Shutdown Blame Game Seeps Into New Jersey, Virginia Elections

A federal government shutdown entering its second week may sway some Virginia and New Jersey voters weighing choices for governor in key elections next month.

As both parties in Washington blame their opponents for the lapse in government funding, it’s Democratic candidates in Virginia and New Jersey who are making the shutdown a major talking point ahead of the Nov. 4 vote by relentlessly linking their Republican foes to President Donald Trump. The president lost both states by six percentage points in the 2024 election.

The Virginia and New Jersey election results will serve as a gauge of voter sentiment since Trump returned to the presidency earlier this year and moved quickly to shrink the federal workforce. The White House’s party has typically struggled to win governor’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey, which often attract outsize national attention as the only two states that elect their chief executives in the year following a presidential election.

A Top Virginia Message

The effects of the shutdown have been acutely felt in Virginia, which is proximate to Washington and has one of the highest concentrations of federal workers of any state — along with contractors and business owners whose work is tied to federal government operations. The impasse also threatens the next pay date for active-duty military members on Oct. 15.

“The federal shutdown in Washington is a key part of campaign messaging for Democratic candidates across Virginia,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va.

“It creates a difficult environment for Republicans who don’t want to break with the president, but at the same time don’t want to endorse undermining the livelihood of federal workers and contractors,” he said in an interview.

Ex-Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Virginia Democratic nominee for governor who’s leading in polls, seized upon a Trump administration threat to withhold back pay from some federal workers to attack Republican opponent Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s lieutenant governor.

Earle-Sears “has backed President Trump’s job-killing and price-hiking agenda at every turn,” Spanberger said in a statement Tuesday.

Earle-Sears has linked Spanberger to “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats” and called for a “clean continuing resolution,” a reference to the Senate minority leader and most Democratic senators who have thwarted enactment of the GOP’s House-passed stopgap spending measure (H.R. 5371) to fund the government through Nov. 21.

Virginia Republicans have sought to steer the political conversation away from the shutdown, campaigning of late on transgender issues and tying Spanberger to Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general whose violent text messages about a political opponent and his family have rocked that race.

The shutdown is an issue in Virginia’s legislative contests in competitive districts with large concentrations of federal employees, including in some suburbs of Washington and Richmond and in the Hampton Roads region of southeastern Virginia. In a Virginia Beach district, Democratic state Rep. Michael Feggans is airing an ad attacking the “Trump shutdown.” Democrats are favored to keep control of the state House and already have a majority of state Senate seats, which aren’t up for election this year.

Late in Virginia’s 2013 election for governor, a 16-day government shutdown was widely blamed on congressional Republicans and put GOP nominee Ken Cuccinelli on the defensive. It may have contributed to his close loss to Democrat Terry McAuliffe — the only Virginia governor’s election in the past 50 years when the state didn’t elect a governor opposite the president’s party.

“Congress often engages in shutdowns in odd-numbered years, which doesn’t impact their own elections as much as it does the Virginia governor’s race,” Farnsworth said.

Gateway and the Garden State

A delay in funding for the multi-billion, trans-Hudson Gateway bridge and tunnel project is emerging as a factor in the New Jersey governor’s race.

Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

In New Jersey, Trump’s threats to freeze funding for the massive Gateway transportation project to expand rail infrastructure provided fresh grist for Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D) to attack Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli, a Trump-endorsed former assemblyman who almost unseated outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy (D) in the 2021 election. Polls show a close race.

“I think it’s been effective as part of a larger set of issues on which she’s put Ciattarelli on the defensive over the last week. It’s certainly been energizing to her base,” Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said in an e-mail.

Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said Tuesday that Trump “just lost the governor’s race in New Jersey for the Republicans by taking on such a reckless action and punishing so many American families just for political revenge.”

Ciattarelli and Republican allies have attacked Sherrill for her Sept. 19 vote against the House-passed continuing resolution. Democrats including Sherrill want any funding deal to extend expiring health insurance tax credits.

“If Mikie Sherrill did her job as a congresswoman we wouldn’t be in this mess,” Chris Russell, a political strategist for Ciattarelli, said in a statement.