Dem
51
GOP
49
Of course it is underway, you might be thinking. After all, the previous item is about Joe Biden's campaign manager, and likely campaign announcement. 2024 is in full swing!
Silly reader, we were not referring to 2024. No, we meant 2025. There's no presidential race in '25, but two governor's mansions are up, namely New Jersey and Virginia. And the former seat will be vacant, as Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is term-limited. So, the race is already underway. Mayor Steve Fulop (D) has been running Jersey City for 10 years, apparently with some success. Before that, he was a U.S. Marine. Fulop thinks, with good reason, that his résumé sounds like the résumé of a candidate for high political office, so he has announced a bid for Murphy's job. Fulop nearly ran in 2017, before pulling out at the last minute and endorsing Murphy, so one suspects he'll have the Governor's backing in 2025.
The other side of the aisle in the Garden State also has its first contender, apparently. It's former state representative Jack Ciattarelli. Ciattarelli ran for governor in 2021 and lost, and in the same speech where he conceded to Murphy, he also announced his 2025 bid. The candidate has done nothing to back off that promise since then, so presumably his hat is still in the ring. The first poll of the race reveals that he has the broadest name recognition among Republican candidates, with 76% of Republicans saying they know who Ciattarelli is. That said, you might want to take that 76% with a little bit of salt, since Paula Hawkins was at 13% recognition and Vance Kassebaum was at 10%. Even readers who live in New Jersey and are very dialed in may be wondering who Hawkins and Kassebaum are. If so, then you're right on point. Hawkins and Kassebaum don't exist; they were inserted as controls to see how many people just claim to recognize every candidate for fear of looking ill-informed.
Meanwhile, if 2025 is just a little too close in time for your tastes, perhaps we can interest you in some 2026 campaign cycle news? A whole bunch of governorships will be up then, including the biggest of them all, namely California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will be term-limited. The Republicans will eventually find some rich person who can self-fund, and who wants to run as a vanity project. The Democratic side of the contest, on the other hand, will be brutal. The bench is deep in the Golden State, and with the two U.S. Senate seats very possibly locked up for a generation by then, every upwardly mobile Democrat in the state is going to take a long look at the possibility of replacing Newsom.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis (D) is well aware of this, and decided it's far better to be too early to the party than too late. And so, she officially declared her candidacy yesterday. Being official puts a target on her back and also causes California campaign finance laws to kick in. However, it also means that from now until Election Day, she has the cachet of being "gubernatorial candidate Eleni Kounalakis," which is of much greater interest to most people and media outlets than "Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis." Plus, she's been able to lock down a lot of the best strategic and fundraising talent.
The last person to serve as lieutenant governor of California, and then to declare a gubernatorial run well more than 3 years before the actual election, was... Gavin Newsom. So, this playbook seems to work fairly well. Other aspirants to Newsom's throne will now be under some amount of pressure to jump in, though the most serious competitor for Kounalakis might well be the loser of the Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)/Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) Senate race. And, of course, that loser can't exactly declare a gubernatorial run until their Senate run is dead and buried, which might very well not happen until November of next year. And what kind of political piker, these days, declares with a mere 2 years left until the election? (Z)