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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. As Michael just said, early voting begins tomorrow in the New Jersey gubernatorial primary. On the Republican side, former New Jersey State Representative Jack Ciattarelli is leading the pack by a lot in the polls and with President Donald Trump's recent endorsement in his pocket to boot. Maybe you missed that, that happened this month. I've read that Trump will be joining Ciattarelli for a virtual rally tonight, showing his interest in Republicans leading the Garden State and his seal of approval for Jack Ciattarelli.

Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates are looking to prove to voters that they would be a strong oppositional force against the White House if chosen in next week's primary or the primary for which voting is already underway. If you have a mail in ballot and early voting in person opens tomorrow, the party's primary is looking more competitive than the Republicans, certainly North Jersey Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, plus the two North Jersey mayors, Newark's Ras Baraka and Jersey City's Steve Fulop.

Former state Senate President Steve Sweeney from South Jersey also just picked up the first endorsement from a sitting member of Congress, Representative Donald Norcross of Camden, first endorsement for him. Joining me now with analysis of that race is Nancy Solomon, WNYC reporter and Host of the Ask Governor Murphy monthly call-in show. Hey, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go right to how the North Jersey candidates are trying to distinguish each other from each other. According to the most recent polls, I see Congresswoman Sherrill is leading, but I've also read that Mayor Fulop and Mayor Baraka are splitting what was described as a more left-wing of the party's voters. Is that an accurate description as you see it? Are they more progressive than Congresswoman Sherrill in any identifiable ways?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I think it is accurate. The one quibble I would have with what you just laid out is that you really can't count on the polling in this situation because you have a low turnout election with five strong candidates. Whether it's because they have a lot of money, or a lot of name recognition, or they have a lane where they have their base supporting them, each one has a pathway to winning this election. With five candidates, you're talking about 20.1% of the vote wins this thing. [crosstalk] is correct.

Brian Lehrer: No rank choice voting in New Jersey, no runoff.

Nancy Solomon: Exactly. A very small number of voters could decide this thing. Besides the fact that it's a crapshoot, I'd say yes, Mikie Sherrill is more moderate and more of a centrist, and Ras Baraka, I'd say, is the true progressive of this bunch. He really is a guy who has lived his values and been very consistent and out on the campaign trail. He really says what he thinks and means. You don't get a sense of him trying to posture. A lot of voters have responded to that and like it. Steve Fulop, he's always been somewhat progressive, but I think it's notable that progressive activists in Jersey City, of whom I speak to regularly, are not big fans.

They campaigned for him and supported him his first time up for mayor when he ran first for mayor, and over the years, the bloom has fallen off. His positions and what he says during the debates, definitely progressive and a lot of people have responded. I'd say he has a shot at this thing.

Brian Lehrer: Just not to overstate the polls, which I only made a brief reference in the first place, but you're absolutely right. The latest poll from the middle of May, I think it was, that I saw getting a lot of press had Sherrill at about 30%, Baraka and Fulop at about 20%. I'm just re-emphasizing your point that in a low turnout election that's, that's really not very different. I just don't want anybody to be dissuaded from voting at all, thinking that this is a done deal because of any of these polls. That's why I'm coming back to that.

Would you go further down the road you were just going and cite any particular issues on which Sherrill is a little more center left, and the two mayors are a little more progressive?

Nancy Solomon: Yes. Let me add that Josh Gottheimer, the congressman from Bergen County, talking in terms of the political continuum, I would say he's to the right of Mikie Sherrill. As an example of a recent example, folks remember the Lake and Riley Act. That was, I believe, one of the first things Congress voted on after Trump took office and the new Congress took office, and the Republicans gained control. That was kind of a litmus test for center Democrats, and Gottheimer voted for it.

It basically was a show against immigrants in a way, saying, "Oh, we're going to Deport people who commit crimes," when already there's a law on the books that people who commit crimes are deportable and do get deported.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. The distinction in Lake and Riley is more deportable than before if they're just accused of a crime, they don't have to be convicted.

Nancy Solomon: It upset a lot of Democrats in New Jersey that Gottheimer voted for that. He's also the founder of the Problem Solvers Caucus. I just wanted to put him in there because he could win, too. These are all very strong candidates with a lot of money and a lane. Let me talk about what it means.

Brian Lehrer: Then there's also the one, the one candidate in the Democratic primary we haven't mentioned, Sean Spiller, who's the head of the state teachers union, who's getting a lot of teachers union money apparently. He also has dollars to spend.

Nancy Solomon: 40 million of them in fact. Sean Spiller, we could do a whole show on Sean Spiller. He is using teacher union money to run this election. Up until recently, he didn't have much of a campaign staff, but he is out there. I saw him at an event on Saturday, shaking hands and talking to people, and everybody in New Jersey has gotten at least 10 mailers for him, and his ads are everywhere. It raises some troubling questions, this money from the teachers' union. I would have no problem with it if I saw that the rank and file teachers voted to support their guy for governor and voted for their union dues to be spent on this. I would have no problem with it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with teachers being a political force in the state. What I have a problem with is that it was a much, much smaller group of union officials who voted to allow him to do this and that. That gives me pause. He is also a completely legitimate candidate with a lane to election. In terms of the issues, what separates these folks? I'd say that the biggest thing that-- let's back up for a second, primary elections, as we all know, are base elections. The die-hard base of the party is who turns out to vote, and that tends to tilt things to the right for the Republicans and to the left for the Democrats. Then there's the big pivot to the general election.

Some candidates can pivot easily, and some can't. I think given that, I think for Mikie Sherrill, progressives in the party who aren't supporting her because some are, do not like that she will not commit to raising taxes on people who earn $2 million and higher. There's already an extra tax on people who earn $1 million or more. Progressives are fighting for an income tax system that continues to get more money out of people as they get richer and richer, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million, and so on. More graduated tax levels for those higher, richer people.

She has not committed to that, and people aren't happy about that particular thing. Then there's been a whole fight about this little detail, in some ways called the Immigrant Trust Directive. The Immigrant Trust Directive, a policy by the former attorney general that the current attorney general has also enforced, which basically the attorney general's office supervises all of law enforcement in the state. They basically have told law enforcement, "You can't participate with ICE arrests and deportations unless you see a crime being committed or there's reason to believe a person has committed a crime."

They can be involved and assist in terms of fighting crime, but they can't be involved and help just because someone is undocumented. You can't walk up on the street-- a local police officer is not supposed to walk up to somebody on the street and ask for their ID and their papers, for instance, assuming they're looking at somebody and judging them by what they look like. That is the policy of the state. Progressives in the Democratic Party, and this has been an issue during the primary, want this to become a law.

There's a whole debate about would it be more effective as a law versus a directive by the attorney general's office. Mikie Sherrill has argued that it would not be effective to make this a law because what happened when the Immigrant Trust Directive was first established was that there were two Republican sheriffs in South Jersey who sued, and they lost. Now we have established law that says that the Immigrant Trust Directive is legal and enforceable.

Mikie Sherrill argues that if you make it now a legislative bill and a law in the state, those same sheriffs can now sue again and take it to the Supreme Court, where there's a much more conservative body there now who would likely say, no, they wouldn't uphold this law or it would put it in jeopardy. That's her argument, but she's getting beat up by the other candidates as being not as immigrant supportive. Those are two issues. Then, of course, what someone says they're going to do about property taxes, we should just talk about property taxes in general, because it's across the board. It's always one of the biggest issues every four years in a gubernatorial election.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. I'm all ears.

Nancy Solomon: It's a hard issue to fix. I think the range is basically some of the candidates, like Mikie Sherrill says that she would work harder to consolidate towns and school districts. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe there isn't quite so much daylight there because they all want to see consolidation. A big problem in New Jersey is that we have so many towns and so many school districts, and they're tiny, and they have their whole layer of management and management salaries, and that drives up costs.

The extent to which people talk about this, it's very hard to get it done because towns don't want to lose their local control. It's a perennial problem. It never gets fixed. All of the candidates talk about that they're going to do more. I guess it really comes down to-- Ras Baraka says, "No town is ever going to vote to do this. They're not going to cooperate. We have to force them." Mikey Sherrell is more on the side of, "We'll give them incentives, we'll make it happen in a more voluntary way." There's this thing called shared services where you still have local control, but you go in together with other towns to buy stuff.

There already is a lot of shared services agreements, and they don't seem to be saving much money. Then on the Republican side, they all talk a lot about how they're going to cut property taxes. They don't all have a lot of specific plans. I'd say Jack Ciattarelli maybe has the most specific one. See, this is the problem. He says specific things like that he'll cut the corporate business tax that Governor Murphy created and raised, but he hasn't said what he would do to make cutting taxes possible. Obviously, we know you have to either cut services or raise taxes on other people and not the ones who are currently being taxed, and he's not real specific about that.

I will say he wants to cut funding to urban schools. He thinks that they get too much of the share of the pot. They get more money because those schools are more expensive to run. He says he would, he would send more money to suburban districts and less to urban districts.

Brian Lehrer: Are they more expensive to run? Are urban districts spending more per student than some of the wealthier suburban districts that can levy high property tax for education because the residents, the homeowners, can afford it and want to fund their relatively well-off kids' education well?

Nancy Solomon: I haven't looked at this in a while. I think it has been true that the urban districts do spend more per pupil. They get more from the state per pupil, I know that.

Brian Lehrer: That's really the question, I guess, for the governor, right?

Nancy Solomon: Yes. I guess the idea is that kids who are low income, who have less opportunities for everything that they don't get at home, to make up for that deficit, whether it's feeding them and clothing them, or whether it's reading support, that's expensive and it costs more. I think that's the basic idea behind the school funding formula and why urban districts get more. It's been a thorn in the side of suburban white New Jersey for a long time.

Brian Lehrer: I think that distinction between state funding for urban districts and local funding for urban districts is important because obviously the lower-income urban areas don't have the property tax base that the wealthier suburban districts do. That's part of the reason the state tries to compensate for that. We'll come back to Ciattarelli and the Republican primary in just a second, but finish on the Democrats. Here's a text that says, "Just received my voting template for Sussex County Democrats are not in alphabetical order. They put Spiller first." This listener wonders, will this cause Sussex County Democratic votes to be eliminated?

I'm not sure what they mean eliminated, but I was looking at that on an absentee ballot that I saw for the New York Democratic mayoral primary as well. It's not in alphabetical order. I was scratching my head. How do they come up with the order in a big multi-candidate race in any of these situations? Do you know how they do in Jersey?

Nancy Solomon: Yes. It's county by county. Sussex County is one of the 21. The county board of elections and the county clerk literally have a random drawing of the names out of the hat for the order placement. There have been accusations of hanky panky with that process in some counties. I think statistically, you could make the argument that something's going wrong in a couple of them. Most of them seem to be pretty random and fair. Research shows it gives an advantage to the one at the top, but it's, I guess, deemed the fairest way to do it is to pull those names out of a hat every election, county by county.

Brian Lehrer: I am now told that that's the way they did it in the New York City mayoral primary as well, by lottery. On the Republican side of my guest for another few minutes is our Nancy Solomon, who covers New Jersey and hosts the Ask Governor Murphy call-in show once a month, for another few months anyway, then we'll see what happens next year. I hope the next governor, whoever it is, is willing to sit for that. The Republican primary seems, by all reporting, to be less competitive than the Democratic primary, with Ciattarelli, who was the nominee against Phil Murphy in 2021, leading the pack again, and President Trump this month endorsing Ciattarelli.

On that point, Nancy, why do you think he endorsed Ciattarelli and maybe not candidate Spadea, who's a right-wing talk show host and is probably the most MAGA of the three, or correct me if you think that's not a fair characterization.

Nancy Solomon: No, I think that's fair, and it's a good question, and I believe my interpretation and my answer is that Donald Trump desperately wants the Republican candidate to win the general election, that it is going to be talked about as a referendum on him, Donald Trump. There are only two gubernatorial elections this year, and that's always true, that Virginia and New Jersey are on a very different cycle, and are always the year after the presidential election. There'll be a lot of attention watching both. He has clearly made a move to win rather than go with the guy he might like better or who's been more loyal.

Ciattarelli in 2016 called him a charlatan and that he was embarrassing. He tried to get his endorsement in 2021 when Ciattarelli ran again. I can't even remember what happened that time, but it was never a done deal that Trump was ever going to support him and forgive him. Now, clearly, it's in Trump's interest to do so. That's what's happened. I think it's really amazing that Trump is coming here to do a campaign event with him. I think this has catapulted Ciattarelli's chances at winning the primary. I think at this point, he's expected to win because of the Trump endorsement. The top challenger to Ciattarelli is Bill Spadia, who is a conservative talk radio host.

It was expected that because he has this huge listenership and huge following, and name recognition, he could do very well. He got a lot of reporters, particularly Politico. Matt Friedman and Politico were really hammering him over the fact that this was an in-kind donation for the station to continue to put him on the air when he was running for governor. He did step down from that, but he had a real shot at getting Trump's endorsement. He's been MAGA all the way for many years. When that didn't happen, that has really cut his legs out from under him.

Brian Lehrer: For Trump and the Republican Party generally, this is going to be a question for the voters going to the polls in the Republican primary. If the issue to any degree for them is electability in a state that almost always in recent years elects Democrats the statewide office, then why not Jon Bramnick, the third candidate in the race who's pretty anti-Trump? I could see why Trump would never give him his endorsement. I wonder how much you think this is an issue for voters in the Republican primary electability. Ciattarelli lost to Murphy in 2021. Ciattarelli, again, rather than someone like Jon Bramnick, who still holds a bunch of Republican positions.

Nancy Solomon: Jon Bramnick is a true moderate, and he wouldn't want Trump's endorsement, although I'm sure he would take it. He's a true moderate. He's been very consistent, but he's like the last man standing. He really is one of the last moderates in the legislature. The party has doubled down on MAGA at this point, and there's really no hope that Jon Bramnick's going to win the primary. Would he be a better candidate for the general? Absolutely, but there's really little hope that he could win.

Let me talk for a minute about the general election and the way this shakes down in terms of the question of is New Jersey a blue state. Will the winner of the Democratic primary automatically just be expected to win in November? That is just not true at all. In fact, if I were going to place a bet today, I might put my money on the Republicans winning in November. There's been 60 years of history of after a two-term governor, that the opposition party wins the gubernatorial election the next year. That has been happening for a very long time.

We have had a flip between Democratic governors and Republican governors. Let's not forget Chris Christie.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Not that long ago.

Nancy Solomon: Back and forth. The reason for that is for one thing, the issues that drive a gubernatorial election are very different than the issues that drive a Senate election or congressional seats.

Brian Lehrer: New Jerseyans never elect a Republican for US Senate. That's the other statewide election.

Nancy Solomon: Exactly. During the same 60-year period. Instead of going back to the early '60s, going back to 1972, we've had Democratic US senators. The reason is because the issues are really quite different, and the way that the government gets administered, like when you go to get your license renewed, how long is the line? How much do you pay in your property taxes? How are the roads, how are the trains?

Brian Lehrer: We've just got 30 seconds left in the segment-

Nancy Solomon: Okay, sorry.

Brian Lehrer: Just saying, go ahead, finish the thought, though.

Nancy Solomon: Those issues are different, and people get frustrated with the governor over those issues, and they vote out the party. The other thing that happens is we have more Democrats than Republicans registered to vote, but we have the same number of independents as we do Democrats. That's a huge voting bloc in the general election that you're not going to see in the primary. A candidate like Mikie Sherrill or Jon Bramnick have much more appeal with independents, and that is a huge force.

You have to create a coalition to win a statewide gubernatorial election in this state. That's why if the progressives prevail with their candidate and the MAGA folks prevail, they're hurting their ability to coalesce with the independents.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, on the issue of the order in which the Democratic primary candidates are ranked, I guess the Republicans, too being by lottery, I guess it's county by county because people are writing in. After we heard from that listener in Sussex County who was surprised to see Spiller first, a listener writes, "Spiller is last in Monmouth County, Fullop is first." Another one, "I'm in Bergen county, we have Gottheimer first, then Baraka, Fulop, Sherrill, Spiller, Sweeney." For what it is worth, our Nancy Solomon with her eagle eye on New Jersey. Early voting begins tomorrow in the primary. Thanks a lot, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: Thanks, Brian.

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