GOP Governor Hopeful snags A Bergen Democrat’s Endorsement. Does That Mean Anything?

New Jersey Monitor

Terrence T. McDonald Terrence T. McDonald Terrence T. McDonald

Is a party switch by a Bergen County Democrat a sign of doom for Dems in this year’s race for governor, or a desperate push by the Republican candidate to project bipartisan bona fides?

That’s the question from Thursday night, when Jack Ciattarelli, the GOP former assemblyman hoping to seize the governor’s mansion back from Democrats, touted an endorsement from Garfield Mayor Everett E. Garnto Jr., a Democrat who said he is changing his party registration to Republican and backing Ciattarelli over Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill.

Garfield Mayor Everett E. Garnto Jr. after speaking at a campaign event for Jack Ciattarelli in Garfield on Sept. 4, 2025. (Photo by New Jersey Monitor)

New Jersey under Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy is broken, Garnto told reporters Thursday.

“Over the last seven and a half years, the policies that Murphy has put out, it’s ruining the state,” he said. “Mr. Ciattarelli is the guy to turn it around.”

Garfield, sandwiched between Routes 21 and 46 in southern Bergen County and home to about 6,300 registered voters, is not a purple city. After going for Republican George H.W. Bush over Democrat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 campaign for the White House, it voted for the Democrat in every subsequent presidential race — until 2024, when it voted for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by about 1,000 votes. In governor’s races, Garfield voters also tend to stick with Democrats. In 2013, when Republican Gov. Chris Christie won statewide in a landslide over Democrat Barbara Buono, Christie’s margin of victory in Garfield was only about 100 votes. This is a Dem stronghold, one where Sherrill shouldn’t have to worry about a local Democrat campaigning against her.

Still, Garnto is no typical Democrat. Voter registration records indicate he was a Republican as recently as 2016, when he cast a ballot in that year’s GOP primary (when, of course, Trump ran his first campaign for the White House). He was a Democrat by 2020, though he does not appear to have participated in the June 2020 presidential primary.

A social media post from Garfield Mayor Everett Garnto showing off Trump-branded socks.

And he’s made no secret of his love for Trump. He posted on social media about going to Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, and in August 2023 he shared a close-up of Trump 2020 socks with the caption, “2024” followed by nine exclamation points. He told reporters on Thursday that he voted for Trump in November.

I asked Garnto about his back-and-forth party switches and he said local politics is what made him flip from Republican to Democrat years ago. Democrats dominate in Bergen County, and that’s the party with the money and the machine muscle.

“In 2016 is when I first ran for the board of education and people in Garfield basically said, ‘Hey, listen, you should join the Democratic Party.’ I was unaffiliated at that time, and I just did, and since then, I’ve voted for Democrats, Republicans,” he said.

Garfield’s local elections are nonpartisan, so Garnto’s political affiliation is largely irrelevant for his own campaigns. But merely the news that Ciattarelli has picked up an endorsement from a Democratic elected official in prized territory like Bergen County is good for Republicans, according to Dan Cassino, a pollster and government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

“Any Republican running statewide in New Jersey has to make themselves acceptable to moderate Democrats and independents, and pointing out support from Democrats is an easy way to do that. Chris Christie was very interested in getting Democratic endorsements for much the same reason. Saying that the mayor of Garfield is on your side doesn’t help much, but saying that even Democrats in the state are backing the Republican does help,” Cassino told me.

Some Democrats may laugh at this idea, and cite public polling not just of the governor’s race but also of Trump’s job approval here in New Jersey. But my guess is they also would have laughed last October if someone told them Trump was going to win Passaic County.

To find out more about Garnto, I talked to someone who works with him and was once mayor of Garfield himself: Garfield Councilman Richard Rigoglioso, who goes by Richie Riggs. Rigoglioso, a Democrat, told me he respects Garnto’s decision to switch parties, but he hadn’t thought of the mayor as a Democrat.

“He’s more independent than Democrat,” Rigoglioso said.

Rigoglioso said he thinks Garfield swinging to Trump in 2024 was an aberration, the result of the last-minute switch at the top of the Dem ticket and not an indication that the town is lurching rightward.

“Is Ciattarelli going to win Garfield? Garfield’s still a blue city. It just happened to be that Trump was the better candidate that day. I don’t think our mayor is going to sway that pendulum one way or the other,” he said.

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