When President Trump announced he’d try to halt funding for the new Gateway train tunnels under the Hudson River last month, he billed it as retaliation against Democrats for the federal government shutdown. Instead, the move became a political albatross that hurt New Jersey’s Republican gubernatorial candidate.In Tuesday’s New Jersey’s governor’s race, Democrat Mikie Sherrill whooped GOP candidate Jack Ciattarelli with more than 56% of the vote. Ciattarelli had spent the campaign supporting Trump, and failed to separate himself from the president after the White House threatened funding for the $16 billion tunnel effort, the largest public works project in the country and a long-sought solution to the single, antiquated tube to New York City for Garden State train commuters.“Jack Ciattarelli’s line throughout the campaign would be that he supported everything Trump was doing,” said Dan Cassino,  professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey. “But if Trump were to do anything that would hurt New Jersey, of course he would stand up for New Jersey.”When Trump first threatened to halt the flow of upwards of $6.8 billion in federal subsidies for the project, Ciattarelli didn’t speak up. Only when Trump then said he would kill the project altogether did Ciattarelli chime in with a post on X that he would “fight to get it done.”“This is something that was very clearly hurting New Jersey and Ciattarelli was not able to say, ‘Oh, I'm going to stand up to Trump in this case,’” Cassino said.Recent polls suggest riding on Trump’s popularity wasn’t a winning strategy in New Jersey this year. Only 40% of likely New Jersey voters approve of the way Donald Trump is “handling his job as president,” while 56% of likely voters disapprove, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll.Still, Republicans eyed the governor’s race as an opportunity after Kamala Harris won less than 52% of the state’s vote in last year’s presidential election.Threatening the Gateway tunnel may have also given many New Jersey voters deja vu. Back in 2010, former Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, abruptly yanked his state’s funding for the ARC project, which also aimed to build new rail tunnels beneath the Hudson River. If that project had gone forward as scheduled, it would’ve been completed by now.

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