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TRENTON, NEW JERSEY —New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy narrowly won reelection Wednesday, eking out a victory that spared Democrats the loss of a second gubernatorial seat.
He's the state's first Democratic governor to get a second straight term in 44 years, defeating Republican former New Jersey General Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli.
AP called the race Wednesday evening when a new batch of votes from Republican leaning Monmouth County increased Murphy's lead and closed the door to a Ciattarelli comeback.
Ballots left
Ballots remaining to be counted included a significant number of votes from predominantly Democratic Essex County, along with mail-in votes spread across other counties. Murphy won the mail-in vote by a wide margin, even in Republican leaning counties like Monmouth.
Ciattarelli spokesperson Stami Williams disputed the call because of the close margin, calling it "irresponsible."
Ciattarelli waged a formidable campaign in the heavily Democratic New Jersey, his spending nearly equaling the governor's and outpacing the GOP's performance four years ago. But Murphy's advantages, including 1 million more registered Democrats, proved too much for the Republican to overcome.
The victory gives Democrats a silver lining after GOP businessman Glenn Youngkin defeated Terry McAuliffe in Virginia's gubernatorial race - prompting worries that President Joe Biden's sagging approval ratings are hurting the party. This year's elections were the first major tests of voter sentiment since Biden took office.
The closeness of the race surprised experts, who watched public polls showing Murphy leading comfortably and looked to his party's registration advantage.
"If you asked anybody several months ago within the state, I think anyone would have predicted a high double-digit landslide for Murphy," said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.
Trend stopped
Murphy's win also ends the more than three-decade-old trend of the party opposite the president's winning in New Jersey's off-year governor's race. Voters came out in much higher rates for Ciattarelli this year than they did for his GOP predecessor in 2017.
The 64-year-old governor said he was acutely aware of the political trends, calling them an "animating" force for his reelection effort that spurred him to run as if he were 10 points behind.
Murphy built his campaign around the progressive accomplishments he signed into law - like a phased-in, $15-an-hour minimum wage and paid sick leave along with taxes on the wealthy - and brought Democratic allies, like progressive U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, in to campaign for him.
With a Democrat-led Legislature, Murphy achieved most of the promises he made in his first run four years ago when he vied to succeed Republican Chris Christie. Paid sick leave, taxpayer-financed community college and some pre-kindergarten, tighter gun laws, expanded voting access, recreational marijuana, more state aid for schools and a fully funded public pension - all promised and all delivered during the first term. A proposal for a public bank to finance projects went unfulfilled.
Murphy is a former Goldman Sachs executive and served as ambassador to Germany under former President Barack Obama, who campaigned for Murphy in the weeks before Election Day.
He has said his next term will be about enacting a Reproductive Freedom Act aimed at codifying Roe v. Wade in the state as well as additional gun control laws and the expansion of taxpayer-financed pre-kindergarten for 3-year-olds.
Headwinds facing Democrats, like Biden's falling approval ratings and congressional Democrats' struggles to enact their agenda didn't factor heavily enough into some experts' pre-election analysis, said Ben Dworkin, the director of Rowan University's Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship. He counted himself among them.
A spokesperson for Ciattarelli said Wednesday that the campaign was focused on the vote count and said that a possible legal pursuit of a recount was on the table. Murphy also called Wednesday morning for every vote to be counted.
New Jersey does not have an automatic recount law, but the candidates are permitted to request one. The party that wants a recount has to file a suit in State Superior Court in the counties where they want to contest tallies. That has to be done within 17 days of Election Day.
Ciattarelli is a former state Assembly member, serving until 2018. He's the founder of a medical publishing company called Galen Publishing, and served as a local and county official in Somerset.
He walked a line between standing up for the moderate stances he had in the Legislature - like supporting Roe v. Wade - and appealing to Republicans who embraced Trump, particularly on cultural issues that have captured attention across the country.