly so!!!
What IS commenter Kathleen Demarest talking about??? If she has nothing important to impart to the rest of us New Jerseyans, then she should say nothing at all. She is so far wide of the mark in her commenting, it almost sounds like she has a case of dementia–or worse; Biden’s Disease.
Thomas Jefferson 1776/No Marxist in DC,
Dementia or not, I Do REMEMBER your comment about running for Congress, the year, and the CD.
It is living with the retired columns.
It is easy to find if you know the title, author, date, and time..
I can even mail you a copy if you wish.
YES, I would do that for you, happily.