Ciattarelli Meets Friendly Crowd In Middletown Campaign Stop

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — A crowd of about 300 turned out for Republican governor candidate Jack Ciattarelli when he made a last-minute campaign stop in the New Monmouth section of Middletown Monday night.

The election in an increasingly close NJ governor's race is Tuesday.

Ciattarelli knew he was in friendly territory: Middletown is a majority Republican town, and a majority of Middletown residents voted for Donald Trump in both 2020 and 2016. This is despite the fact that Gov. Phil Murphy actually lives in Middletown, in the extremely wealthy Navesink River Road section.

Ciattarelli was also in the Middletown area just last week, when he made a campaign stop at No Limits Cafe in Red Bank. No Limits is a cafe owned by a Middletown husband-wife team that employs people with special needs.

This time around, Ciattarelli stopped at a volunteer firehouse at 125 Main Street in Port Monmouth at 5 p.m. Monday.

He had just come from a campaign stop at Chateau Madrid Restaurant and Bar in Carteret and from Middletown, was headed to Kelly's Tavern in Neptune.

This latest Stockton poll out Thursday shows Ciattarelli trailing 9 points behind Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy, which is a closer gap than this Monmouth University poll showed last week, which had Murphy 11 points ahead.

But Murphy famously said last week he's running this reelection "like he's 10 points behind."

President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders and Vice President Kamala Harris all campaigned for Murphy in New Jersey throughout October, with Sanders speaking at a Get Out The Vote rally of about 1,000 college students on the Rutgers campus last Thursday.

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