#Governor issues dominate ad wars full

WHERE’S MURPHY? - In Palisades Park to visit a Pre-K classroom and make an announcement at 11 a.m. But in the ad, he’s shown speaking with a “Stop the Steal” sign behind him. What’s harder for Ciattarelli to explain is that he claimed not to have known it was a “Stop the Steal” rally and that it turned into something else after he spoke there. But there’s no context around the quote, so it could have just as easily - and perhaps more likely - been Ciattarelli talking about his own campaign. It uses a clip of Ciattarelli saying he’s “working hard to make sure things go our way.” The ad’s implication is he’s talking about overturning the election. Given that, and the way it cut against well-respected, nonpartisan polls, it didn’t gain any attention outside conservative Twitter and the blogosphere.īack to that Murphy ad.

#Governor issues dominate ad wars full

The one tight poll came from the conservative Club for Growth, only supplied to reporters with a summary - not the full dataset. They’ve shown Murphy with a double-digit lead. As for the tightening numbers, we have few public polls to go on. Remember: He went negative on Kim Guadagno in 2017, and Murphy’s surrogates have been trashing Ciattarelli for months. He could also be doing it to run up the numbers, try to establish state legislative coattails or a number of other reasons. But I’ve also seen campaigns where the incumbent goes negative against a challenger even when it’s not close. At the same time, the Democratic Governors Association’s PAC launched an ad hitting Ciattarelli on abortion.Ĭiattarelli adviser Chris Russell said on Twitter that Murphy’s initial positive ad “was a head fake intended to fool the press into reporting that Murphy isn’t worried” and that “they’ve shifted most of their spend behind the negative.”

It uses footage of Ciattarelli at a “Stop the Steal” rally he attended not long after the election - a rally that featured a guy not only holding a confederate flag but dressed like one. Of course, the ad ties Ciattarelli to Trump. Phil Murphy's campaign launched a negative one against Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli. It’s notable, for instance, that a day after launching a positive ad, Gov. They are, after all, advertisements, and if campaigns want them on the airwaves or in publications, they can pay for them.īut they can still tell us something. My personal policy is to not write about campaign ads just because they exist.