Trump holds tele-rallies for Virginia, New Jersey candidates on election eve

President Donald Trump made a last-minute effort to increase Republican turnout in Tuesday’s elections for governors of New Jersey and Virginia, but he only mentioned one Republican candidate by name.

While Trump talked about Jack Ciattarelli, his preferred candidate for governor of New Jersey, he did not name the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia: Winsome Earle-Sears. Instead, he largely urged his supporters to vote for the entire GOP ticket.

Trump endorsed Ciattarelli earlier this year, but did not support Earle-Sears, the state’s lieutenant governor. The president indicated Monday that he believed Ciattarelli had a better chance of winning on Election Day.

“You have to vote for Jack Ciattarelli, who is a great guy, a friend of mine, a great guy, a very successful man, who now wants to put all his effort into actually saving New Jersey, making it great again, saving it,” Trump said during the phone call in New Jersey, where he spoke for just under 9 minutes. “And he’s going to do it. He’ll be able to do it. The polls look really good.”

Trump spoke for about 8 minutes during a call with supporters in Virginia hosted by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, touting his endorsed candidate for state attorney general.

“Go out and vote tomorrow for Jason Miyares, very — so important — and for Republicans up and down the ballot,” Trump said, referring to the Republican incumbent who is in a tight race against Democrat Jay Jones.

The race for attorney general has been rocked by recent revelations of text messages in which Jones wrote that a top Republican colleague in the state House should be shot in the head. Jones has since apologized for the texts.

Earle-Sears is trailing former Rep. Abigail Spanberger in recent public polling and ad spending, while polls show Ciattarelli is in a more competitive race against Rep. Mikie Sherrill, although Sherrill’s lead has varied in recent polls.

Trump warned that Democratic victories in the two gubernatorial races would be “a catastrophe” and lead to higher energy costs.

The president’s remarks came shortly after he endorsed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the race for New York City mayor. Trump endorsed Cuomo, a longtime Democrat who is running as an independent, over Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in a three-way race with Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani.

It was not immediately clear how many voters participated in the tele-rallies. Youngkin said the call exceeded the 2021 call with Trump, which drew 450,000 supporters, but did not say how many supporters were listening Monday night.

New Jersey GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who organized the Garden State call, did not reference the number of participants.

Trump said New Jersey was the race to watch.

“This is the biggest election. The whole country is watching New Jersey,” Trump said.

New Jersey swung toward Trump by 10 percentage points last year compared to the 2020 presidential election, the second-largest swing of any state in the country. Engaging Trump voters who may be less likely to vote in an off-year gubernatorial race will be a key part of Ciattarelli’s path to victory against Sherrill, as well as winning over independents.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in voter registration in the state, and Trump lost New Jersey by 6 points last year. But Ciattarelli rejected any suggestion that Trump could be a liability in the race, even though voters nationally give the president low marks on his handling of the economy and the cost of living.

The New Jersey race “is all about property taxes. It’s about monthly electric bills. It’s about public safety, it’s about public education, it’s about overdevelopment,” Ciattarelli told reporters during a campaign stop at Murph’s Tavern in Totowa Monday morning. “These are New Jersey problems that my opponent wants to blame on the president. He has nothing to do with these things. It has everything to do with his party which has controlled Trenton for 25 years.”

Asked about the upcoming tele-rally with Trump, Ciattarelli said: “We appreciate what the president is doing to excite the base and remind them that they need to vote, as all New Jerseyans do. The future of our state is at stake.”

Trump endorsed Ciattarelli about a month before the June state primary, which Ciattarelli won handily. The former state lawmaker has had his own evolution from Trump over the years, as he ran for governor in two previous election cycles. Ciattarelli lost the GOP primary in 2017, but became the party’s nominee in 2021, losing the general election to Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy by 3 percentage points.

Both Murphy and Youngkin are term limited.

During Trump’s first presidential campaign, Ciattarelli called him a “charlatan” and said he was unfit to be president. After the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Ciattarelli did not campaign with Trump in that year’s gubernatorial race.

Ciattarelli has now embraced Trump and largely supported his policies, giving him an “A” rating in a recent debate.

“I think he’s right about everything he does,” Ciattarelli said of the president during that debate. “He has secured the border and the economy, we have much lower inflation than what it was when Joe Biden was in the White House.”

Cattarelli also said during the primary that he would welcome Trump to the Garden State to campaign. But Trump did not campaign in person, opting instead for a tele-rally on Monday and another late last month.

Ciattarelli said recently that he told Trump he could have won in 2021 if the president had campaigned in the state.

Trump indicated that he and Ciattarelli speak frequently, writing of Ciattarelli in a Truth Social article last month: “He calls me constantly, wanting assurance that I will use the power of common sense to help New Jersey with its record-rising energy bills.” »