[music]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and returning to New York and New Jersey results now, with Nancy Solomon, managing editor for New Jersey Public Radio and WNYC, and Bill Mahoney, reporter at POLITICO, New York's Albany Bureau. Nancy and Bill, good morning. Hope you're doing okay.

Nancy: Good morning, Brian.

Bill: Thank you.

Brian: Nancy, maybe the most newer newsworthy resolve in our area without a big balance of power shift taking place is that it looks like legal, recreational cannabis will be a thing in New Jersey, won by a two to one margin, if the partial results I saw held up, like 67 33, confirm what that was. Tell us what's next? Because then the legislature actually has to get involved and hammer out the details.

Nancy: They've got to pass a law or multiple laws that will set the rules for how this is going to happen. Then there is already established a marijuana regulatory commission and that commission would then take the rules that the legislature sets and apply them and come up with a system for regulating. Then, the permits have to get issued for marijuana sellers. I'm thinking I should invest in popcorn futures because I think this is going to be quite something to watch.

Brian: It's undetermined who's going to get the franchises, whether there's going to be a sort of long-term criminal justice make good allocation of franchises of any kind, things like that?

Nancy: Yes. I mean, are we going to have a marijuana store on every block, like Portland, Oregon, or are we going to have one limited to one in a town? New Jersey has a history of very restrictive alcohol licensing and very expensive licensing. It'll be interesting to see how they go. I think, Karen Rouse brought it up during your newscast in the show that there's also question about how the revenue is going to be spent. The ACLU of New Jersey is calling for the legislature and the governor to spend the extra money that comes in on communities that were hurt by the war on drugs.

Brian: Last thing on this, does the referendum that passed mandate a deadline for the legislature, because otherwise, theoretically, they could never actually enact a system like they couldn't enact one when they were trying to a year ago?

Nancy Yes, but now it's not as political. The law is passed and it's just up to them to define it and come up with the rules. I don't think there'll be a huge delay. There's obviously a very big incentive and that's that they already put marijuana revenue into this year's budget. They need the money. We're in the midst of a pandemic and a huge budget crisis. They need the money and they want to beat New York and get New Yorkers coming across to spend their money here and tax those sales. I think there's going to be some pressure on them to move quickly.

Brian: Bill Barr can bust them on the path train, because it's illegal to carry legal weed across state lines. Okay. Bill Mahoney from POLITICO, New York Democrats were two seats away from a supermajority in the New York State Senate, which would make them able to pass legislation without worrying about an Andrew Cuomo veto, presumably that would lead to more progressive legislation. Does it look like they've got it?

Bill: As of now, I don't think we can say for sure, but the smart money-- It's a long reach. They need a lot of things to go their way to hit that mark. You need 32 seats to hold a majority in the Senate. They had 40. As you mentioned, they need 42. There's 36 seats right now where I would say that Democrats are the clear winners. There's another nine that are still undetermined, but Republicans came out of the night with very big leads among the in-person voters, but we're not going to start counting the absentee ballots in New York for a while.

In many of these it's certainly possible that Democrats could make up the margins based on their advantage among absentee voters, but pulling off six of nine of them, they'll need a lot of luck to go their way in the coming weeks for that to happen.

Brian: Another issue, when we were previewing these races on the show earlier this week, we started with the Working Families Party. The party needed to meet a certain threshold to survive. This is another issue of sort of relative progressives versus relatively more progressive factions in New York State. Because governor Cuomo changed the ballot access rules, it was harder for the Working Families Party or any minor party to maintain their ballot line. Did the Working Families Party clear that hurdle?

Bill: By a very comfortable margin. They needed about 160,000 votes in the presidential race to clear that hurdle. They're at about 290,000 right now with a lot more to go. The Conservative Party also did, not quite as big a margin, but they've got about 250,000. A number of the other minor parties in the state, like the Greens and Libertarians, however, are certainly at risk of losing their ballot line after this election.

Brian: What would that mean if the Green party or the Libertarian party, which everybody's heard of the Green party and Libertarian party, they don't tend to get candidates elected per se, but they're important political voices in the state, as well as the country. People talk about Green party items all the time. Sometimes they put things on the agenda that the Democratic party later adapts. Same thing with the Libertarians, and really either party, either major party flowing from them or Republican dough. Are the Libertarian and Green Parties themselves going to basically cease to exist if they don't meet those thresholds when all the votes are counted?

Bill: They won't cease to exist, but it'll be a lot more complicated for them to do anything. For example, if they met the threshold, then they basically get an automatic ballot line for things like the gubernatorial elections and they don't need to do too much work to get their name on the ballot when that comes up in 2022. Now they'll need to get tens of thousands of petition signatures to do that. T

They'll also face stricter contribution limits and some things like if you hit that threshold you have state-funded primaries, for example. Without being an official party, it's tougher to grow and you need to spend all your resources just to basically staying on the ballot. It certainly will impact their ability to bring these issues to the table in future years.

Brian: We're going to take a short break. When we come back we're going to look at the results as much as they are known from the closely contested congressional races in our area. We'll also talk some with both Nancy from New Jersey Public Radio and Bill from POLITICO, New York about what's at stake for New York and New Jersey in the presidential race, which is still undecided. Listeners, we can get a couple of phone calls in if you want on New York and New Jersey results at (646)-435-7280, (646)-435-7280. Stay with us.

[advertisement]

[music]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, as we're looking at New York and New Jersey election results now with Nancy Solomon, managing editor for New Jersey Public Radio and WNYC, and Bill Mahoney, reporter at POLITICO New York's Albany Bureau. Let's look at the congressional races now that we're supposed to be close. New Jersey, 2nd Congressional District way in the Southern part of the state, Nancy. Jeff Van Drew, as many of our listeners know and some don't, was elected as a Democrat in 2018. This year, he ran as a pro-Trump Republican. He actually switched parties in the middle of his term and he was running against Democrat Amy Kennedy, who rose up to challenge him. Is there a result?

Nancy: No, their race is too close to call. He is ahead and it's looking better for him, I would say, because Amy Kennedy's having problems. She really needed big turnout from Atlantic City and specifically as Atlantic County more broadly, and it's unclear whether she got that. Although, if there was a lot of voting in-person in Atlantic City yesterday, then that's going to help her possibly. It is too close to call and there's also been some pretty dodgy reports coming out of that district in terms of some of the election nearing that went on.

There was a guy, a powerful South Jersey machine Democrat who was paid $110,000 by the Van Drew campaign to pay people to collect ballots and there's been questions raised about whether people were dissuaded from turning in their ballot, possibly if they were Democrats. There was also apparently an FBI investigation into whether there was a robocall yesterday that went out to Democrats saying that the polls were closed and that they shouldn't bother going. There's a lot to be sorted out in the next few days, both to count the votes and to look into some of these problems but I guess--

Brian: What if somebody did that kind of thing and suppressed the vote? Can that result in a redo or some votes being disqualified? It doesn't change anything, right? Except trying to crack down on that thing for the future?

Nancy: I think you may be right. We need the lawyer you had on in the last segment. I'm not entirely sure, but whether the Kennedy campaign has any recourse, but probably not.

Brian: It looked to me like Jeff Van Drew pulled the Trump in the middle of the night, declaring victory against Kennedy before the vote tallies really backed him up. That's still too close to call, but he declared victory, right?

Nancy: Yes and it is too close to call and it was Trump-like. It's interesting, this is what's considered a bellwether district, so it's voted for the winner of the presidential race in the last 50 years. The Trump/Biden election is still on the line and the Van Drew/Kennedy election is still on the line. it mirrors it pretty closely.

Brian: Bill Mahoney, similar but different New York's 11th congressional district that Staten Island and South Brooklyn, with Democrat incumbent Max Rose, Republican challenger Nicole Malliotakis. Again, she's declaring victory. He is not conceding as they wait for absentee ballots to be counted, but this one looks more like she really won, right?

Bill: Yes, she's up by a solid 15 points at this point in time. I don't have all the numbers for the absentee ballots in that district, but he would basically need every single thing to break his way and a lot of luck for him to make up any ground with those being counted.

Brian: How about the Long Island district that Peter King has represented for the last few decades? He's retiring. There was supposed to be a close race between the Democrat and the Republican trying to rise up for that seat. Do we have a result?

Bill: I think one of the big stories of last night in terms of New York was in many ways what we've seen in 2017, 2018 during these blue wave years, is that Democrats made a lot of unprecedented gains on Long Island where they've sometimes been competitive, but never really run the tables there and they've been doing that in races, like for the state legislature. But last night we did see a number of state legislative candidates from Long Island are the ones who were in trouble. Two of the congressional districts there, including the one that you mentioned that used to be held by Peter King, the Republican assemblyman Andrew Garbarino, he's also got a 16-point lead in that district and it doesn't seem to be in any danger of flipping at this point.

Brian: Nancy, back to New Jersey, the 7th congressional district, the Democratic incumbent, Tom Malinowski, he was being challenged by Tom Kean, Jr., son of the former governor, Tom Kean Sr. Do we have a winner?

Nancy: Malinowski won and Andy Kim in the 3rd congressional district one as well. Those were two freshmen incumbents who were thought to be in danger, but they both won pretty handily. Mikie Sherrill won easily and was expected to win easily. That comprises the blue wave that we saw in 2018. It pretty much held, although we still have the Van Drew election waiting for us, but this really goes to-- The suburbs have been increasingly turning Democratic in New Jersey as well as Long Island and we're seeing the same thing, that there were some down-ballot races, some local freeholder races.

They're not going to be called freeholder in a couple of months, but they still are the county commissioners and there were two seats in the state legislature, they had a special election. We're seeing this continuing wave of Democratic victories in the suburbs of New Jersey.

Brian: Do they get paid?

Nancy: Does who get paid?

Brian: The county commissioners?

Nancy: Oh yes, they do.

Brian: Oh, then they're not freeholders.

Nancy: They owned their property free and clear, I believe, or something like that was whatever referred to.

Brian: We were talking about the Green Party, possibly losing its ballot line in New York and we have the co-chair of the Green Party of New York State calling in. Gloria in Park Slope. You're on WNYC. Hi there.

Gloria: Hi, Brian. Thank you for mentioning the Green Party in terms of a party that doesn't often win elections right now and in New York, although we have on occasion, but that we push the issues from ban fracking to ranked-choice, to the same-sex marriage that eventually the Democrats will take up. We just want to acknowledge that it will be a challenge for us and that this was a planned attack from the end of 2019 to up the threshold by the commission that Cuomo put together.

Then, in fact, it was struck down in court earlier this year, that that commission putting that law in to raise the thresholds for parties to keep their ballot status was beyond their reach, and then Cuomo just put it in that emergency pass the budget during COVID. We really feel that this reduces the amount of voices and choices for voters in New York State when people are clamoring for more parties and for more choice.

Brian: Thank you very much and good luck to you and your party. We have a minute left. Let me give you each 30 seconds on the following question. Bill Mahoney, what's at stake for New York if Biden or Trump ultimately wins the presidency? I heard the mayor the other day on NY1 really sounding like the fiscal emergency will be much, much deeper if Trump pertains the presidency.

Bill: I can tell you at a state level, Governor Cuomo's budget-balancing strategy during this time of massive shortfalls, it's pretty much been entirely contingent on Joe Biden winning office and giving a state billions of dollars. If that does not happen, we're going to see some pretty severe cuts all the way from Albany to the MTA in the coming months.

Brian: Same thing with blue, New Jersey, Nancy?

Nancy: Oh, I'm sorry, Brian, give me the question again. I was looking up what freeholders are paid. They're paid, but not very much.

Brian: Look at the rabbit hole I sent you down. I apologize to you and all the listeners. The question was, and we have 15 seconds, if Biden or Trump is elected, are there fiscal implications for New Jersey in the immediate term?

Nancy: Huge. First of all, there, we have a budget crisis and the governor is looking to the feds to help with that and Trump has been antagonistic about it. That's huge. Just everything having to do with COVID, I think Murphy believes that we would be better off with Biden, listening to Anthony Fauci at the CDC.

Brian: Nancy Solomon, managing editor for New Jersey Public Radio and WNYC, and Bill Mahoney, reporter at POLITICO New York's Albany bureau. Thanks, both of you. Appreciate it.

Nancy: Thanks, Brian.

Bill: Thank you.

Copyright © 2020 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.