Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli held a town hall meeting in Bergen County on Thursday night.

Ciattarelli vowed to make changes in Trenton if he is able to defeat Democratic incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy.

“You need me to go down there and turn that place upside down and run it the way any company you own stock in would be run,” he said.

Ciattarelli held his town hall at the Hasbrouck Heights VFW. He fielded questions from a mostly Republican audience.

“With regard to critical race theory let me say this - there's a recent study that showed that less than 15% of high school students in this country know that slavery was central to the civil war. That would suggest that something’s wrong with our public school curriculum. But at the same time, we are not going to teach that white people perpetuate systemic racism,” Ciattarelli said.

Ciattarelli opened up on Gov. Murphy for his economic policies including progressively larger state budgets and said he would be a better manager of the state’s finances.

“I think he's tone-deaf and out of touch with everyday hard-working New Jerseyans,” he said. “I put the garbage out on Thursday night, I cut my own grass, I'm one of you. I don't know who Phil Murphy is, but he's not us.”

In a statement, the Murphy campaign said that the governor believes "diversity is a strength and history needs to be taught through the full lens of all our lived experiences…."

Regarding taxes, the Murphy campaign said that Ciattarelli’s plan “would drag New Jersey back to the days when the economy only worked for the wealthy and well-connected."