It’s official. Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican Nominee for Governor of New Jersey has made the agonizing decision to concede victory to his opponent, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy.

Ciattarelli officially ended his campaign today exactly where he started it 22 months ago … his hometown of Raritan, New Jersey.

At 1:03 p.m, flanked by his wife, Melinda, and running mate, former New Jersey State Senator Diane Allen, Ciattarelli confirmed that he had called Governor Murphy earlier this morning and congratulated him on his re-election.

Ciattarelli confounded most all of the pundits and the polls, which all had him trailing Governor Murphy by a wide margin on Election Day.

In the only real poll that mattered, Ciattarelli ran a very competitive campaign and lost by only 2.9 percent of the vote out of more than 2.6 million votes cast, (51.1% to 48.2%).

Only The Trafalgar Group was close, almost hit the bullseye, when they called it a 4 point Murphy lead in a poll they released on November 1, 2021, the day before the election.

In our breaking news coverage last night, we pointed to this very moment of realization, when a hard-charging candidate concludes that’s it’s finally over … that the votes are just not there to change the outcome of a very close election.

New Jersey voters over the past 40 years have been very kind to candidates (of both political parties), who come close but fall short of victory.

Ciattarelli's electoral future remains very bright in New Jersey.

It’s a very heavy lift for a candidate to get well known in the densely populated state of New Jersey, with more than 9 million residents.

Ciattarelli has spent almost two years, in a non-stop, relentless, high-energy campaign.

In politics, there really is such a thing as a good “loss.” No doubt, it hurts really bad to lose. When you work that hard and long, it always does.

There is no doubt that this qualifies as a good “loss” for Ciatterelli.

Ask Jim Florio, Christie Whitman, and Jim McGreevey they’ll tell you. Each lost close state-wide elections and each went on to become the next Governor of New Jersey, following their previous close loss.

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Ciattarelli enters this exact same political territory because of the credible result that he accomplished on November 2, 2021.

Governor Murphy made history of his own in this election, becoming the first Democratic Governor since Brendan Byrne, in 1977 to win re-election (44 years ago).

Ciattarelli’s political future remains very bright in New Jersey.

He can consider a run for the United States Senate. However, he’s an accomplished Chief Executive Officer. Governor would appear to be his best destiny.

Also, no Republican has won a United States Senate seat in New Jersey for more than 50 years.

New Jersey voters appear to prefer to send Democrats to Washington, D.C., and, are willing to give Republicans a chance to be Governor about half of the time.

It's a very interesting political dichotomy.

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