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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll do two New Jersey-focused segments on today's show, as well as one that straddles New York and national and some fun at the end with a call in on your favorite weird or lesser-known sport. On the politics, we'll have our monthly Call Your Senator segment, my questions and yours for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in about 15 minutes. Later, we'll continue our series with candidates for mayor of New York and governor of New Jersey. Today it's my questions and yours for Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, now running in the Democratic primary for governor. Right now, almost as a preview, WNYC's Nancy Solomon joins us with excerpts from her Ask Governor Murphy call in last night and to take some of your questions and comments. She does that call in once a month with Governor Phil Murphy and usually comes on with us the next morning. Hey, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Before we play our first clip of the governor, one of the big topics last night in general, how national politics is playing out locally in New Jersey during the new Trump administration, what can the governor do?

Nancy Solomon: I think that's the problem, is that there's not a whole lot he can do. The big concern, of course, has been tariffs the last several days and the tanking global markets, the tanking stock market, the tanking bond market, looming recession. He basically said governors can't do a whole lot to us to stop this, and he called for Donald Trump to listen, as he put it, listen to the adults in the room. Governor Murphy is a guy who worked most of his career on Wall Street. He was an ambassador to Germany. He feels like he should have a lot of credibility with the Trump administration on these issues, but I think it's not going to be a surprise to anyone to hear that nobody's in Washington is listening to Phil Murphy about this, certainly not on the Republican side.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Governor Murphy outlining a bit of the stakes and his solutions with respect to tariffs.

Governor Phil Murphy: Canada, like for 36 other American states, is our number one trading partner, and that's a problem right there. We've got a great relationship. This is maybe our closest ally in the world. For the life of me, I don't understand why we're picking on them, but we do a lot of trade with them. That's more inflation, so what can we do? I mentioned this build $500 million incentive to onshore manufacturing. We're in the middle of a lot of really good conversations about companies moving here, companies that are already here, consolidating their operations here.

Brian Lehrer: How big a deal is this, Nancy, the import, export business to New Jersey's economy specifically?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I think it is a pretty big deal. Let's not forget the second largest port in North America is in New Jersey. It obviously serves the entire region.

Brian Lehrer: Port of Newark.

Nancy Solomon: The Port of Newark is only slightly smaller than the port in Long Beach, California, so that's a huge part of the regional economy. Manufacturing, while obviously it's way lower than it was for centuries, is still a pretty decent piece of the New Jersey economy. I think it's worth about 55 billion a year and is somewhere around 9% of the state economy, and anybody who's making anything, we've been hearing stories from both small and large manufacturers in the coverage of the tariffs, they talk about, really, how huge it is for them, how impossible it'll be to make things and keep the cost down so that consumers can afford them without even the component parts that they use from overseas, so, as goes New Jersey, it's really the whole country.

I don't think we're that different. Governor Murphy talks a lot about what he's tried to do with the state economy, which is to build off of the high level of education in the state, the strong educational institutions like Rutgers and Princeton, but we're even seeing attacks on that. We're seeing huge federal cuts to research, particularly to Princeton and to medical research in the state. I think Murphy's kind of swimming at this point in trying to figure out how to shield the residents of New Jersey to these harms, and what he says is he can't, that this is a political problem that needs to be fixed with a political solution.

Brian Lehrer: I see the governor also mentioned potentially raising the minimum wage as a result of tariffs. What's the relationship?

Nancy Solomon: I think he brought that up more because we got a call about why is it that agricultural workers don't get the minimum wage and, in many cases, don't get overtime? He was responding to the caller, and then he brought it up again later, I think it was on his mind because of that. I don't think there are any plans. Murphy, that was one of his big achievements of his first term, was getting the minimum wage raised in New Jersey, and it took years of-- they did indexed it and it went up a little bit every year, and now he's pretty much, I think at the end of that. I haven't heard anything about plans afoot to raise it further.

Brian Lehrer: Staying on the topic of what can the governor do, you asked them about Senator Cory Booker's record-setting 25-hour speech on the Senate floor last week. I'm going to ask Senator Gillibrand about that too in a few minutes, and really what the governor thinks the Democratic Party could be doing better generally to convey their message to voters. Here's 30 seconds of the governor on that.

Governor Phil Murphy: We had a roundtable discussion on the potential impacts of Medicaid cuts in Congressman Kean's district. You get the three New Jersey congressmen who are Republican to vote with the Democrats, it's over. The margin's only four votes. 218, which is their number, goes to 215. Our number is 214. It goes to 217. Game over. I invited the congressman who is a friend and I admire his public service, his family's. He couldn't join us, but we had real conversations with six or seven folks who would be devastated by Medicaid cuts.

Brian Lehrer: You want to clarify or expand on what the governor was talking about there for our listeners?

Nancy Solomon: Yes. He's talking about Tom Kean Jr in the 7th Congressional District, which is a district that is very purple and has flipped back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans since 2018, and he held a kind of a panel discussion. Governor Murphy has not been a guy to hold town halls, like it is not his comfort zone like Chris Christie did hundreds of them, and this has not been his style. I don't think he's comfortable fielding the kind of wild and woolly stuff that happens at a town hall.

I think some people would like to see him do that more, but he held a panel discussion where they talked about the Medicaid cuts and they held it in Tom Kean's district. They invited him to come and he didn't come. I think this is one of the complaints about Tom Kean and really the all three of the Republican congress people in New Jersey, there's Jeff Van Drew down in the south and Chris Smith in the center of the state. The three of them, typically, one of the big criticisms of them is that they don't put themselves out there to meet with the public to make themselves available. That's what he's saying.

We talked about this a month ago on the last show and he brought it up again. He thinks that this is the way that New Jersey needs to approach the problems that the state is facing with the Trump administration is to go at these three Republican congresspeople and organize in their districts. There are progressives organizing in those districts. I think Murphy could do a little more, really. If that's what his plan is, he could do a little more.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to take a call from Regan in Park Slope, who has a New York and New Jersey and other blue state relevant question here. Regan, you're on WNYC with Nancy Solomon after her Ask Governor Murphy call in. Hi.

Regan: Hi. Longtime listener and I'm a frequent caller. It's just out of my mind that if we are paying taxes for services and agencies and the services are being pulled back, why are we paying taxes as citizens and why are states contributing to the federal pool? I think New York gives about anywhere from 200 to 300 billion to the federal government every year of their taxes with the agreement that we'll get it back for our needs, and if the federal government is going to be calling back services, then why can't we just withhold the money? $300 million of FEMA assistance is going to be taken away, then why can't New York just say, "Okay, cool, we'll just withhold 300 million. Whatever we need for education, for Medicaid, whatever, we'll just withhold it from what we give you."

Brian Lehrer: Regan, thank you. I think a question there, Nancy, you and I have talked about this topic before in theory. I don't know if the governor addresses it. One question there is how do you do that? We've talked about how wealthier blue states like New York and New Jersey and California contribute more to the federal treasury than they get back in federal programs.

Those go, ironically, more to red states, which tend to be politically for a smaller federal government, but I don't know how you do that. Does that mean individuals in New York and New Jersey withholding their federal income taxes? Then they're sort of liable for law breaking as individuals. I'm curious if this has ever come up with the governor and your experience with him as a means of Pushback?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I wish I had asked him because, correctly, you stated we have talked about this before. Clearly, if it's done by taxpayers, you would want to be part of a very large organized group doing this. Right?

Brian Lehrer: Right.

Nancy Solomon: You wouldn't want to put your own legal liability to pay your taxes out there on your own, so could this be done a taxpayer revolt? I'm sure it could be, but it would take a lot of organizing. Does the state have the ability to do this? I don't see how that mechanism works. Individuals pay their federal income taxes. That's how the money flows, and then it comes back to the states, so I don't see state action by the government. I could be wrong. This isn't a question I've thought about or looked at, but I would say that once again, I would turn attention back to what Governor Murphy says New Jersey residents can do, and that's put pressure on the three Republicans in the state as part of our representative democracy to fight back on this stuff.

Brian Lehrer: I should note that the bulk of your conversation with the governor last night centered on affordable housing. When doesn't it, really, on either side of the Hudson? You referenced Ezra Klein's new book, Abundance. Good thing to bring up. He was on here for that book recently, and the governor was familiar with it. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson wrote that together, as some of our listeners know. The premise is really Democrats have good ideas but trouble getting stuff built, and now too much Democratic resistance to getting stuff built. What's the through line from that book to New Jersey as Governor Murphy sees it?

Nancy Solomon: I've been fascinated with the work that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson did and the conversations that have been all over the media about it. I've listened to several very long interviews with Ezra Klein about it, and I just think it's so interesting because it's exactly what happens in New Jersey. I've been so focused for years and years on these sorts of problems in New Jersey, and I never really thought that much about the national story and what it means for Democrats and why Democrats face such trouble in the last election. Ezra Klein has really put this all together, so it was interesting to talk to the governor about it last night.

I was even a little surprised that he immediately jumped in, like, "Oh, Abundance? Yes," like he had been paying attention. I was a little surprised by that, but anyway. New Jersey, we have a million examples that are just so clearly like things just don't get built, don't get done, don't get fixed. New Jersey transit, well, New Jersey transit's problems are Amtrak's problems, and New Jersey transit, and the governor of New Jersey can't do a whole lot, although he says he is getting stuff done, but he can't do a whole lot to fix that problem.

Affordable housing, affordable housing has just been a disaster in New Jersey. It got completely tangled up in the courts. The governor says he has passed a bill, signed a bill that has fixed it. It's unclear whether it really fixes it. Each town has so much control over what happens in their town, and so the question is, what should the state do to to override nimbyism, to override the natural inclination of every small town in New Jersey to say, "Wait, we don't want a high-rise apartment building. This is our suburban paradise of single-family homes and big lawns."

Brian Lehrer: Right. Exactly. I'm going to ask Mayor Baraka about that later in the show when he's on as a candidate for governor, but go ahead, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: The governor, by the way, gave him a shout out, gave Baraka a shout out for doing a good job in Newark in getting housing built.

Brian Lehrer: Did he endorse?

Nancy Solomon: Oh, I'm sorry, actually talked about Jersey City. He gave Baraka a shout out for something else.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. Well, Jersey City is where Steve Fulop is the mayor. He's running in that primary. Plus we have Steve Sweeney, Congressman Gottheimer, Congressman Sherrill.

Nancy Solomon: Mike Sherrill. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Has the governor endorsed, or will he?

Nancy Solomon: He hasn't said anything publicly. He seemed eager to talk about the race last month, but I had other things on my mind I wanted to get to, so we didn't. I don't think we'll see a formal endorsement coming from him before the primary, but I could be wrong, but not yet.

Brian Lehrer: We have Senator Gillibrand standing by for a Call Your Senator segment in just a second here, but what's your view of this gubernatorial race so far? I see that Baraka coincidentally just got a group of big endorsements from progressive groups, including the Working Families Party and some big unions.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, that's a very big, big news piece today. This is what happens with primary elections, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, that the most engaged voters are the only people who vote in the primary, and so what you get is more power concentrated at the, I won't say edges or fringes because it's a big part of each party, whether the Trump conservatives versus the Democratic progressives, but what you see is pressure in the primary, this happens year in and year out, to appease those reaches and win the primary, but then can you win the general?

I think that is precisely the problem with the Democrats that they face is that you've got so many candidates, each one has its base. Then when we turn to the general, the Republicans are going to take all those clips from all the town halls and forums and they're going to beat up the Democrats for being too liberal. I think it's interesting that progressive Democrats are not being maybe as pragmatic and they're going for the-- they think this is the moment to get a more true progressive in the governor's seat, and that's what they're going for.

Brian Lehrer: WNYC's Nancy Solomon, she hosts the Ask Governor Murphy call in once a month and usually comes on with us the next morning. Talk to you in May, if not before, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: Okay. Thanks, Brian.

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