With Election Day 2025 fast approaching, the only two states this year holding showdowns for governor have been jolted by October surprises.
In Virginia, explosive revelations in Virginia's attorney general race that the GOP is aiming to leverage up and down the ballot shook up the race for governor, forcing Democratic Party nominee former Rep. Abigail Spanberger back on defense in a race where most polls indicated her enjoying a lead over Republican rival Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
And in New Jersey, a couple of weeks after the controversy over Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill's Naval Academy records sent shock waves through her gubernatorial battle with Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli, the race was rocked again last week after her allegations that Ciattarelli was "complicit" with pharmaceutical companies in the opioid deaths of tens of thousands of New Jerseyans.
Virginia and New Jersey are the only two states to hold gubernatorial showdowns in the year after a presidential election and the contests traditionally grab outsized attention and are viewed as political barometers ahead of the following year's midterm elections.
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Here's where things stand in both races with three weeks to go until Election Day.
Virginia
Virginia attorney general Democratic nominee Jay Jones has been in crisis mode since his controversial texts were first reported a week and a half ago by the National Review.
Jones acknowledged and apologized for texts he sent in 2022, when he compared then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert to mass murderers Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, adding that if he was given two bullets, he would use both against the GOP lawmaker to shoot him in the head.
But he's facing a chorus of calls from Republicans to drop out of the race.
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Earle-Sears hasn't wasted an opportunity to link Spanberger to Jones.
And during last week's chaotic and only gubernatorial debate, where Earle-Sears repeatedly interrupted Spanberger, the GOP gubernatorial nominee called on her Democratic rival to tell Jones to end his attorney general bid.
"The comments that Jay Jones made are absolutely abhorrent," Spanberger said at the debate. But she neither affirmed nor pulled back her support of Jones.
Earle-Sears has kept up the pressure.
"Abigail Spanberger should have been the first to call for Jay Jones to step down. Instead, she doubled down-because deep down, she's OK with what he said," Earle-Sears argued Monday in a social media post.
But a leading Virginia-based political scientist isn't sure if the controversy will be enough for Earle-Sears to close the gap with Spanberger.
"It definitely made everybody wake up and made Spanberger take a stand," University of Lynchburg political science chair David Richards told Fox News. "It may hurt her a little bit."
But Richards noted that the story broke well after early voting in Virginia had already begun.
"Early voting has been off the charts. I think the race is kind of baked in at this moment," he argued.
But with the Virginia attorney general debate scheduled for later this week, the furor over the texts is certain to stay in the political spotlight a while longer.
New Jersey
Sherrill on Monday doubled down on her claim that Ciattarelli is "complicit" with opioid companies in the deaths of tens of thousands of New Jerseyans.
Sherrill spoke during a press conference on the Garden State's opioid epidemic, accusing Ciattarelli of "looking at ways to help people get access to the drugs that were killing them" through his ties to pharmaceutical-backed training programs.
"So you heard it, Jack made millions," she said. "The opioid companies made billions, and thousands of New Jerseyans were dying."
"I think we've laid out the case that Jack is complicit with these opioid companies, in league with these opioid companies," Sherrill said.
Sherrill first made her claims that Ciattarelli contributed to the opioid epidemic during last week's second and final gubernatorial debate.
"With regard to everything she just said about my professional career, which provided [for] my family, it's a lie. I'm proud of my career," Ciattarelli responded at the debate.
And Ciattarelli's campaign fired back the day after the debate, pledging to file a defamation lawsuit against Sherrill.
On Monday, Ciattarelli charged during a campaign stop that Sherrill had "lied about me left and right."
And Ciattarelli campaign chief strategist Chris Russell charged in a statement that if Sherrill "had any decency, she would retract her slanderous comments and apologize."
Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker and a certified public accountant who started a medical publishing company before getting into politics and winning election as a state lawmaker, is making his third straight run for New Jersey governor. Four years ago, he grabbed national attention as he came close to upsetting Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.
It was during his 2021 campaign that Ciattarelli's connection to opioid manufacturers first surfaced. Ciattarelli sold his company, which published content promoting the use of opioids as a low-risk treatment for chronic pain, in 2017.
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At a post-debate news conference last week, Ciattarelli claimed the attack by Sherrill was "a desperate tactic by a desperate campaign on behalf of a desperate candidate."
The race in New Jersey was rocked three weeks ago by a report that the National Personnel Records Center, which is a branch of the National Archives and Records Administration, mistakenly released Sherrill's improperly redacted military personnel files, which included private information like her Social Security number, to a Ciattarelli ally.
But Sherrill's military records indicated that the United States Naval Academy blocked her from taking part in her 1994 graduation amid a cheating scandal that rocked the U.S. Naval Academy three decades ago.
Sherrill has claimed that Ciattarelli was going on a "witch hunt," to raise questions about her possible involvement in the cheating scandal.
Ciattarelli and his campaign have repeatedly called on Sherrill, who went on to pilot helicopters during her military career after graduating from the Naval Academy, to release her military records to explain why she was prevented from attending her graduation ceremony.
And Sherrill, her campaign, and allies have called for an investigation into the improper release of her records, and charged that the Ciattrelli campaign "broke the law to attack a veteran."
Despite the viral moments the past few weeks in the Ciattarelli-Sherrill showdown, Fairleigh Dickinson University polling director Dan Cassino said that "we haven't seen big shifts in this race."
Most polls indicate Sherrill holding a single digit advantage, with some surveys suggesting the race is a dead heat.
Cassino did note that Sherrill's latest accusations appeared to push Ciattarelli off his message. "This is not what they want to be talking about three weeks before an election," he said.
And Cassino predicted that "turnout in the race is expected to be low. People are not paying attention. Turnout in New Jersey elections is normally pretty low. We're expecting it to be abominably low this time."
