With significant fundraising hauls, political newcomer Democrat Guy Citron believes he can flip the staunchly Republican 23rd district, where State Sen. Doug Steinhardt (R-Lopatcong), Assembly Minority Leader John DiMaio (R-Hackettstown) and Assemblyman Erik Peterson (R-Franklin) are on the ballot.
“We stand on core Democratic values, but this campaign is winning because we are connecting the grassroots: Not red team or blue team, but team New Jersey,” Citron told the New Jersey Globe. Citron said that his campaign – including State Senate candidate Denise King – who also ran in 2021 and lost – and Assembly candidate Tyler Powell had raised $100,000 and that they are well on their way to $150,000.
“With the money we have raised, we have put together a serious campaign staff,” Citron commented.
Such large totals ensure that the campaign has a staff – including a volunteer campaign manager, a finance director, a field director, and a political strategist – but that money might also validate the campaign’s message and the candidates’ hard work.
Citron stressed that they are seeing success because he and his running mates are offering voters a different brand of politics – one that is more in tune with the issues that matter to voters and is focused on finding solutions.
In a largely rural and working-class district, Citron believes that he and his running mates bring life experiences that resonate with voters. He is an entrepreneur, King is a nurse, and Powell is a farmer — as such, he says, they understand issues facing their communities on a more personal level.
“We are the district,” he said.
He emphasized that he and his running mates get an intimate understanding of the issues through their careers and have a unique insight into building consensus to solve them.
“We’re not political insiders, we’re just people from this district who are fed up,” he said. “We’re doing well not because we are progressive, but because we are in touch with grassroots problems – yes to Democratic issues – but we know the municipal issues because we have showed up”
While Citron does say he is a Democrat – he is a proponent of abortion access and marriage equality – he is more focused on being “pragmatic,” to help his community.
Such pragmatism means engaging with voters and meeting them where they are; he describes his campaign as built on uplifting every voice in his community.
Citron goes to the VFW in Glen Gardner at least every other week – sometimes every week – and listens to the veterans to get a pulse of what issues they care about and how they think government should respond.
“I go sit around these Vietnam veterans and hear what they think is wrong with society, and they’re talking about quality-of-life issues – wireless connectivity, police funding,” he said. “I sit and listen.”
Citron acknowledges that these voters tend to lean Republican. However, he still views his time with them as invaluable because they all understand that they care about the same issues and can solve them together.
Indeed, he says that his engagement with the veterans emboldens his belief that “common ground solutions” are possible.
One issue that Citron would like to see consensus on is transforming public education.
He outright dismisses Republican attacks on gender identity in schools and proposed “book bans,” suggesting they are distractions.
Instead, Citron would like to see Democrats and Republicans come together to reimagine what public secondary education looks like. He believes there is too narrow a focus on preparing students for higher education while overlooking potential trades and other vocations.
“Voters want high schools to be preparatory for life, so when you graduate, you get a license and can go get a job,” he said.
He believes this is a common sense issue that can attract broad, cross-party support.
Citron points to his stance on education and veterans as key to why his campaign has momentum. Talking to voters, hearing what they believe, discussing solutions – this, he says, brings people together and is the type of politics people would like to see.
This type of “pragmatic” politics motivates Citron’s campaign – he says he is concerned with moving the conversation forward to find solutions to the issues affecting New Jerseyans.
While Citron is content with making his case directly to voters, he does say he would like to engage with his Republican opponents more directly.
Citron claims that the Republican incumbents have decided to skip participating in various candidate forums and debates.
While such events would be crucial for an insurgent candidate like Citron, it’s not unusual for likely winners to pass on debates.
Such could be said about the Republicans in the 23rd – where Republicans outnumber Democrats by 15,000 votes.
Recent statewide and federal elections also underscore how entrenched Republicans are in the district.
In 2020, Donald Trump won the district in 2020 with 5.3%, and in 2021, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Citteralli won with a deafening 20.6%.
And on top of that, the Republican incumbents have enjoyed healthy electoral successes.
In 2021, DiMaio was re-elected with 31% of the vote, and Peterson got 30%; they beat their Democratic opponents, Hope Kaufman, who got 20%, and Nicholas LaBelle, who won 19%.
This will be Steinhardt’s first time in a general election for State Senate; he won an interim seat after Michael Doherty was elected Warren County Surrogate in 2022.
Such Republican strength also underscores the historic lack of vitality among Democrats in the district.
The district has not sent a Democrat to Trenton in over forty years.
Democrat Robert Shelton Jr. (D-Ogdensburg) won a Warren/Sussex Assembly seat in 1973 after the Watergate scandal propelled many Democratic victories; he held it for just one term. In 1977, Barbara McConnell (D-Flemington) won a Hunterdon-based seat and held it for four years, before she ran for governor.
This would be a tough bench to take on in the best of circumstances. In an election year such as this one – where Republicans are generally understood as having the momentum – it will be extremely hard.
But this does not deter Citron.
“The fire is in me,” he says.
Knocking on doors, engaging with voters, talking about policies – these are giving the Democrats significant momentum and perhaps even serious fundraising hauls, but it remains to be seen whether that can outweigh the structural Republican advantage in the district.
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