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Campaigns make final get-out-the-vote push in New Jersey governor race
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Mike Hayes
Published Oct 27, 2025
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Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images
By
Mike Hayes
Published Oct 27, 2025
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Diane Tolkowsky jokes that when she moved to Morristown, New Jersey 37 years ago, she was one of just five Democrats in all of Morris County.
Now, she said she’s spent much of the fall going house to house in the county, knocking on doors and talking with voters about Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee vying to be the state’s next governor. Tolkowsky began volunteering for Sherrill seven years ago when she was running for Congress during the first Trump administration.
“ I've pretty much run the gamut with what I've done for the campaign over the years,” she said.
Both Sherrill and her Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli are engaged in a final push of voter outreach less than two weeks before Election Day on Nov. 4. Polls show an ever-tightening race. Sherrill has been more publicly visible after facing criticism for running a meek campaign compared to Ciattarelli, who has embarked on a whirlwind tour of the state’s diners to shake hands with New Jerseyans.
But some political observers say one of Sherrill’s advantages may lie in a cadre of women like Tolkowsky who have volunteered with the Democrat for years and say they were thrust into politics by their opposition to President Donald Trump. Sherrill’s campaign, which has worked to tie Ciattarelli to the president as much as possible, sees them as a key to her success in November, according to spokesperson Rajan Srinivasan, who said Sherrill’s grassroots team has knocked on over 595,000 doors, made over 2 million phone calls, and sent over 3.9 million text messages.
”You're seeing up and down the state for Democrats, in the different counties, you're seeing door knocking parties and phone calling parties and postcard mailing parties,” said Matthew Hale, associate politics professor at Seton Hall University. “They recognize that Sherrill needs every Democrat to win.”
The Ciattarelli campaign did not respond to a request for similar grassroots outreach numbers or to questions about the role volunteers are playing in the Republican’s campaign.
Diane Tolkowsky with Mikie Sherrill.
Mike Sherrill for Governor
For Tolkowsky, that opposition to Trump is rooted in his mocking of a disabled New York Times journalist in 2015. Tolkowsky’s brother is disabled. The incident angered her, she said.
“He’s not a good person. He's scary,” she said of the president. “He's gotten even worse, the way he’s dehumanized people.”
Sherrill’s 2018 run for Congress prompted Tolkowsky to volunteer for a political campaign for the first time, she said. “I immediately felt at home and I knew that I wanted to be part of that.”
That year, a wave of women candidates helped flip the House of Representatives into Democratic hands during Trump’s first term. Sherrill wasn’t just the first candidate to turn Tolkowsky’s district blue in 34 years — she also flipped it by 37 points.
“We had the largest swing from red to blue in the entire country because of a grassroots movement that was ready for change and leaders willing to take on anyone, including Trump,” Sherrill told Gothamist. “I’m so grateful to those who’ve been with me since 2018 and the thousands of people I’ve met across the state who are driving record engagement to deliver a strong message on Nov. 4.”
Ashley Koning, director of the Rutgers University Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, said get-out-the-vote door knocking may seem outdated when some candidates are able to galvanize support on TikTok and Instagram. But she said they’re still essential components of political campaigns in the weeks before an election.
“It sounds so overly simplistic, but it's going to be won or lost on ground game and on turnout,” Koning said.
Lori Montague, who originally hails from Sherrill’s hometown of Montclair in Essex County, said she was first introduced to the candidate by a family friend, also during Sherrill’s first congressional run. Since then, she’s organized multiple campaign events, and appeared alongside Sherrill at the Llewellyn Park bar and grill in West Orange where Montague is the executive chef.
She said Trump’s endorsement and affiliation with Ciattarelli is fueling her commitment to Sherrill. The Republican candidate recently gave the president an A-grade for his second term.
Lori Montague with Mikie Sherrill.
Mike Sherrill for Governor
Montague, who is Black, said she’s alarmed by what she called the Trump administration’s attempts at “dismantling” Black history. In August, Trump publicly criticized the Smithsonian Institution for, in his words, overly focusing on "how bad slavery was." Since then, the administration has ordered National Parks to remove some photos and materials portraying the history of slavery.
“He's trying to downplay the challenges that we've worked so hard to overcome, the challenges that we still experience. It's no secret that this country was built on the backs of slaves, many of whom are my ancestors,” Montague said, adding that she still has copies of her great-great-grandmother’s slave papers.
She now spends time each week door-knocking in East Orange, where she now lives. The area has become a popular locale for ex-New Yorkers migrating across the Hudson, and Montague said she’s worked to register new New Jerseyans to vote in the Garden State.
‘All gas, no brake’
Ciattarelli has conveyed his own brand of energy with his robust criss-crossing of the state. At a recent stop in Roxbury, he told a crowd of supporters that he'd hit all 600 diners in the Garden State.
“My kids say to me all the time, dad, you're taking a few years off the back end. This is the only way I know how to go. All gas, no brake,” Ciattarelli said.
Republican Jack Ciattarelli with supporters at a restaurant in Paterson, New Jersey.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
His marathon tour of diners has even taken him into Democratic strongholds. On Wednesday, he was on the ground talking to voters at the Park Diner and Pancake House in Linden, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 4 to 1.
”[Ciattarelli] seems to be a little bit more active, going to different places that Republicans don't normally go,” said Hale of Seton Hall University, noting that Ciattarelli appears to be attending more events himself than Sherrill. “Part of that is because he has to, Mikie Sherrill doesn't have to play in his lane, but he has to play in hers in order to win.”
The same is true in Camden, a South Jersey city that Democrats would hope to carry by a big margin. At a campaign event there earlier this month, Ciattarelli drew a crowd of about 50 that filled the parking lot of the famous Donkey’s Place restaurant downtown.
Ciattarelli has run on lowering property taxes and developing low-cost housing in the state’s urban centers, among other issues, and some said they believe he would be better than a Democrat on economic issues.
“Jack is the man that will put forth the effort to invest in our commercial corridor, so that will help to make Camden great again,” said Keith Walker, a longtime Camden resident.
Supporters cheer as New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate, Jack Ciattarelli, speaks at a restaurant popular with the Latino community in Paterson, New Jersey.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Sherrill was slower to hit the campaign trail in earnest, Koning said. It’s a criticism Ciattarelli wielded in the candidates’ first debate.
“ I'm actually pleasantly surprised to see her tonight. I thought I might see a surrogate,” he said on stage. “If you want this job, interview for the job, get up and down the state.”
But Sherrill’s campaign schedule has filled up as Election Day approaches. Over the past few weekends, for example, Sherrill held get-out-the-vote events with notable Democrats with a national platform, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gov. Wes Moore from Maryland. The campaign has also announced a rally in Newark on Nov. 1 with former President Barack Obama, who endorsed Sherrill this month.
That may be partly to do with her shrinking lead in the polls. Although registered Democrats in New Jersey outnumber Republicans by over 800,000, Sherrill's 20-point lead over Ciattarelli in the spring has shrunk down to a 5- to 8-point lead, according to most polls.
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new jersey
Mike Hayes
Mike Hayes covers equity and access to opportunity in New Jersey. He joined WNYC and Gothamist in 2023. Before that, he worked as a freelance journalist writing about policing and criminal justice. He has written for ProPublica, CNN, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News and The Appeal. He is also the author of the book, “The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.” In 2019, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
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