Vaccine Skepticism Takes Center Stage in a Close Race for Governor

Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey, stood in front of a debate audience on Sunday and said that he supported childhood vaccines and the state’s role in expanding the number of children who are immunized.

Four days later, 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.”)

Mr. Ciattarelli’s appearance at the New Jersey Public Health Innovation Political Action Committee’s Health Freedom Gala in Hazlet, N.J., on Thursday came as President Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has elevated immunization skeptics and limited access to Covid vaccines nationwide. On Monday, in an extraordinary White House address, Mr. Trump also warned pregnant women that Tylenol has been linked to autism in claims unsubstantiated by science.

Mr. Ciattarelli’s appearance also came as a new independent poll showed the governor’s race tightening.

Representative Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor, said Mr. Ciattarelli’s appearance at the gala showed “we can’t trust him to keep New Jersey kids safe and healthy.”

“Jack is taking his cues from fringe activists, conspiracy theorists and the likes of Donald Trump and R.F.K. Jr., whose extreme policies will result in reduced access to vaccines and more of our children catching preventable illnesses,” Ms. Sherrill said in a statement.