A New Jersey radio host is using his campaign for governor to defend bigotry

The recordings were ugly.

The mayor of Clark, New Jersey, a New York City suburb of 16,000 people, used the n-word and joked about lynching Black people. “We fucking hang the spooks up there,” the mayor, Sal Bonaccorso, says in one of the secretly taped conversations , which the town reportedly paid $400,000 to keep from the public when threatened with a whistleblower lawsuit.

Most New Jersey Republicans repudiated it. But Bonaccorso found a vocal defender in Bill Spadea, a conservative radio host who is running for governor. He used his popular drive time radio show to portray the “very competent and successful” mayor as a victim. Then Spadea walked in a parade with him. Now he plans to raise money for Bonaccorso this month.

"You can always tell the guy who's doing the great job because they come at him and pick on things that have been said,” Spadea said.

It wasn’t the first time Spadea has used the airwaves of his employer, NJ 101.5-FM — a station with a long history of race-baiting hosts — to promote people who express bigoted or extremist views. Once a mainstream Republican figure who had twice unsuccessfully run for office, Spadea has become the state’s most prominent pro-Donald Trump commentator, embracing anti-vaccine rhetoric and right-wing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

In a blue state that also has a history of electing moderate Republican governors, Spadea’s 2025 run is a test of GOP voters' attitudes toward a far-right candidate.

New Jersey at a statewide level is run by Democrats, who have nearly a million more registered voters than Republicans. But voters also support Republicans to lead the state — when they run on issues like the state’s high cost of living and prevalent political corruption to the exclusion of culture war issues that animate the party elsewhere.

Just two years ago in Pennsylvania, Republicans nominated Doug Mastriano — a far-right conspiracy theorist — for the gubernatorial race. Voters in the state, which is far more conservative than New Jersey, soundly rejected him, electing Democrat Josh Shapiro by a 15-point margin.

“We’ve seen this happen in other states than New Jersey. These folks are sometimes successful in winning the Republican nomination and have their hats handed to them in the general elections,” said Monmouth University Polling Institute Director Patrick Murray.

Murray said that while he’s “loath” to predict New Jersey politics, he doesn’t see a path for a candidate with Spadea’s history.

“There’s no way that someone who has cloaked themselves in the racial and cultural divisiveness that embodies Trumpism could win a [statewide] general election in New Jersey,” Murray said.

Still, Spadea’s candidacy and his sizeable platform on the airwaves could potentially pull other Republican candidates to the right on policy issues while keeping his own ideas relevant in 2025. Two other declared candidates — former Sen. Ed Durr and former Assemblymember Jack Ciattarelli — have expressed their support for Trump. But a third, former state Sen. Jon Bramnick, has based his candidacy as a traditional, anti-Trump Republican.

“Bill Spadea’s the reason Republicans keep losing elections,” said Bramnick. “He appeals to a very limited number of people, and he gets a lot of attention, and he’s the reason the Republicans lose. The swing voters, the moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats, are not voting for Bill Spadea.”

Spadea declined to comment but posted an interview request for this article on X, saying “Real reporters and actual news sources don't approach interviews with their preconceived notions in tow.”

Spadea has shifted to the right in recent years. In June, he announced his long-expected run for governor, denouncing “insider establishment power brokers” and saying he’s an “outsider they can’t control” — after spending a year laying the groundwork for it with the help of former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and Ocean County GOP Chair George Gilmore, one of the most powerful Republican power brokers in New Jersey.

During the pandemic, Spadea frequently featured Ian Smith, a gym owner who defied Covid lockdowns and aired anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, even after Smith at a public rally used a bullhorn that prominently featured the logo of the New Jersey European Heritage Association, a white supremacist organization. Smith at the time claimed through a lawyer that he had been "handed the megaphone" and had not invited the group. But today, after an unsuccessful congressional run heavily promoted by Spadea , Smith frequently airs blatantly anti-Semitic views on social media .

Spadea, who in 2022 said Pennsylvania was “poised for the same dramatic change that we saw in Florida,” called Mastriano “PA's version of Ron DeSantis.”

Spadea “is the Doug Mastriano of New Jersey,” said longtime Democratic operative Julie Roginsky, who — like most New Jersey Democrats — believes Spadea has no shot at winning a general election in New Jersey. “Donald Trump couldn’t win New Jersey, and the poor man’s Donald Trump certainly can’t win New Jersey.”

Gov. Phil Murphy narrowly won reelection in 2021 against Ciattarelli — another Spadea rival for the nomination next year. That made him the first Democratic governor to be reelected in 44 years. Some New Jersey Democrats, wary of voters’ willingness to elect Republicans as governor, privately acknowledge that a Spadea candidacy would make it easier for them to hold onto the governorship.

Spadea has displayed no intention of softening his rhetoric. Weeks after hosting Bonaccorso on his show and posting photos on social media of the two of them together at public events, Spadea went out of his way to defend another person who used a slur — this time one that had nothing to do with New Jersey. Red Sox player Jarren Duran responded to a taunting fan by calling him a “fucking f—t.” Duran was suspended for two games. Spadea protested on his radio show.

“Right now, you’ve got laws in New Jersey that protect you from being offended by somebody’s off-color joke. I’ll give you an example: That Boston Red Sox player who used a derogatory term against gays which actually can translate into a word meaning a bundle of sticks or a cigarette in London,” Spadea said on his radio show in mid-August.

“And he got suspended for two games. Got suspended! And I’m like, ‘how stupid is that?’ Most gay guys you talk to, they’re like, ‘yeah, I don’t care, we call each other names.’ So we’ve got such a stupid society. And what made it worse is the idiot Red Sox organization donated his salary to some LGBTQ alphabet soup kids organization.”

Spadea did not respond to a question about which New Jersey law he was referring to and how a baseball player in Massachusetts had anything to do with it. He also didn’t respond to a question of whether, using his reasoning about the use of the homophobic slur, non-Black people should be able to use the n-word without workplace or social repercussions.

Instead, in a statement, he called a POLITICO reporter a “shill for the liberal left” and decried “cancel culture.”

“Anyone who heard the show’s segment knows that I was criticizing cancel culture and DEI in today’s society. It’s ruining professional and amateur sports,” Spadea said. “Look no further than boxing in the 2024 Paris Games to see what happens [when] woke nonsense takes over.”

Christian Fuscarino, who leads the LGBTQ advocacy group Garden State Equality, said “it’s odd to criticize a sports team for recognizing that words matter and supporting LGBTQ+ youth over outdated, offensive language.”

Fuscarino noted that Republicans’ heavy focus on the gender identity culture war issues in recent elections has fallen flat. In 2023 state legislative elections, when Republicans — who campaigned heavily against new sex education standards and gender identity being taught in public schools — lost six Assembly seats and one Senate seat.

“The folks who actually show up to the ballot box, that messaging doesn’t reach them,” Fuscarino said. “So while it might work for the type of radio personality, it doesn’t actually translate to winning an election.”