Last night, New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli took the stage at the NJ Public Health Innovation PAC’s gala — an organization that has repeatedly pushed claims that vaccines cause autism and other related conspiracy theories.

As a “distinguished guest,” he shared the stage with someone who thinks COVID-19 vaccines could make people magnetic and someone else who compared vaccine mandates to slavery.

His appearance last night came as no surprise to those who know him best: Jack Ciattarelli has long been associated with anti-vaxxers and is an ardent defender of Trump’s budget, which kicks 390,000 New Jerseyans off their health insurance.

While he tried to flip-flop once again about how anti-vax he is, New Jerseyans deserve answers: what does Jack actually believe? 

Read more below in the New York Times: 

New York Times: As Immunization Rates Fall, Vaccine Skepticism Grows as a Wedge Issue

[Tracey Tully, September 26, 2025]

• Mr. Ciattarelli was a featured guest at an event hosted by a group that has emerged as one of New Jersey’s main opponents of mandatory vaccination. 

• The keynote speaker was a doctor who has falsely claimed that the Covid-19 vaccine magnetizes patients. (“They can put a key on their forehead. It sticks,” the doctor, Sherri Tenpenny, testified in 2021 in Ohio. “They can put spoons and forks all over them and they can stick.”)

• On Sunday, Mr. Ciattarelli, who is running for governor for the third time and has been endorsed by Mr. Trump, said, “I support the vaccine schedule.”

• Earlier this month, however, in answering a question at a town hall, he said: “I would never mandate a vaccine. That’s up to you.”

• Mr. Ciattarelli was interviewed by leaders of the Public Health Innovation PAC during the 2021 campaign.
  
• “I’ve always been about bodily autonomy,” he said, according to the group’s website. “I don’t think government has any right to tell any individuals that they have to take a vaccine or a medicine.”