New Jersey’s last chance for change is on the campaign trail — as Scott Presler hopes to repeat his Pennsylvania success

After more than 25 years, I don’t know how much longer I can stay in the abusive relationship that I call being a New Jersey resident.

I frequently contemplate leaving because I simply can’t stand how the people who run this state treat people like me with disregard. I have a wandering eye for any place with moderate weather and a lower cost of living.

Despite having an above-average household income, I’m effectively priced out of the housing market with this state’s median home price of $586,900.

Even if I could afford to be a first-time home buyer here, the taxes and ever-increasing energy costs thanks to bad Democratic policies would assign me to the “house poor” demographic.

The place I call home is on the brink of failure, and much of it is due to one-party rule, allowing the worst progressive ideas to flourish without a counterbalance from a strong opposition party.

While most people focus on the national news and the circus we call Washington, DC, New Jersey residents have begun making a pivot for necessary change — much of it inspired by President Trump’s commonsense policies.

Grassroots organizations like Scott Presler’s Early Vote Action have been working in New Jersey as the final push over the line for the Republican Party to make serious inroads in a state abused by its incompetent Democratic overlords for far too long.

Presler is aiming to do in the Garden State what he did in the Keystone State last year — turn it red.

Trump lost Pennsylvania by 80,000 ballots in 2020. Presler’s activism helped him win it in November by 120,000 votes.

I followed Scott Presler and his organization in the final weeks leading up to the most pivotal state election in my lifetime, Nov. 4’s gubernatorial contest.

After spending days with Presler, I realized his enthusiasm is infectious and inspirational for everyone attached to Early Vote Action.

Despite his high profile, he embraced everyone he encountered with humility, politeness and genuine care.

It’s hard to inspire one person to work as hard as you are for a common cause, yet he somehow attracted teams of people just as passionate as he is.

Many — including myself — have for years criticized the Republican Party for neglecting to reach out to residents in traditionally Democrat-leaning areas.

But what the GOP ceded, Presler and his team embraced as they saw a demographic of residents who aren’t Democratic sycophants; they’re people who haven’t been given an alternative in decades.

“You’re seeing Democrats in blue Bergen County, the backyard of Mikie Sherrill, endorsing Jack Ciattarelli,” Scott Presler told me at Gun For Hire in Woodland Park.

“So clearly, while we’re in the business of getting Republicans out to vote, we also need to be in the business of courting independents and Democrats.”

The Democrats’ failures have created a void to be filled by Republicans, now claiming ownership over traditional table issues like taxes, safety and education quality.

At the Gun For Hire range, I met a remarkable woman by the name of Christine who’s been a resident for decades but never cast a state-election ballot.

“Well, I really never thought it mattered, that’s why I never voted before.”

Her political awakening came in 2016, when she was appalled at the progressive shift happening nationwide. The decisive moment: the assassination attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pa.

“July 13th, 2024, was my turning point. I still remember it like I saw it yesterday. And then what just happened with Charlie Kirk, and the difference between the two parties is like night and day.”

Presler’s mantra about the importance of reaching all Americans is not an empty political slogan — it’s rhetoric he’s made actionable with his organization.

I met one of his enthusiastic coordinators, Jasmine Grey, whose face lights up every time she talks about her work of reaching out to the residents of Paterson to ask them to consider voting Republican for the first time.

It became clear Early Vote Action isn’t political veneer; it’s substantively enthusiastic to connect with people who either feel forgotten by both parties or given limited options to choose from on the ballot.

Grey told me most of the people she’s encountering in Paterson, a city about 62% Hispanic and 22% black, have never had a Republican seek out their vote despite finding themselves leaning conservative on many key issues.

Grey, who is also working with black Republican congressional candidate Billy Prempeh to win the district Paterson is within, explained this is not a Paterson phenomenon but something happening in urban areas across the state.

I later joined her at an Elizabeth project housing, coincidentally in one of the most air-polluted areas in New Jersey, minutes away from oil refineries.

I met resident Rich Tabor, an outspoken Republican, who is witnessing black people like himself locally seeking out an alternative to the Democrats who have let them down for decades.

“The Democratic Party usually blames the Republican Party for everything that’s going wrong in the Democratic community. So what I came to see is that there’s no Republicans sitting on any seats inside of our Democratic communities, but yet they consistently receive the blame for everything going wrong in a Democratic community. That right there is a problem,” lamented Tabor.

“What the black community in Elizabeth is starting to see is that we cannot keep voting for the same party without any progress, without nothing moving forward. We have to ensure that we are not doing something that’s insane, and that we are beginning to move our community forward, which is by starting to vote for the Republican side.”

With increasing strife and frustration with the status quo, Republicans are finally realizing the color of the river of angst that flows throughout New Jersey is traditionally blue.

“The Republican Party was nonexistent in the [Elizabeth] community, and now that we’re pushing, we’re giving the people what democracy always intended, which is a choice,” Tabor enthused.

While in Elizabeth I met another resident, a black female by the name of Sheri, who echoed Tabor’s sentiment of residents’ readiness for change.

“We’ve sat in Democrat territory for so many years now, and I think the people are tired. I think the people want something different. They want to see something different. They want to have control. So absolutely, we can go Republican.”

Understand that being black and even having a moderate interest in supporting anyone who is not a Democrat is seen as racial heresy by the mainstream political media and in many social circles.

We are supposed to sit idly by as the party of promises falls through once again and pretend we have political amnesia during the next election cycle, when they repeat the same junk slogans for us to digest.

The ploy has always been to see us as having separate interests, as if being concerned with your children’s education, family’s economic prosperity and neighborhood safety is a race-specific issue; it most certainly isn’t.

As I continued to follow Early Vote Action, I met Susan, a social worker, at the group’s Toms River debate-watch party as Ciattarelli and Sherrill faced off.

“It pains me to say this because I was a Democrat for so long: They hate the working class,” remarked Susan, who has given up supporting Democrats.

“They hate anyone that does not fit into this box that they want to put us all in. Their goal is to divide us all. They want to divide men from women. They want to divide black from white. They want to divide rich from poor, straight from gay. It’s because when you divide, you can conquer. It’s all about power for them. That’s all it’s about.”

In the face of grave frustration with decades of bad legislation, class warfare and idiotic energy policies, every person I came across still possessed hope for the future only for one reason: Jack Ciattarelli.

There was even a hopeful phrase I never thought I’d hear from the mouth of anyone from the Garden State: New Jersey will become a swing state.

While Donald Trump is a massive political influence for many on the national stage, Ciattarelli is a Jersey native who is rational yet unafraid to take on the New Jersey Democratic Party machine.

What I learned from following Early Vote Action is that I’m not the only one tired of being economically strapped just so I can stay in my home state.

I’m equally worried about the next generation of Jerseyans who’ll have the hardest time starting a prosperous life in this state unless something dramatically changes.

There’s a positive energy coming from the Republican Party in New Jersey that’s replaced the typical defeatist attitudes. Instead of “Why bother?” people are saying, “Why not now?!”

We are at the precipice of seeing real change for the first time in many years, and the political right is seizing this opportunity, galvanizing anyone who has felt discarded by Jersey Dems.

Can New Jersey flip to Republican?

Absolutely and it must.

We are at a breaking point in this state. It’s Ciattarelli or the people will bust.

Adam B. Coleman is the author of “The Children We Left Behind” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing.