Sen. Gopal Declares Victory, Assembly Race Too Close To Call

FREEHOLD, NJ — Sen. Vin Gopal has declared victory over Republican challenger Lori Annetta on Friday, touting in a press release his resistance over the "Republican Red Wave" that swept through the state.

The 11th District race hasn't yet been called by the Associated Press. While some mail-in ballots have yet to be counted, Gopal is 2,077 votes (or 3.04 percentage points) ahead of Annetta as of early Friday afternoon. That's still far from his upset victory in 2017 when he flipped District 11th's Senate seat with about a 7 percent lead against then-Sen. Jennifer Beck.

"I am deeply thankful to the voters across the 11th Legislative District for entrusting in me the duty to serve them for another term in the State Senate,” Gopal said in a statement. "Perhaps most importantly, I will continue to be a strong advocate for a return to civility in our politics."

The State Assembly race is still too-close-to-call in District 11 and the two Democratic incumbents, Joann Downey and Eric Houghtaling, are trailing the Republican candidates by less than a percentage point. In 2017, both comfortably won the seat with close to a 5 percent lead over their opponents, Robert Acerra and Michael Whelan.

Associate Director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University John Weingart said that the Democratic Party benefited from a post-Trump election wave of enthusiasm four years ago.

"A lot of organizing of Democrats and independents and some Republicans who were put off by or terrified by Donald Trump and wanted to express that and maybe help create some kind of buffer against him," he said.

That apparently wasn't present so much this time around, Weingart argued.

"There wasn't that same energy among Democrats, whereas there seemed to be among Republicans," he said. "I think Jack Ciattarelli was an attractive, appealing Republican nominee for Governor. So Republicans who wanted to go out and vote either for him because they liked him or against Murphy because of Murphy's statement about if you don't like taxes you shouldn't live here found themselves returning to the Republican party."

On social media, the Monmouth County Republican Committee noted that "a red tsunami hit Monmouth County."

According to the most recent results, Ciattarelli got 137,621 votes in Monmouth County— well over Murphy's 94,021.

"We won LD12, LD13, LD30 and looking positive for a take back of LD11 which has 14,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. We won every incumbent seat and flipped 13 seats across the county," the committee wrote. "The Monmouth GOP dominated Monmouth County!"

Weingart pointed out that District 11, which used to be a Republican area and changed over time to be thought of as "almost reliably Democratic," turned out not to be so reliable.

"Looking across the state, there are so many districts where the same thing happened," he said.

Gopal's campaign manager Coby Eiss described the Senator's performance in the polls as proof of his "unique ability" to bring leaders together from both sides of the aisle.

“The 2021 elections across the state proved to be a red wave, and our district falls within Monmouth County, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli enjoyed nearly a 20-point advantage," he said. "Senator Gopal's significant win came even as many tremendous public officials across the county and throughout the state lost their seats in the Republican red wave on Election Night.”

While it's still unclear whether Democrats Joann Downey and Eric Houghtaling will be able to also resist the red wave and hold on to their seats in the General Assembly, Weingart pointed out that the assembly and senate candidates are usually considered together by the voters.

"There's always some deviation, but there have been very few districts before where there was a split," he said.

According to Weingart, some of the people who vote for the Senate candidate skip the General Assembly.

"They have some sense they may know, have an image of the Senator or the Senate candidates and just not recognize maybe the Assembly candidates and leave that blank. That's another factor," he said.

Weingart singled out Senator Stephen Sweeney's loss in the 3rd District as symbolic of the general election results.

"When looking at the Sweeney's race as the most startling outcome, trying to understand how that happened is probably some clue to what happened in other races," he said. "To a large extent, I think we don't know. Everybody's sort of speculating."