The Republican candidate for New Jersey governor, Jack Ciattarelli, can sue his opponent, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, for defamation ahead of next Tuesday’s election, state election officials said Monday. According to Gothamist, Mr. Ciattarelli can file the lawsuit so long as he uses his personal funds to pay for it. 

Mr. Ciattarelli’s threat to sue Ms. Sherrill stems from claims she has made during the course of the campaign about the Republican nominee’s private sector experience, when he owned a medical publishing company. She claims that he made money by working with pharmaceutical companies to publish “propaganda” about the safety of opioids. Mr. Ciattarelli says that her claims are baseless lies. 

“You know, my opponent likes to talk a lot about being a businessman, but I think what New Jersey doesn’t know as much about his business, how he made his millions — by working with some of the worst offenders in saying that opioids were safe,” Ms. Sherrill claimed at a debate with her opponent on October 10. She alleged that Mr. Ciattarelli was “publishing” the “propaganda” of the pharmaceutical industry during his private sector career.

“As if that wasn’t enough, then he was paid to develop an app so that people who were addicted could more easily get access to opioids,” she said. “As he made millions, as these opioid companies made billions, tens of thousands of New Jerseyans died.” Mr. Ciattarelli sold his business, Galen Publishing, in 2017. 

“We’re not letting her get away with that lie,” Mr. Ciattarelli told Fox News in an interview on October 15. 

On Monday, the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission ruled that Mr. Ciattarelli could use his own money to sue Ms. Sherrill for defamation. He has yet to file such a lawsuit. The Ciattarelli campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about when that lawsuit would be filed. 

On Thursday, the ELEC announced in a press release that it would answer the question of whether “a publicly-financed gubernatorial candidate’s intended use of personal funds to file a defamation action would be a contribution to the campaign and whether such use of personal funds would be subject to the expenditure limit.”

According to Gothamist, the four-member commission ruled unanimously that Mr. Ciattarelli has the right to sue if he uses his own money. 

This is Mr. Ciattarelli’s third run for the governor’s mansion in the last decade, having lost the Republican primary in 2017 and the general election to Governor Phil Murphy in 2021. Mr. Ciattarelli lost the election four years ago by only three points, and after the state’s 10-point swing to the right between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, many in the GOP believe that they can win this year. 

Recent polling shows Ms. Sherrill in the lead, but only in the single-digits. The most recent survey from Rutgers University shows Ms. Sherrill up by five points. In 2017, during President Trump’s first term, Democrats won the governor’s mansion by nearly 15 points.