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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. WNYC's Nancy Solomon joins us now with excerpts from an analysis of and to take your phone calls about her Ask Governor Murphy call-in last night, which she does once a month. Nancy usually joins us here on the morning after. Yesterday, the governor gave his reaction to the election of Donald Trump as president. The president-elect and the governor have already apparently been in touch. The governor and Nancy also talked about New Jersey's ongoing drought and the elevated risk of wildfires throughout the state. Congestion pricing is also back in the news. Sources are telling WNYC that New York Governor Kathy Hochul is expected to officially resurrect congestion pricing later today. I think there's a noon news conference scheduled. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, remember, had sued to stop the program initially. We think it's going to be a $9 base toll instead of the original $15. We'll find out in a few hours.

Finally, New Jersey's Cannabis Regulatory Commission is considering raising the social equity excise fee. That's the $1.25 per ounce tax on cannabis that goes toward funding things to fix the effects from the war on drugs in poor communities over the years. They're eyeing a big hike potentially in that tax. We'll take your calls on any of these topics or any other New Jersey related news. We'll get to clips from Governor Murphy from last night as we welcome Nancy Solomon back to the show. Hey, Nancy, happy morning after.

Nancy Solomon: Thank you. Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: You did start off with a drought and wildfires, so let's start with that here. We discussed this on the show earlier this week. Certainly the talk of my neighborhood right now in Upper Manhattan with Inwood Hill park with a lot of woods having partly caught fire yesterday. Can you remind us what's going on in New Jersey? It's much worse there than in New York, right?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, we've got wildfires all over the state. The governor said last night that there have been almost 550 fires and that's comparable to a usual year. There would be about 50. He said it's up about 300%, and also we've got the reservoirs in the state ranging at about 50-65% capacity. That's also significantly lower than it should be at this time of year.

Brian Lehrer: They've raised the level of alert from drought watch to drought warning. We'll hear the governor now explain what that means.

Governor Phil Murphy: It gives us, I think, even more importantly, the opportunity to use our bully pulpit and say, "This is serious. It's not going to end anytime soon. Use less water, don't mess around with lighting anything."

Brian Lehrer: There's another level that he might yet raise it to which is called drought emergency. When do they move from requests to things that are mandatory?

Nancy Solomon: When I'm not so sure about. I think what it means is that the restrictions that are now been requested of people go from being voluntary to being mandatory, and I guess, it just depends on whether any rain starts to fall over the next month. They're monitoring the reservoir levels, the groundwater levels, and at a certain point if it doesn't improve, then they have to come in and say, "No, you must do these things."

Now how do they know whether my 16-year-old son is taking a half hour shower or not? I don't know. He would prefer not to have to go to the mandatory.

Brian Lehrer: On the, "Don't mess around with lighting anything," part of that clip, the governor gave some basic guidance. No campfires or any outdoor fires. If you smoke, find a safe container to dispose of your cigarettes or presumably joints or blunts or whatever. What about something like grilling, which might be more common in the suburbs, just, in the backyard or so, or on the patio of people's homes?

Nancy Solomon: A propane grill that is off the ground, which is what most of them look like, is okay, it has to be elevated, but no wood burning fires or charcoal or anything like that.

Brian Lehrer: Now, you asked the governor about the surprising election results out of New Jersey, that is Trump coming within 11 points. A lot of that is, as we've discussed on the show a few times, not that Trump got any more votes in New Jersey than he did in 2020, but Kamala Harris got a lot fewer votes than Joe Biden did. Do you have any theories as to why?

Nancy Solomon: He was very quick to point out that this was not any particular failing of New Jersey Democrats, that this is the result that happened across the country, state by state, that there was a drop-off from the Biden totals of 2020 to the Harris totals this month. He didn't explicitly say anything about what New Jersey Democrats did or didn't do that could have made it any different, and he certainly didn't take any personal responsibility as the leader of the Democratic Party in New Jersey for Harris's poor numbers.

Brian Lehrer: We'll play a clip here of the governor. This is a one-minute clip of Governor Murphy last night with Nancy Solomon on the Ask Governor Murphy call-in doing election analysis, at least at the state level.

Governor Phil Murphy: The margin in New Jersey was 10 to 12 points less than it was in 2020. If you look at Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, California, all blue states, all had a drop-off in margin between 10 and 12 points, so not unique to New Jersey. We won a lot of races down ballot. Andy won with eight or nine, I believe, margin. Sue Altman lost. I don't think Sue could have won that given the top-of-the-ticket performance or put differently, if the top of the ticket did this year what they did in 2020, I think Sue had a real shot there. I was with her a lot at the end.

Other than that, down ballot races, you don't win them all, but we won a lot. One example, Trump won Passaic County, and yet we won all three commissioners races and the sheriff's race and they were all competitive. It's a crazy ballot. A lot of people stayed home.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, what's your take if you have one on all the ticket splitting? We've been asking various people over the course of the last week. A lot of people either voted for Trump or didn't vote for president, but still voted for their local Democratic candidate for something.

Nancy Solomon: I think maybe there are a few overarching things. For the most part, you really need to drill down to each county, each district. Sue Altman, the progressive Democrat, was running against a incumbent Republican who, through redistricting, has a gerrymandered district that added more Republicans. I think the governor's right. If Kamala Harris had done better at the top of the ticket in that district, then Sue Altman had a better chance at winning, and that didn't happen.

Passaic County is fascinating because that is the county where Patterson is and it has a huge number of Arab American voters. I think you got to believe that issues around Gaza and Israel were driving the vote there, that you see the Democrats maybe undervoting, not voting at the top of the ticket, and voting for candidates lower, continuing on from the primary in the uncommitted vote movement that was very alive and active around Patterson, Clifton, that area.

I think you really have to go case by case. I think the Attorney General Matt Platkin had some interesting things to say yesterday to a group of high school students, that really goes to the heart of what a lot of people in New Jersey feel about Democrats that is specific to New Jersey and not something that's going on in other states, and that is the leaders in the state, elected leaders who are Democrats have gutted transparency. They've defended a corrupt ballot design system. They've criticized the attorney general for going after a corrupt party boss.

The governor pointed out that Senator-elect Andy Kim did better than Kamala Harris, but what the governor didn't say is that Kim is perceived by many as a corruption fighter and a reformer. That's not Murphy's brand, and the state legislature is actively fighting political reform. I think there are some very particular issues, state by state by state, that make up what Democrats are feeling and why they were voting, and here we have our own particular flavor.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any calls for Nancy, comments or questions on any of the things we're talking about from her Ask Governor Murphy call-in from last night? The presidential election results in the state, other election results in the state.

We'll play a clip in a minute of Murphy describing already talking with Donald Trump, so the fate of New Jersey going forward under a Trump administration. Also the revival of congestion pricing to drive into the Manhattan business district, we'll get to that. The wildfires, the drought, the water supply, we started with that. The coming increase apparently in the excise tax on legal weed. 212-433-WNYC, help us report any of those stories. Tell us a story, talk about your experience. Just offer an opinion or ask Nancy a question. 212-433-9692, call or text.

The governor told you yesterday that Donald Trump actually gave him a call this week. Here's about a minute of what he had to say about his relationship with the president-elect.

Governor Phil Murphy: By the time I walk out of here, I will have had more years at that moment as governor alongside Donald Trump as president than any other governor, an American who's a Democrat. We've had to run this play before, as they say. You have to do basically two things that seem at odds with each other.

Number one, you have to fight like hell. If you look at the three years that we overlapped with him in the first go around, we fought like hell to protect people's rights, certain communities, our interests as a state, and we're going to do that again. That's why we're here. My job is to protect the nine-and-a-half million residents of this state, but at the same time, you have to be open and willing to find common ground.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, can you talk a bit more about that tension? What did that balance look like for the governor last time Trump was in office?

Nancy Solomon: Murphy talks a lot about how he was able to get what he needed from the White House during the first horrible months of COVID when there weren't masks and there weren't enough ventilators. Remember, as I think we all do, New York and New Jersey were the first states to be hit really hard. It was so early in the pandemic that he needed help and he got it. He's always been very grateful, always talked about the fact that the president helped him with that. He was able to get funding for the Portal Bridge, and he spoke about that last night. That is a choke point on the train corridor into New York, and it's being rebuilt, and he got that money through.

Then he talks about what he fought him on. Mostly immigration raids, I think, was one of the key things. We got a lot of calls last night from folks about the election results and about Trump and about what Murphy is going to do. People really wanted to know. Sometimes I I do these shows and I feel like what people want to ask about is not what I plan to talk about, and that's fine, but last night, it was really clear that people wanted to hear from him about the next Trump presidency.

For instance, one of the calls we got was from someone who wanted to know whether Murphy could stop Donald Trump from using federal facilities like Fort Dix or the Picatinny-- I can't remember what it's called, but the arsenal out here, whether he could stop Trump from using those as immigrant detention centers. The governor seemed a bit dubious that he would be able to do that, but that's the kind of concerns that people have. He was trying to answer people's questions about it.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here's Rita in Somerset. You're on WNYC, Rita. Hi there.

Rita: Hi, Brian. I voted for the Democrats. I've always leaned towards it, and I voted for Kamala Harris, but I do feel maybe the Democrats have had it wrong [unintelligible 00:14:33] including me, I'm an immigrant, and I came the proper channels. I waited my turn. I do feel upset that a lot of people are just allowed to come in and stay here. I think one of the reasons maybe the Democrats lost was because the Republican governors used that as an excuse, the sanctuary cities, to highlight the fact that Democrats are weak on the border control.

I don't think they should repeat the same mistake because you can see that we have lost ground in a lot of places, and this could be one of the reasons because people don't like this particular-- It's also an expense on our public system. I feel Governor Murphy, instead of doing that, maybe Biden as well as the governors of blue states could offer means and transportation to help people to go in a peaceful way, like a self deportation before the Trump administration takes power.

It's so demeaning to all these people to be rounded up to be put in detention centers and left hanging there for a long time and subject to all the abuses that they're going to get. I think that they would be better served if people can offer them a way. For those who are voluntarily self deporting, it would be a much better way, I think, to handle the situation and also would give credibility to the fact that the administration, the Democrats also support rules. I think it's very obvious that most of the people in this country do not like the idea of people just crossing over the border. I think they should recognize that.

Brian Lehrer: Rita, thank you very much. Did the governor get any call or comment like that last night?

Nancy Solomon: No, we didn't. Most of the calls were folks who really don't agree with the Republican stance on immigration or other things, you know. It was more, as I said, "What are you, Governor Murphy going to do to protect us from the Trump administration?" I think it's an interesting point.

Certainly, there's a whole debate going on about the need for affordable housing. That's certainly crucial. There are people who believe that immigrants coming into the country are driving up demand for housing, and so, there is some blame being placed there. It's not for me to say whether that's right or wrong. I think we haven't built enough affordable housing for decades anywhere in this country, and so, to blame it on this year's influx of immigrants seems a little misplaced.

Brian Lehrer: A couple of texts coming in, and here's one. I would not have expected the part of this segment that's about the drought in New Jersey and the part that's about the presidential election to intersect but listener writes, "Are golf courses still watering their grounds? I believe a certain president owns a course in New Jersey."

Nancy Solomon: That's a great question. I'm going to have to get back to our caller on that one. I don't know. I don't know if this is watering season for golf courses. This is not an area I really understand too much about, but it is post-watering season, I think.

Brian Lehrer: Although with so much dry weather, it might be watering season in a lot of places. I did happen to run across somebody watering their lawn in the Bronx the other day and had that thought, "oh, this isn't really watering season," but there they were.

Another listener writes, "Reliably blue and incredibly diverse Teaneck went for Harris by only three points, which is shockingly small. I feel like the large population of Orthodox Jews and Muslims had something to do with that. I know members of both groups who voted for Trump and some who left the top of the ticket blank. Sadly, there is one thing that many Jews and many Muslims can agree on. I'm so sad that this is it." Any thought about that or Teaneck in particular?

Nancy Solomon: Not really. Let's add in what we just heard from the last caller. I think there was a real miscalculation about how certain reliable segments of the Democratic coalition, what's been referred to all week as the Obama coalition, what they wanted and how they were going to vote and what issues mattered. I think when you hear voting immigrants, new citizens to this country, talking about how Trump's immigration and deportation plan is the reason they voted for him, that I think is a surprise.

New Jersey is no different on that account. It's a very diverse state and I think, national Democrats and Kamala Harris didn't address the issue to their liking.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue with Nancy in a minute. We'll get to the potential new cost of driving into Manhattan from New Jersey and the potential new cost of cannabis in New Jersey. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Nancy on the morning after her monthly Ask Governor Murphy call-in. Let me do one more here on the election and then we're going to go on to congestion pricing. Hannah in Essex county, you're on WNYC. Hi, Hannah.

Hannah: Hi. I just wanted to make a comment that overlaps with the last conversation, too, is that in Essex County, my entire Italian Family kept repeating that Kamala Harris was a diversity hire, that she was sexually promiscuous. It was just really the Fox talking points. I think that gave them, people, the excuse to vote with Trump in a way that they wouldn't have considered in the past. I think it gave them the ability. Those talking points really took hold up there. I wasn't surprised by the numbers.

Brian Lehrer: Hannah, thank you very much. Any political analysis of that, Nancy, before we move on to congestion pricing?

Nancy Solomon: Again, New Jersey is America. What we see here, we saw all across the country. And I don't think you can underestimate the power and influence of Fox News. We have our own local situation going on here, which is that the state's largest newspaper, the Newark Star Ledger, has announced that it's going to stop printing its paper edition and it is cutting The Jersey Journal, which is the Hudson County newspaper that's part of their chain. We've seen two decades of retrenchment of local and statewide news coverage. You got people relying on not just Fox but on social media to get their news, and it's a real problem.

Brian Lehrer: Congestion pricing. Governor Kathy Hochul is expected to announce in one hour from now a new lower congestion pricing toll. Sources are telling WNYC it'll be a $9-toll versus the previous $15. Here's how the governor weighed in last night.

Governor Phil Murphy: Coming out of last week's election with those competitive House races in and around New York City, so the suburbs, where voters, I think, screamed out that economic matters, affordability, kitchen table issues were really important and they felt like they weren't being addressed and that they were lost as a result. I don't understand why you play that card. I just don't get it.

Brian Lehrer: Is the governor still suing New York? Don't we have a state of New Jersey lawsuit against New York over the original congestion pricing proposal? Does that stay in effect now after Hochul announces whatever she announces in an hour?

Nancy Solomon: That's what the governor said. He seemed to indicate that this doesn't change anything. We were talking about it. He just got back from a trade mission to Great Britain and this news broke yesterday. I'm not sure he had a whole lot of time to think about it and discuss it with his advisors, but at least, he made a real attempt at answering the questions about it. I think he's pretty much full on still opposing it. The cut to $9 didn't really seem to impress him too much, and he did say that the lawsuit still stands.

Brian Lehrer: It looks like we have a high school student from White Plains calling in on congestion pricing. Judo in White Plains. Hi, Judo. Do I have your name right first of all?

Judah: Judah, J-U-D-A-H, but close enough.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, Judah. Sorry, I heard judo as the martial art. Go ahead. Hi.

Judah: No worries. I just wanted to say thank you so much for taking my call. I'm a huge fan of the show. In general, I'm in favor of improving the mass transit system in New York City. I think it's a given. I think it really offers a source for upward mobility. One thing about congestion pricing that I think is not being talked about enough is these food delivery trucks that are going to be going in and what you're going to have is you're going to have these food deserts in Lower Manhattan. It's going to hike the price of food and people are just are not going to be able to afford food. I think that's a really interesting point that's just not being talked about enough.

Brian Lehrer: What's your source on that? When you talk about food delivery trucks, you mean trucks that are delivering food to the grocery stores and that kind of thing.

Judah: Right. Exactly. Those food companies, if their truck drivers are going to have to pay a toll, they're going to also increase the price of food products that are going into the city.

Brian Lehrer: Judah, thank you very much, Nancy, interesting. Presumably it's going to increase the price a little bit of whatever goods are coming into the city from outside, and maybe that would include food because the trucking companies are going to bake that into what they charge, right?

Nancy Solomon: Yes. I think, we always see unintended consequences of policy changes. This is not my area of expertise, but I will say, the governor just got back from London and he made a comment about how they got stuck in traffic, so he doesn't think congestion-- Congestion pricing, by the way, is one of, I think, two places in the world. Hopefully I'm right on that. I believe it's Singapore and London. It's definitely London, though.

He commented last night about the fact that it didn't seem to be working so well, which I think the research is pretty clear that it is working well in London. Have prices for goods and food gone up there related to congestion pricing? I'm sure that we could Google that and figure it out.

Brian Lehrer: I also know, and this doesn't totally answer Judah's question, that one of the goals is supposed to be to get delivery trucks carrying a lot of stuff to come in to Manhattan overnight when the congestion pricing fee either isn't in effect. I don't remember if it goes down to zero, or it just goes down to much less than the daytime fee, but that's one of the ways they want to fight actual congestion.

It's not all about funding the MTA. It's not all about climate. They're actually trying to fight congestion as well. One of the ways that, as I understand it, they want to do that is by incentivizing with the free or lower toll, a lot of deliveries, especially larger scale deliveries, to happen in the late night hours. Just adding that piece of it.

All right, let's see. Do we have one more? Yes. Let's take Jean in Rahway on congestion pricing and then we're going to finish up with this new possible cannabis tax. Jean, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Jean: Thank you so much. I just wanted to make the point that since Mr. Biden is only going to be president for a short period of time, why wouldn't Governor Murphy want the money for congestion pricing that even $9 would accumulate would be coming into the coffers of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority and just get the money no matter what? Because the uncertainty of after the election and the inauguration--

Brian Lehrer: Trump might kill it.

Jean: Correct.

Brian Lehrer: Jean, thank you very much. The premise there, Nancy, does the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey get any of that money, or does it only go to the MTA, which is a New York only institution?

Nancy Solomon: Where's Stephen Nissen when we need him? I believe it's only the MTA. I do know for a fact that this is one of the issues the governor objects to, is that New Jersey would not be getting any of the revenue from the toll.

Brian Lehrer: All right, last thing. Social justice groups in Jersey want the state to the social equity excise fee on cannabis. It's currently $1.25 an ounce. Am I putting that right? They want to raise it to-- Am I seeing $30 an ounce?

Nancy Solomon: Now remember, an ounce, it's a pretty large amount of cannabis, but yes, that is the plan and it is a big increase. The governor says the plan, all along when they legalized marijuana, was that as the increase for supply went up, the price would come down and they would substitute the savings for this social equity tax.

Brian Lehrer: Here's 30 seconds of the governor last night on that.

Governor Phil Murphy: There are several annoying elements of this, one of which is this has been part of the deal since the day I signed the law. This is not a new thing that just came up. The point is, for folks out there, it's not without risk. I want to say that, for folks out there who may not be paying attention, the deal was, as the price continued to drop as we expected it would in the legal market, then the taxes would go up and all the monies would get put toward colloquially the fallout from the war on drugs into underserved communities. That still should be the case in my humble opinion.

Brian Lehrer: Why wouldn't that shift more buyers to the black market? California, I believe, has a problem with this, that it's still so much cheaper to buy on the black market and still so available that a lot of the legal cannabis dispensaries in California have started to have trouble. They haven't even really stood up the industry yet in New York enough to have the conversation about there and measure that. I don't know, maybe that's a potential downside. I know they're trying to strike this balance of raising enough money from that for the social justice initiatives that they want to spend on, but they also want people to shop there, not on the street.

Nancy Solomon: I think what the governor is arguing is that consumers aren't going to necessarily feel the price go up because they're going to replace decreasing prices with the tax and phase it in so that when you go to the weed shop, you're still seeing similar prices. Now some of that business is going to the black market because the prices are lower. To what extent? I haven't looked into that.

I don't think we've talked much about the fact that this isn't just a general tax. This is a tax meant to create a pool of money that is specifically going to low income communities that were hurt by the war on drugs. This is the part that is the most important part to the governor, is that this was going to raise money and shift all of the harm that happened with the war on drugs by taking that money and investing it in low income communities, which, in New Jersey, the bulk of those low income communities are also communities of color.

Brian Lehrer: I guess if people buy an eighth or a quarter ounce at a time, which I think is common, it's a few dollars, and so I guess we'll see what happens. Nancy Solomon, WNYC reporter and editor and host of the Ask Governor Murphy monthly call-in show, thanks so much for coming on. Probably talk to you on the morning after next month.

Nancy Solomon: See you in December, Brian.

 

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