Daenerys Targaryen (as my fellow nerds will recall) famously vowed to “break the wheel” of power on HBO’s Game of Thrones program.
We got a substantively similar statement from Melinda Castro Ciattarelli this week, estranged wife of 2021 gubernatorial nominee (and 2025 candidate) Jack Ciattarelli. She’s weighing a run for Bob Menendez’s U.S. Senate seat next year as first reported by Save Jersey.
“As I call and travel around the state one thing is clear, politics are broken and have become what Ronald Reagan called ‘…the seat of a buddy system that functions for its own benefit…’,” Melinda Castro Ciattarelli said. “That buddy system is made up of individuals who pick which candidates should run and who should handle their campaign. This goes for both parties.”
Ciattarelli’s husband had served at the local and state levels of government before undertaking his first run for governor in 2017. Since then, she’s been had her husband’s side at countless events in all 21 counties until the pair’s announced separation earlier this year. The 2025 contest between Jack Ciattarelli, Bill Spadea, Jon Bramnick and whomever else ultimately joins the developing Republican primary race is already setting up a very Game of Thrones-ish dynamic as the loyalties and allegiances of party organizations and leaders are tested and challenged.
“For 20 plus years I’ve had a front row seat and watched the buddy system in action,” she continued. “It’s broken and needs to be fixed. Whether or not I decide to run for office, I will work to remove bullies from our state politics. New Jerseyans deserve better.”
Dany ultimately did break the wheel in the fictional land of Westeros but in a way in which she never intended. While New Jersey politics is decidedly less physically violent than the world portrayed by HBO, it remains to be seen whether Castro Ciattarelli is capable of engendering a similarly seismic political impact on the Garden State.
