East Brunswick, New Jersey —

Jack Ciattarelli ticked through the states where New Jersey’s most recent Democratic governors grew up as he kicked off a rally Wednesday night.

“They brought Jon Corzine here from Illinois — that didn’t work out so well. They brought Phil Murphy from Massachusetts — this isn’t working out so well. My opponent’s not from New Jersey,” the former state assemblyman and Republican nominee for governor told hundreds of people packed into the Brunswick Grove bar.

“So I got a really simple idea,” he said. “How about we elect the Jersey guy?”

Ciattarelli, born and raised in the central part of the state, faces Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who was raised in Virginia before becoming a Navy helicopter pilot and later settling in New Jersey, in one of the most important contests on this year’s political calendar.

Republicans face a massive voter registration disadvantage, and Sherrill’s allies have spent months tying Ciattarelli to President Donald Trump and seeking to nationalize the race. The “Jersey guy” message is Ciattarelli’s bet that authenticity is a more valuable political currency than party affiliation.

It’s also how Ciattarelli connects his own background — with a family that’s called New Jersey home for 100 years — to what he calls crises of affordability (particularly energy costs and property taxes), safety and education that he says are gripping the Garden State under its Democratic leadership.

“There’s a New Jersey I want to get back to,” Ciattarelli said. “I grew up in a time when my parents didn’t have to worry about me walking to the bus stop. My parents didn’t have to worry about what I was learning at school that day.”

“My parents knew that through their hard work, their middle-class family is going to get ahead, and their children will have a better life than they did,” he said. “We got to get back to that day.”

Ciattarelli’s message aims to tap into the same simmering discontent that is showing up across the political map — including on both sides of the Hudson River, with Ciattarel