Endorsing Jack Ciattarelli
New Jersey’s gubernatorial election on November 2 is the state’s Alamo moment
‘IF YOU GIVE A Progressive Politician another term” could be the latest addition to the children’s book series that contains other titles such as: “If You Give a Pig a Pancake,” and “If You Give a Moose a Muffin” — though, admittedly, it doesn’t have the same ring to it.
While it may not seem as though those books, meant for secondary school children, offer a lesson for adults voting in New Jersey’s upcoming gubernatorial election, they do. New Jersey is facing its Alamo moment this November. An outnumbered band of Republican voters will be taking its stand with a cadre of Independents to vote out incumbent governor Phil Murphy before he has additional four years to plunge New jersey irreversibly down the path to becoming a Progressive hellscape.
Unlike Joe Biden, who campaigned as a “moderate,” Murphy does not attempt to disguise his far-Left ideation. Earlier this month, Murphy shared an article on his Twitter page from The Nation magazine, which proudly declared him “the most progressive governor in America.” The piece contains praises from Murphy allies like Sue Altman of the Socialist New Jersey Working Families Association and celebrates the governor’s “achievements” on things such as his “millionaires’ tax.”
But Murphy’s new taxes have not been a success. The only defense for tax hikes would be if they were used to bring a state out of debt. Murphy only raised spending. The Wall Street Journal editorial board reported that New Jersey is expected to spend $45 billion this year, and this is up from $37 billion when Murphy came to Trenton in 2018. In 2021, the Journal reports that Murphy added $3 billion to the budget. It is hard to imagine a “millionaires’ tax,” which infrequently drums up additional income wherever it is tried, covers that gap, especially when the overall tax base is fleeing.
According to that same Journal article, a “2020 National Migration Study ranked New Jersey the top state for net departures.” Murphy’s challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, is right to cut ads featuring the incumbent’s response to these issues. The ad points out what Murphy has said in response to his previous tax hike: If taxes are your issue, “then we’re probably not your state. Residents got the message; when the survey cited by the Journal noted that their number one reason for doing so was taxes and cost of living.
Ciattarelli stated in the final gubernatorial debate at Rowan University earlier this month that he plans to sit down with the state legislature and start the process of cutting $10 billion in spending if he wins. The former state assemblyman didn’t say how he would cut the funds but cutting Murphy’s some of Murphy’s additions, like legal representation for illegal immigrants, may be a good start.
But Ciattarelli has plans to deal with residents’ financial situations and offers a welcome change from Murphy regarding immigration. On taxes, Ciattarelli plans to make the first $20,000 of taxable income taxed at 0%. And instead of providing free legal aid to immigrants, whose first act was to break American law, Ciattarelli has voiced his support for an E-Verify system that will confirm an immigrant’s right to work in America. Far from being a threat to the agricultural industry, Ciattarelli plans to revamp H-1B and H-2A visa programs that bring in legal immigrant workers.
While all of this sounds good, Republicans often make the mistake of considering man a purely economic animal that can be satiated with a feed pan of tax cuts and a few points of GDP.
There are always matters of justice to consider when one heads to the ballot box. It was a watershed moment in 2016 when Donald Trump released his short-list for judicial appointments to fill Justice Scalia’s vacancy on the high court. That same opportunity exists on a state level this year, as the next governor will be tasked with appointing four new judges to the state Supreme Court. Ciattarelli stated during the last debate that he wants to appoint justices that would be willing to review the state’s school funding formula and the “Mount Laurel decision.”
The latter is probably one of the most prominent examples of inequality facing the state right now. The Mount Laurel decision has forced an “affordable housing” burden on to every town in the state and resulted in numerous lawsuits. Under the law, if a municipality wants to get a new apartment complex or housing development built, a developer will have to impose the cost of subsidized units on future tenants. In sum, this means, not only do unprotected have to pay more for their homes, but it is also possible that their neighbors pay significantly less. How’s that for “fairness.”
While the Mount Laurel decision predates Phil Murphy, he still shares a distorted view of racial politics. That distorted vision was on full display earlier this year when Murphy took one of the most lucrative new sources of income — legal weed — and let it go up in smoke.
Murphy and the state’s Democratic legislature have designated 70% of the tax revenue from legal weed as a “Social Equity Excise Fee.” This means a majority of tax income from all forms of cannabis and corresponding paraphernalia will be dedicated to towns with a population of people who have been “disproportionately affected by the war on drugs.” According to the law, that income tax money also can go to organizations that represent those populations.
Replacing Murphy with Ciattarelli would also affect another protected class of citizens in New Jersey: teachers.
Murphy, like all good New Jersey Democrats, has been a fierce defender of teachers’ unions. When the state’s most prominent teachers’ union, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), requested an embargo on the standardized tests that would reveal to parents how much they dropped the ball during the pandemic, Murphy obliged.
But there is no reason to believe the union will stop there. Earlier this year, NJEA President Mary Blistan tweeted an article from the National Education Association that called all standardized tests racist.
The union would rather hide their failures while implementing Critical Race Theory in the classroom. Ciattarelli pledges to fight this by adjusting school funding and expanding school choice — a tactic that paid off for other Republican governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis.
This column has had a few issues with some of Ciattarelli’s economic policies. But the vital thing to take away is that a second Murphy term will sink New Jersey. All evidence points to the incumbent raising taxes, forcing vaccine and mask mandates, and ushering in a new era of race essentialism the moment the election is over.
But the good news is that there is cause to be optimistic about Ciattarelli’s chances. Two of the most recent polls show Murphy only has a single-digit lead. The earlier of the two comes from Stockton University shows Murphy leading 50% to Ciattarelli’s 41%. The most recent poll — the Emerson College/PIX 11 poll — shows only a seven-percentage point difference between the two, with Murphy at 50% to Ciattarelli’s 44%.
More telling is that Ciattarelli leads independent voters 56% to 32%. This is important because independents rival Democrats for the leading share of the state’s 6 million registered voters. According to voter registration records, as of May of this year, Unaffiliated voters numbered 2,434,798, Democrats 2,553,714, and Republicans 1,464,221. And it worth noting that, for as often as New Jersey is referred to as a blue state, no Democratic governor has been elected to a second term since Brendan Byrne won reelection in 1978.
Unfortunately, state contests such as this one have an unfortunate habit of being made about national issues. Murphy has tried this tac by painting his opponent — who won the primary by not being a Trump apologist — as a far-Right election conspiracy theorist. In addition, Murphy has been cutting ads saying Ciattarelli is a threat to women’s health care rights, as though he plans to make mammograms illegal the moment he gets into office. That is why the competition on November 2 will be tough. But it will be the Garden State’s last chance to rid themselves of the Progressive politics of Phil Murphy. Remember New Jersey’s Alamo.
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