Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Did you watch the New Jersey gubernatorial debate last night? If not, these headlines ought to give you an idea of what happened. Politico, "Tempers flare as Murphy, Ciattarelli face off." Northjersey.com, "Murphy, Ciattarelli clash on COVID vaccine, taxes and abortion." Nj.com, "Feisty debate." That story also mentioned their differences on Trump in January 6th. Our own New Jersey public radio reporter, Nancy Solomon called it a spicy, raucous affair. Nancy will join us in just a minute, but first here's one exchange that she highlighted for us. It includes Ciattarelli saying he would spend less on education for low income kids.

Jack Ciattarelli: You never hear him talk about property taxes. Under Governor Ciattarelli, we will have a new school funding formula that provides a flatter more equitable distribution of state aid.

Brian: Murphy's position on that knock on him as the governor of high property taxes.

Phil Murphy: You're paying lower income taxes. You're paying less for healthcare. You're paying less for childcare. You're paying less for college. You're not paying 1 cent more to ride at NJ Transit and that's a fact. These guys, folks come on, this is a classic. These guys created a mess, and they left it for guys like me to clean up and we will do just that.

Brian: We'll play more examples of the feistiness and raucousness, maybe they will even help you pick a candidate based on the issues that underlie the fire. Nancy Solomon, WNYC reporter and editor joins us now. Good morning, Nancy. Welcome back to the show.

Nancy Solomon: Hi, Brian. It was actually a really terrific debate, surprisingly so.

Brian: Terrific, meaning?

Nancy: Well, it was feisty and raucous but in a good way. It was about policy, and they were both on their game. They were sparring back and forth, but on the issues. There were maybe a few little personal attacks, but mostly it was on the issues and it was compelling. I was like, "Another debate I have to watch," and then I completely got swept up in it. It was fun in all the best ways a debate should be.

Brian: Well, we'll hear a bunch more examples of that as we go, but let's start with the issues underlying the clips we just played. When Ciattarelli says a flatter education funding formula, does he literally mean spend less on the low-income districts where Democrats think the disadvantages of the children there require more?

Nancy: Yes, that is what he's proposing. He's tapping into a vein of anger that folks in white middle and upper income districts feel about the fact that their property taxes are so high, and when we talk so high, we're talking $20,000 a year, $25,000 a year, so their property taxes are high and part of the reason for that is because it's going to fund schools in places where the property tax base is much lower. Those are low income communities where those schools need the funding. That's the underlying argument there.

Brian: Well, explain for people who don't understand how that works, a little bit more about how that works. If somebody's a homeowner in Upper Saddle River, pretty wealthy area, and paying a lot of local property taxes, don't those property taxes just go to be spent on things in the town, or do they also somehow go to be spent on kids going to school in Newark?

Nancy: You're going to really test my knowledge here, but from what I understand it goes county by county and that's the unit. Saddle River is in Bergen County, I think, but let me talk about Essex, which I know very well. In Essex County, you have communities like the one I live in, Maplewood and our next door, Millburn, which is I would say even more affluent than Maplewood, and on the other side of Maplewood, you have Irvington and Newark. When I say the other side, I mean half a mile, like right just down the road.

Brian: Much lower income communities.

Nancy: Right. What happens is a big part of your property taxes goes to Essex County, and there is a redistribution that happens at the county level to support communities who do not have the property tax base to fully support their schools. I'd say the best argument that the people who are against that redistribution have, is that, and they will argue that an increase in funding for school districts like Newark, like Patterson, like Trenton, has not improved the school districts, and that it's throwing money at a problem that doesn't get fixed.

I don't think the research supports that. I think the money does help those school districts. I think there is the hard data to support that, but does it help it proportionally, like every dollar that goes up, does the school district get better? Probably not. That is the underlying debate.

Brian: Can you fact check the Murphy clip we played there, the claims that New Jerseyans are paying less for healthcare, less for childcare, less for college. Does he mean less than under Governor Christie, his predecessor?

Nancy: Yes, he does and it's true. He poured a bunch of money into community college tuition, and now it is free to a large number of students, not all, but a large number. Childcare is paid for and universal, they're rolling it out. Every kid does not have free childcare, but school districts have got funding to provide pre-K, just like New York. What were some of the other examples?

Brian: Childcare, healthcare, college.

Nancy: Healthcare costs, particularly for working in low income families, and childcare for children in those families, the cost has gone way down. He passed the millionaire's tax, which obviously, there's disagreement about whether that's a fair thing, but certainly most Democrats and all progressives believe that millionaires and people making even more than a million, should be paying more in taxes, that that would be fair. That's another thing to support, and hopefully, when marijuana, when the stores finally open and the sales tax on that comes rolling in, that's going to help even more.

Brian: Let's play one from each of them now and listeners, if you're just joining us, we're listening to excerpts from and getting analysis of last night's Ciattarelli-Murphy debate, the New Jersey gubernatorial debate with WNYC's Nancy Solomon from Maplewood as she just revealed, 646-435-7280. If you watched and had a reaction, or if you want to ask a question, 646-435-7280. Here's Ciattarelli blaming Murphy for many nursing home deaths during the pandemic.

Ciattarelli: The reason New Jersey leads the nation in nursing home deaths is because the governor forced nursing homes to take in nursing home patients.

Brian: Here's Murphy charging that Ciattarelli is like Texas when it comes to a refusal to stop the pandemic now.

Murphy: The conversation that I hear to my left here is about wiggle room on vaccinations and not so sure on masking, that's the conversation, that's like, Texas.

Brian: I guess we should point out that Ciattarelli was standing to Murphy's left.

Nancy: Yes, he didn't mean that ideologically speaking.

Brian: Not at all. Can you explain the context behind each of those?

Nancy: Yes. I think everybody's aware of the fact that we had a huge crisis at the beginning of the pandemic with deaths in nursing homes and it's something that, both New York former governor, Andrew Cuomo, and Governor Phil Murphy have been criticized for. First, New York made the decision and then New Jersey followed, that nursing home residents who went to the hospital with COVID would return back to their nursing homes or congregate care of whatever kind.

What Murphy argues is that these were people's homes, that they needed to go home, and that the nursing homes were told to quarantine patients and keep them separate. That the extent to which that didn't happen is tragic, but it was not a error in public policy.

It's probably the place where he's most vulnerable. I mean, I think the polling shows that New Jersians are fairly happy with his leadership over the pandemic, and his popularity rating certainly went up during the depths of the pandemic, when people were actually tuning into his press conference every day, which is just a crazy thing. I would watch on YouTube the number of viewers go up to like 2,000 people. It's like, "Wow." People were happy.

Brian: If people thought Cuomo was the only governor who is being watched like that, or if people thought Cuomo is the only governor transferring nursing home patients back into their nursing homes, then they missed the New Jersey story.

Nancy: Exactly, but also, I think what Murphy will argue is that, "Hey, New York and New Jersey got hit first, and so were hurt by the lack of knowledge the lack of preparation, the lack of leadership by the federal government under Trump." We were watching that as journalists in real-time, and I think he's got a decent argument to make there. There was a shortage of PPEs. They had to make very, very tough decisions on the fly, very, very quickly. A little personal aside for Phil Murphy, he happened to have just had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his kidney the week that all of this started to happen. He got out of the hospital from a fairly major surgery, and had to get the ball rolling very quickly.

Brian: On difficult, difficult decisions. Going forward to the Murphy clip attacking Ciattarelli, how different are they on vaccine requirements and masks?

Nancy: I think this is a big vulnerability for Ciattarelli. He said last night, "I'm vaccinated, I tell people they should get vaccinated," but he's against any kind of mandates. I think more problematic for him and the polling show this, is that he's against mask mandates. That's a much less invasive kind of mandate to require people to, or require even schoolchildren to wear a mask. The fact that he has held on to that and it's playing, obviously, we've had a political division in the country about this stuff, I think he's playing to the Republican voters on that one, and it's hurting him.

Brian: All right. New Jersey callers, we'll take some of your reactions and questions in a couple of minutes. I want to play a few more excerpts and get Nancy's thoughts from the debate, 646-435-7280. If you want to get on the phone lines though, if you're a New Jersey listener and you get a vote in November, 646-435-7280. Our next clip is a 90-second exchange between the two of them on January 6th, in Trump's so-called Stop the Steal rally that became the insurrection, that Murphy says Ciattarelli promoted.

Ciattarelli: In late November, I was invited to a rally personally by the organizer. He told me it was a rally focused on 2021, and as a gubernatorial candidate, would I please speak on the importance of the entire legislature being on the ballot this year as well as the governorship. I went there, I didn't see people in the kind of apparel that we find offensive. I didn't see any of those signs.

Now, let me say this, if they were there, I don't think I should be held responsible. I've never held the governor responsible for attending rallies where people were holding signs that said Defund the Police or No Justice, No Peace. I can't be held responsible for what any person does at a rally. What I've said from the very beginning, Joe Biden is our president, and I want our president, whoever he or she may be at any point in time, to be successful, because it's un-American not to root for the president.

Murphy: When did No Justice, No Peace become controversial?

[applause]

Murphy: Listen, this rises to the level of disqualifying. Come on, man, your picture and name were on the invitation. Your picture and name were on the invitation. There's video, I've seen it with my own eyes, of you standing there with a Stop the Steal sign right beside you. There were Confederate flags. There were white supremacists. It's the exact same cocktail that led to-- it was January 6th, by the way, it was January 6th, and it almost brought democracy down. Members of law enforcement were killed, including a native New Jersey son.

Brian: That was Ciattarelli first, Murphy second. Nancy, what was that about Ciattarelli's picture and name on an invitation to January 6th? Literally true?

Nancy: Yes, there was a Stop the Steal rally, and there are photos of, at least one photo, of someone wearing a Confederate flag shirt, and there was Stop the Steal is-- Ciattarelli's in a photo where the sign, Stop the Steal, is right behind him on the stage, and he's speaking, and he was on the flyers for the rally. This was on January 6th. When he says he supports that Biden is our legitimate president, but he didn't come out with that support until two days after January 6, when really the country was shocked by what happened on the 6th and things start to really change in terms of the number of Republicans who were continuing to oppose Biden's win of the election.

When he says that, that's a little bit misleading, but yes, he went to the Stop the Steal rally. This is a big problem for Ciattarelli. I was surprised that he didn't have a better answer, that he's saying he didn't know that it was a Stop the Steal rally. It seems to me, if I could just offer a little political advice, he'd be a lot better off saying, "Hey, the Republican Party, it's a big tent, and I've got to go, and speak, and be there to everybody and make my case." That would have made sense to me as an answer because I think it's--

Jack Ciattarelli is not a member of what used to be the far-right wing of the Republican Party and now has become the entire middle to right of the Republican Party. That's not the kind of Republican he is, so it's surprising that he doesn't have a better retort to this problem.

Brian: What about Murphy being at rallies that included Defund the Police signs, which Ciattarelli raised there as an equivalent, or No Justice, No Peace signs? We heard Murphy say since when did No Justice, No Peace become controversial, it's certainly a well-worn phrase at this point, but I guess to Ciattarelli, it implies violence, no peace, if policies don't change in the way people want.

Nancy: Yes, I mean, there was some criticism of Murphy from the right about the fact that after the murder of George Floyd, that he appeared in, there were some walks, and vigils and rallies. Murphy likes to talk about the fact that there was virtually no violence in New Jersey in the aftermath of that incident. He says that's because he and his attorney general, at the time, had worked very hard to build better relationships between police and communities. Whether that's true was up for grabs.

He's pretty clear that he doesn't support Defund the Police. That's come up before and he has said that, but I don't think he has a real problem on his hands that he went out and marched in communities against racial injustice.

Brian: Let's take some phone calls. Roseanne in Bernardsville, you're on WNYC. Hello, Roseanne.

Roseanne: Good morning, Brian, good morning, Nancy. A long time listener, I love your show, Brian. I just wanted to talk about New Jersey public schools. Even though some of the school districts in Essex County or Passaic County where they have a large city, pay some of their property taxes, the vast majority of those property taxes are going to the local schools. New Jersey loves home rule. We love our local schools, but we also are racist raised. Our local schools are the way they are because we segregate children, and children are segregated by where they live. Predominantly, children in Newark, and Irvington, and East Orange are Black, and then you have, within the Essex County, West Orange, and Millburn, where the children are predominantly white.

Quite frankly, Nancy, I know you know about this because you've reported on it, the South Orange Maplewood school district was taken to court by a parent, because within the school district, it's actually raised. I just wanted to make sure that people understand that even though we're spending a lot of money on taxes, for example, in West Orange or in Milburn, the vast majority of those dollars are going to those schools and those children, not only have better public schools, if you will, but they have parents who could afford to do all the extracurricular stuff, and the preschools, and the fancy whatever. I just wanted to make people aware of what goes on in our 600-some odd school districts in New Jersey.

Brian: Roseanne, how would you fight the segregation? Busing, some other way, do you have an idea?

Roseanne: In other states, it's done by county, so that parents have a choice. In New Jersey, we've turned to charter schools, but I always ask people, why are there no charter schools in Livingston? Why are there no charter schools in Bernardsville? There always seem to be charter schools in places where there's students of color. I don't think charter schools or school vouchers are the answer because that's continued segregation. I think that we need to expand the borders and the boundaries, but those are tough, tough fights.

I live in the Somerset Hills, which obviously is a very wealthy school district. I moved here, primarily because our oldest daughter had Down syndrome and they did inclusive education really, really well, so I had the opportunity to move here. We regionalized in the '90s and I think we might have been the last school district to regionalize. There might have been one more to do it. Even in wealthy districts, even in wealthy areas parents don't want to regionalize. They want their kids in local schools, so it's big. I'm not going to say I have an easy solution to it, but that would be one way. One way would be forced regionalization.

Brian: Roseanne, thank you so much for your call. Here is Harold in Hillsborough, you're on WNYC. Hi, Harold?

Harold: Hi, how are you doing? I heard the explanation that most of the media, including Nancy, is giving on Jack's proposal to balance the school district formula. It's a little incorrect, right? He's not saying take away from inner city schools. What he's saying, the last time that we had a school formula budget, if you would, was a while back. At the time places like Jersey City, they weren't affluent, so they get a big chunk of that money. As a result, their taxes end up being less, because the greatest portion of your taxes is literally your school district.

Their houses in Jersey City, in the millions nowadays, they're paying peanuts in property taxes. While homeowner in other places like Hillsborough and Manville, they're literally paying a lot more in percentage, because at the time, places like Jersey city were getting a lot of money from the state for their schools. All he's saying is revisit that formula and let's be equitable in how we distribute that money. For example, Jersey City is not supposed to get as much as they're getting currently. I hate to pick on Jersey City, but I just use it as an example, because they're no longer in the position that there were many years ago when they weren't as affluent.

That's all he's saying. Let's just revisit the formula, see who is getting what, and distribute it accordingly. Yes, you'll see taxes get more uniform across the state, as opposed to people across the state in places like Hillsborough, paying a fortune in property tax due to the school district. He's saying, let's revisit the formula, and balance it accordingly, based on where towns and counties stand, as opposed to, God knows how long ago that district school formula was in place.

Brian: Harold, thank you very much. With Harold's call and Roseanne call before him, two very different takes on property taxes and school funding.

Nancy: I think it is super complicated and I think there are elements of both calls that I understand the argument and I agree with. I think it's correct that the school funding formula, it's very complicated. The whole property tax bill and how things are apportioned, and whether you're in a high tax town or not, is a complicated mix of things. For instance, the town of Short Hills, which is a very affluent place, it has the Short Hills Mall in its town boundary, so it has a, what's called a ratable. It has a commercial property tax base that lowers the residential property tax of everyone in that town, and other towns that do don't have that commercial ratable don't have that.

That's just one example of all the ways that it is quite complicated and the Jersey City issue is quite complicated, but I think ultimately, Jack Ciattarelli made it pretty clear that he was basically speaking to white, middle class suburbanites, who are angry about the funding of low-income schools. I felt like that was the subtext that came through loud and clear. To Rosemary's point, Maryland is a great example of a place where the school districts are done by county, and they don't have this problem, but it is enormously unpopular.

Governors have tried for years to get towns to merge and create bigger units of government. It's very expensive that we have the so many units of government, and the way we pay for schools and the property tax bill is all by round up in that. You're not going to get people to do it by choice. I don't know what it's going to take to fix it, to be honest.

Brian: All right. We've talked about COVID, we've talked about Stop the Steal, we've talked about property taxes and education. I want to finish on the social issues and how they differed on that last night, you know, what some people sometimes call guns, gays, and God. Here's a 30-second exchange, Murphy first, accusing Ciattarelli of supporting concealed carry, 30-second clip, Murphy first.

Murphy: He supports concealed carry.

Ciattarelli: It's not true.

Murphy: He voted, it's true.

Ciattarelli: That is not true.

Murphy: In fact, you said for certain professions, like that really dangerous one, realtors. You voted against background checks, you voted against banning 50 caliber weapons. You voted against reducing bullets in magazines. We have the strongest gun safety laws of any state in America. You're going to make us less safe.

Ciattarelli: Talk to people that replenish ATM machines, and female realtors that sit in open house all day by themselves.

Murphy: You got to be kidding.

Brian: All right. Some clear differences on that. Let go to a one-minute clip on their differences on some LGBTQ issues, and Nancy, so that I set this up correctly, does this revolve around a certain S-word?

Nancy: Yes, it does. Let's give a shout out to our colleague, Matt Katz, who broke this story in New Jersey with tape of Ciattarelli speaking at some kind of campaign appearance. Do you want me to explain the S-word?

Brian: Yes, why don't you do it? Sure.

Nancy: In that tape, and he pretty much backed it up in the debate last night, that he believes this, he says, "Kindergartners should not be being taught about gay sex." I'm not sure exactly what he said about kindergartners, but that they shouldn't have any LGBTQ curriculum, that middle schoolers are being taught about sodomy and this is--

Brian: That's the S-word, sodomy, and so we pick this up in the middle of the response by Ciattarelli.

Ciattarelli: I believe there are certain subject matter for our younger students, K-8, that are best left at a kitchen table between a mom and a dad and their child. I would ask the question this way and answer your question. Why does Phil Murphy believe that we should be teaching sexual orientation, and gender ID to kindergartners? Why does he believe that we should be teaching explicit sex acts to middle school students? I don't believe that.

Moderator: Mr. Murphy, would you like to respond?

Murphy: A lot going on at your kitchen table.

Ciattarelli: Isn't that the job of a parent?

Murphy: We're going to decide?

Ciattarelli: Isn't that the job of a parent?

Murphy: Apparently.

Ciattarelli: You want to replace the parent?

Murphy: Yes.

Ciattarelli: You'd rather parents advocate parenting?

Murphy: Remember what I said about drunk driving? That's what your support is consistent with. Vaccines? Let's discuss vaccines.

Ciattarelli: The question is about the public curriculum.

Murphy: I'm going to get to that, believe me. Masking, and now using a word, which you well know, is a dog whistle word. The word sodomy is not taught and you know exactly what that word enflames, and it's a complete and utter offense to the LGBTQ+ community and anybody who is alive or supports that community.

Brian: All right, so their differences are pretty clear on guns from the first clip, on education that pertains to LGBTQ people in the second clip. Nancy, last question, one of the headlines I saw about the debate last night said they disagreed on abortion. Do they have different positions on abortion rights at this crucial time for abortion rights in our country?

Nancy: Well, Ciattarelli opposed funding for Planned Parenthood, so that's one of the main things. He says he doesn't support what's happening in Texas, and that he does support Roe v. Wade, but then he kept saying that Murphy supports abortion for women in their seventh, eighth, or ninth month of pregnancy, which to be honest, I don't exactly know what that means. I don't know what he's referring to.

Brian: There are late-term abortions, right and some people would put a deadline on that?

Nancy: Yes, but is late term all the way to eighth or ninth month? I don't know about that. I didn't dig into that one, but certainly, and Ciattarelli stuck with his opposition to Planned Parenthood funding last night. He didn't try to backtrack on that one, and that's a enormously popular issue for New Jersey voters. The fact that Chris Christie had cut funding to Planned Parenthood was very unpopular among a wide swath of people in the state.

Brian: All right, well, we will try to clarify that, among many other issues, when Jack Ciattarelli joins us as a guest on tomorrow's show. We are doing a candidate interview with Mr. Ciattarelli tomorrow. We've invited Governor Murphy, and are working on the date for that, when his people get back to us with a final date, but Jack Ciattarelli tomorrow, as we cover the New Jersey gubernatorial race. There's another debate to come and in fact, am I right that one of the moderators will be our own Michael Hill?

Nancy: That is exactly right. That is on October 12th, and it's exciting because there will be, including Michael, there will be New Jersey journalists on the panel asking the questions. There was some unhappiness on Twitter last night from the New Jersey political reporting core about the fact that the moderators didn't understand certain things, and the premise of some questions was a little off. The most notable one, Sam Sutton of Politico New Jersey, pointed out was that they kept talking about in terms of legal marijuana that the police aren't able to tell parents when they come across kids with weed, which is, of course, still illegal and will remain illegal.

Brian: For that age group?

Nancy: Yes, for anyone under 21, so Ciattarelli was hitting that pretty hard and there was no pushback on the fact that that actually got changed, it got fixed legislatively, and that is no longer the case. That's an example of why we're very happy that Michael Hill, and other New Jersey reporters are the ones who are going to be asking the questions next time.

Brian: All right, Nancy Solomon. Thanks a lot.

Nancy: Thanks, Brian.

 

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