Who this GOP group wants — and doesn’t want — to see its N.J. governor’s race ads

In early September, Passaic County voters began seeing a YouTube ad claiming that utility rates will be worse under U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for New Jersey governor. It’s an accusation Sherrill and Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli have thrown at each other throughout the highly competitive race.

But more telling than the ad’s message was its target audience.

Passaic County — a majority non-white area with one of the state’s largest Hispanic populations and one of just three N.J. counties where white people aren’t the largest racial group — was selected to view the ad alongside eight counties that are far whiter.

YouTube ad audiences cannot be targeted by race, so advertisers rely on geography to reach certain communities, as well as gender and age. While the other counties chosen as the ad’s audience lean more Republican than the state as a whole, Passaic mirrors New Jersey as a whole with more Democrats.

The ad, which was viewed about 1.9 million times, was part of a $50,000 purchase from Change NJ, a pro-Ciattarelli super PAC run by former Trump advisers, including Kellyanne Conway. Under election law, super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with candidates’ campaigns, but the messaging tends to overlap anyway.

Both parties have spoken about the importance of reaching Hispanic voters in the race as the community is viewed as drifting away from the Democratic Party.

Passaic County represented a nationwide shift toward Trump among Hispanic voters in the 2024 election.

Former President Joe Biden won Passaic by 17 percentage points in 2020 before Trump won the county in 2024 by three percentage points as turnout plummeted by more than 27,500 votes.

Nationally, Trump lost Hispanic voters by only three percentage points in 2024 — a 12-point improvement from 2020, according to Pew.

But for over a month prior to this ad buy, Passaic was intentionally excluded from the super PAC’s audience across four attack ad buys of varying lengths that argued Sherrill doesn’t know what to do as governor, featuring a clip of her stammering in an interview when asked about her legislative priority. Also excluded were 17 municipalities that altogether have a non-white population of 82%. The state’s non-white population as a whole is 48%.

Out of the state’s 564 municipalities, just 17 have a lower proportion of white residents than the places excluded from these ads, including the city of Camden and Atlantic City.

These earlier summer ad buys also excluded women and people ages 45 and older, suggesting that the PAC was going for young, white, male voters. They cost roughly $54,000 altogether and were shown about 3.35 million times, according to YouTube data. (The group also made four similar ad buys without geographic parameters but targeted ages 35 to 64 in three and 18 to 44 in the fourth.)

The decision to add Passaic shows that Ciattarelli’s allies recognize an opportunity to draw voters outside their traditional base of support. But in the case of their YouTube ads, it’s the exception, not the rule.

Only five out of 21 counties in the state have a higher proportion of white residents than the counties included in the newer targeted ad buys, showing the group continued to target whiter areas even when adding Passaic.

The state as a whole is 25% Republican. The super PAC didn’t simply take the most Republican counties in the state to target, but the included counties are more Republican than the state average at 31%. The excluded municipalities were together 10% Republican.

Carlos Cruz, a spokesperson for Change NJ, said the super PAC decided to start including Passaic as a reaction to new information in the race — suggesting the group took note of the heightened importance of Hispanic voters.

Cruz, who previously worked on Trump’s ad outreach for Hispanic voters, said Change NJ went from a “tighter target” with the ad that excluded Passaic and women with other nonwhite areas to a “slightly broader” one also because of budgetary considerations.

According to Cruz, the YouTube ads make up only about 20% of the super PAC’s video budget. He said the group is “pursuing a targeted universe of disaffected members of the old Democrat coalition” and reaching non-white voters through other platforms that can target voters more precisely than YouTube but don’t share ad data publicly. He declined to share more details.

The ads come as Ciattarelli faces an extremely close race that he can likely only win with support from independents and disaffected Democrats.

That includes communities of color that were once reliably blue and have started to drift away from the Democratic Party.

Ciattarelli, after his three-point gubernatorial loss in 2021, said his campaign was “too white” and that he could have benefited from more support from Black and brown voters. This time, he said, his staff has “representation for minority communities all across the state,” which he said helps with outreach.

Meanwhile, the Sherrill campaign has been criticizing Ciattarelli for not answering a question last week about the importance of Black and Hispanic voters while fielding questions from reporters. He argued in an interview with The Inquirer that he didn’t take the question because it was unrelated to his news conference’s topic on overdevelopment, and that their role is “the same as it is for every registered voter across the state of New Jersey: to get out there, engage, listen, and share my ideas on how to fix New Jersey.”

“I’ve always prided myself on going places that other Republicans don’t or won’t,” he also said. “My experience in this year’s governor’s race is that I’ve been very, very warmly received by minority communities all across the state.”

Democratic entities, meanwhile, have been putting out Spanish-language ads, a move that Change NJ and Ciattarelli’s campaign have not yet made. Kennith Gonzalez, the former New Jersey GOP executive director who does outreach for Ciattarelli’s campaign, said the campaign is planning to launch Spanish-language ads and has had Spanish-speaking surrogates on the ground.

“The Hispanic community is listening now more than they ever have, because they’ve had enough of everything that’s been going on in the state of New Jersey for the last decade,” said Gonzalez, whose parents were Cuban immigrants.