Voters start on picking candidates to replace Chris Christie

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A former Wall Street executive and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s second-in-command are the leading candidates Tuesday as voters begin choosing who will replace the unpopular Republican governor.

The winners in Tuesday’s primaries will compete in the Nov. 7 general election. It will be one of two statewide gubernatorial contests in the country this year, along with Virginia, and the first since Republican President Donald Trump took office.

The candidates are little known, even in New Jersey, and are competing as Trump administration developments swamp headlines, spurring the Democratic candidates to lash out at the president and wedging Republicans between an unpopular White House and a GOP governor whom most voters disapprove of.

On the Democratic side, candidates attacked wealthy front-runner Phil Murphy over his time as an executive at Goldman Sachs. They compared him to members of Trump’s administration who also worked there and former Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, another Goldman Sachs alumnus who, like Murphy, donated to local New Jersey Democratic parties.

“What most New Jerseyans care about are taxes. They care about reforming the pension. They care about the cost of college,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. “But what the candidates talk about is Mr. Trump and Mr. Corzine, probably not the concerns of most New Jerseyans.”

Murphy, a Middletown resident who served as Barack Obama’s ambassador to Germany after chairing the Democratic National Committee’s finance arm, loaned his campaign more than $16 million.

The race to take the New Jersey governor’s office back from a Republican comes as Democrats nationally weigh whether distancing themselves from Wall Street will help them counter Trump and his populist Republican allies. Murphy blurs the line between establishment and insurgent just as Democrats reckon with whether their best candidates should come from within or outside the traditional party structure.

Murphy faces challenges from former Teaneck firefighter Bill Brennan, one-time Clinton administration Treasury official Jim Johnson, state Sen. Ray Lesniak, Assemblyman John Wisniewski and Tenafly Councilman Mark Zinna.

When he voted in Sayreville Tuesday, Wisniewski said half the electorate was undecided. Johnson and his wife, Mary, also cast ballots.

The top Republican in the race is Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno. She was twice elected on the ticket with the term-limited governor, but she has gone to great lengths to try to highlight their differences.

Christie, who remained neutral during the campaign, said he voted for Guadagno.