>> Major funding for "Reporters Roundtable" with David Cruz is provided by RWJBarnabas Health, let's be healthy together.

Rowan University, educating New Jersey leaders, partnering with New Jersey businesses, transforming New jersey's future.

♪ David: Down the stretch they come.

Where they are depends on where you are standing.

Hey, it is Reporters Roundtable, I David cruz.

Our panel includes Colleen O'Dea , editor for NJ Spotlight News, a reporter for Politico NJ, and Larry, transportation reporter for NJ advanced media.

We will get with them in a few minutes but let's start with a look at the election season and where things stand at this moment.

The chairman of the state Republican Party, Bob, welcome back.

Good to see you.

Chairman: good to see you, thank you for having me.

David: Even Democrats are quietly saying that this looks like a Republican year.

How are we all feeling?

Chairman: I'm always optimistic, but I believe you have to work hard until the day is done and don't take anything for granted.

You have to make sure you make the case everyday to the voter.

David: Before we get to the general, the parties will have to settle on their candidates.

Some major contestants here, but most of us are looking at what the president might do here.

Do you have any sense of whether the president will make an endorsement and who you might endorse?

Chair hugin: I'm pretty confident he will endorse the winter, and hopefully he will endorse a winner before then, but I think we have so much going on, I hope the president is continuing to do the great job he is doing, but in any case, I think Republican voters have a good opportunity to really hear from the candidates to make decisions, but we expect the Republican primary voters choice of right-hander and who they will be.

We are excited about the prospects for November.

David: So the president does not call you, his chairman, and say, hey, Bob, how are things going on in Jersey, you have advice?

Chair hugin: I think he has plenty of people giving him plenty of advice, so I will let him decide what he would like to do, and a lot of good momentum, a lot of good things.

The state is headed in the wrong direction and we have to move it back to the right direction.

We are optimistic, and I think president will be helpful come summertime.

David: How much impact would a Trump endorsement have on this race?

Chair Hugin: You know, I would have said a while ago it would have had a lot of impact.

As you get closer to June 10, you mentioned in your beginning, the last full month of really the campaign trail, I think people are getting set in their mind what they would like.

They would like someone who will go in the right direction, November.

Things are getting late for any late, last-minute endorsements, but I'm sure they would take the endorsement for the most part.

David: Yes, that is what they are all saying.

Let me get a couple of panel questions.

Ry: I wonder what you think about the potential of the president pardoning Bob Menendez, giving some past thoughts on the Former Senator.

Chair Hugin: I think they had the longest sentence in the history of any senator for corruption and fraud charges.

In some ways, in this sense, it is a sad chapter of our history.

The American public were fooled by someone who took advantage of the people so badly.

In one hand, I would like that to go into history books in the past.

When you commit crimes, you should be held accountable and serve the time your sentence too.

I have mixed feeling.

I don't have any perspective on the pardoning or not pardoning.

David: Larry, you had a question?

Larry: I do, thank you.

This is about the corporate tax transit fee, which takes effect in July.

Obviously, the next governor have to the side it's fate -- to decide its fate in the next five years.

Is this something that should continue, should it be constitutionally dedicated or is there another way to fight the operations of NJ transit?

Chair Hugin: I grew up in Hudson County, and mass transit is critical to the success of our people, going to work for businesses to be successful, but I have to be honest, I think the whole thing of doing spending and strategies, adding something on top of something as opposed to looking at holistic leak, so I hope whoever is the next takes a step back and looks, let me think about this for a minute.

I will not accept anything in the past.

Let's make sure we re-examine the best way to fund our schools, the best way to fund mass transit.

To encourage affordability and encourage businesses to come here, let's have a good, clean way of living and barn mentally.

Let's do things in a sound, holistic way and not just add stuff on and make minor changes.

We made a lot of mistakes in the past by making little changes we thought would make the system better, and the whole system needs to be transformed in my opinion, but the governor, whoever the governor is going to be, will be saying that.

David: The most recent poll, the public poll from Eagleton shows I'm pretty good margin ahead.

Do you think that is where the electorate is right now?

Chair Hugin: I cannot speak out of both sides of my mouth, I try never to do that, but I think polls are tougher now, and a number of people, obviously, when I went out to talk to them, it was a small number.

On the other hand, I do think that is the word on the street.

Jack had a good race against Governor Murphy last time.

So he is a well-known name, a trusted name.

The other candidates, the senator was my State Senator in the LD 21, and they are focused on doing what is best for the people and leading New Jersey in a positive way.

I think Donald Trump and 2016, we were shocked, so if anybody tells you they know what will happen, I would be a little leery of them.

The poll does reflect the street also.

David: Republican voters love to come out for Trump, but they demonstrate less enthusiasm when he is not on the ticket.

How are you going to motivate them in the fall, especially with the president's poll numbers starting to sink a little in New Jersey?

Chair Hugin: It is an important question and I appreciate you raising that.

When you look at the numbers from 2024 and when President Trump did as well as any Republican candidate since 1992 in New Jersey, and because of that, the NJ GOP opened three regional offices to support the president and support his campaign because we have so many volunteers, and had to connect them to the party and have Republican strategies, so we are optimistic that we have leverage for those people and that enthusiasm will carry down this gubernatorial year.

I think what is important to note, if you look at trends around the country, and New Jersey, independent voters used to be the fault that they would vote, and then you had to convince them put a vote for, and unfortunately, Republicans won that way.

Independent voters have been demoralized by the destruction in Washington and the one-party rule in New Jersey and Trenton, that their vote now is not to vote, so you have to get them to decide who to vote for.

So I do think that helps us a lot to get more people out than we would like we had in 2023.

Anything about the number, Democrats and independents who voted for Donald Trump in 2024, we know who they are.

Technology has improved dramatically, I think we are better able now than we ever have been in the past to be able to identify those people and get them to vote.

But I do think the November election is absolutely going to be a turnout kind of situation.

If we get the people who care about what we do and how we will run the state, turn out to vote.

Republicans will do very well in November, but getting out of that will be the number one job.

David: New Jersey Republican Party chairman, Bob Hugin, thank you.

Chair Hugin: Thank you for having me.

David: Panel, good to see you all.

Welcome.

Let's start with the governor's race.

Ras Baraka striking out at the Democratic Party and the front-runner, I would use air quotes, Congresswoman Mikey Cheryl, called her tone deaf and out of touch.

Did he hit or miss?

Colleen: I think I have to go with a miss.

I was not there, but from what I saw in your coverage, it is not that he doesn't make a valid argument in terms of the Democratic Party and the way things have been going in the state, but I think this speech did not live up to the hype.

And if it was supposed to have loosened his chances with winning with voters, it has to be more than going out and making a speech, it has got to be a direct reach out to voters, and I think we have seen still in this race, amazingly in New Jersey, no real negative ads among Democratic candidates.

David: Larry, Steve Fulop cooler called -- Steve called her Tammy 2.0, that probably hurt more than tone deaf and out of touch.

Larry: Fact is kind of a tough thing for him or her to deal with.

But this is one of the problems.

Affordability and ways to deal with taxes or what have you, the criticism of her has been there was not really a plan.

In other words, what are the details to get us a place where you can deal and how will you deal with affordable housing, the property tax issue, which, let's face it, governors and legislators have grappled with it for decades with very little success, so that is a tough thing for her to come back to.

And the beleaguered homeowner is going to want answers, how are you going to bring my taxes down?

David: One of the criticisms has been that her answers are all from a 30,000 feet perspective when the person who would like to be governor needs to be a little more micro, is that fair?

Ry: I think it is ultimately for the voters to decide.

In some ways, the Ras Baraka event was interesting because he launched criticisms and for people paying attention, that might mean something.

If they are not paying attention, what does it mean?

For people really paying attention, my colleague had similar statements from Baraka, so who is paying attention and what matters to the voters right now, is it fives or details?

We will only know election day.

David: Sherrill was with us on Chat Box this week, in case anybody would like to stick around.

You had an interesting week tracking the money in the gubernatorial campaign.

What did you find?

Colleen: First, it was a really hard thing to do because with lots of independent committees out there, they don't necessarily report to elect, so it is kind of hard to find them.

In total, there is at least $160 million raised that has been related through the matching funds earlier this week, more than 64 million is from 28 independent groups we found that are backing one of eight candidates or several of them are back the same candidate.

We are not going to see reports until May 30, so that kind of hamstrings how much we know about who specifically is getting and what they are spending, and I would like to point out that that 160 million only is counting the 17 million that we know so far, trying to stay forward, which is in that group, and it is a long way of saying, that is maybe only half of the money that they have promised because they promised a total of 35 million, so it is a really expensive election.

David: Moving onto the high cost of electricity, a joint hearing in the legislature on why are my electric bill so high?

Were you able to sit through that?

Ry: A couple of them.

David: So many acronyms.

Ry: Yeah, I will spare you.

It boils down to Democrats are largely trying to plan a regional grid operator in the electricity market over 13 states while Republicans are largely trying to blame in the past seven years were Governor Murphy has emphasized and counted on an offer that is not happening.

So that has led to a supply and demand that is driving up prices.

I think they have some validity that they would not have had.

Offshore wind by now under most scenarios, I also think that there was an opportunity to build or invest in a generation and as a regional grid operator, which is an acronym, PJN, which you will hear a lot about if Democrats get their message out.

David: To me, the revelation, and I think a lot of people, the rules that govern the energy marketplace are really weird.

And quite dated.

Was there any talk of a legislative fix that says that P SNG or others, that they don't generate their own power, the going get it from somebody else?

Ry: Well, somebody else gets it for them.

There is talk about getting the electric utilities which have not been able to own their own power plants since 1999, when the governor signed a law, which there is a partisan consensus to deregulate and open it up to non-monopoly utilities.

There is talk about getting this power back to energy companies to generate their own power utilities because they will be sending the bills with energy supply costs that are not the responsibility but you will lame them because you don't know what is going on.

David: Let's talk a little transit.

Big strike, wasn't there a settlement a few months ago?

Or is that a different union?

Larry: That is the same union, the locomotive engineers, and the union did vote on a tentative contract that was announced with fanfare in March and went to the union membership in the overwhelmingly rejected it and the big bugaboo is, hey, they are back to the bargaining table, NJ transit has pulled the contract off the table and reset the clock.

At the last bargaining session, NJ transit put out patterns bargaining where they ask the look of motive and union to accept the same contract that the other 14 real unions accepted.

The engineers are arguing that their job is a lot more technical, it takes a lot of training and they have to qualify to run on the railroad.

It would be like if you got your drivers license and you had to take a test and embrace the highways you drove on in order to drive on them.

So the other thing is paid to parity, the engineers are saying that the ones opposite for them at Penn Station for Amtrak earn more money, and they work for the agency across the platform and get more money.

The big question is that NJ transit is saying, will they pay $135,000 per engineer average, including base pay -- base pay and overtime, so there is a war of words.

They say they offer 177, and they contend union demands would bring it up to 190.

That claim, it is not exactly accurate because not every engineer earns over time.

The union is saying we do not want to strike NJ transit as saying we don't want to lock them out, but NJ transit's boss says we will not inflict this kind of settlement and that could spark a 17% fare increase and eat up 27% of corporate transit fee revenues.

David: Is there a transportation candidate for governor, either on the Republican side or Democratic side?

I know there is an education one.

One will lower your taxes and so on.

Is there anybody who you can say, yeah, that guy or gal is a transportation candidate?

Larry: Well, Steve Fulop was first out of the box when he started releasing position papers on the first was his transportation one.

He was actually the guy who was credited with the idea of a corporate transit fee, and he was using that for NJ transit's operating budget.

There are other candidates who signed on to the CTF, as we like to collect it, Ras Baraka suggested it be expanded to businesses that earn $1 million or more in profits.

Steve Sweeney has said it should be constitutionally dedicated, and that leaves the other candidates looking for other efficiencies and ways to fund, and surreally sickly said, -- Cirelli said we should create an operation like the FTA that deals with mass transit and toll roads.

John Bramnick has looked at more public-private partnerships to build a light rail which spares capital cost.

They have basically said we need a deep dive approach, to do a deep dive of NJ transit and see what assets they have that can be monetized.

Which of course they have said we need to press Amtrak for more improvements because every train going to New York uses Amtrak's infrastructure and NJ transit pays hundreds of millions of dollars, so there is some difference among them.

David: One last thing on the governor's race, a rural ad from Josh Gottheimer that features an AI generated and pretty rough Josh Gottheimer in the ring with Donald Trump, and while the ad talks about him fighting Trump, the AI Josh is not actually land a punch.

Colleen: I totally agree with you on that.

It looks like Trump is doing a little bit better than Gottheimer, or at the least, they are evenly matched.

If you would like to have an ad that says, I can beat this or I'm fighting this president that is not popular as the polls are in New Jersey, then you really should be landing something.

David: Land a blow, darn it, this is kind of benign, not many people will believe Gottheimer was in the ring with Trump.

Trump had a suit on, impossible, but you can easily deepfake a candidate to look like he is saying that he hates puppies.

Is there a need for some kind of regulation?

Ry: As a member of the press, I'm pretty interested in free speech being as unfettered as possible, but I think it is remarkable that not long after this now president was almost assassinated there is simulated violence against him.

We are living in remarkable times.

That is still a remarkable thing.

To Colleen O'Dea's point of view, if you landed a blow, that would have been something.

I understand the rhetoric everywhere receded, I just think it is still notable to say that there is an ad portraying violence against her president.

David: So don't do it at all at all -- at all if you're not going to have a guy punched in the face?

How soon will I be replaced by AI?

Larry: Hopefully never because I don't think AI would be herding cats, basically reporters and public officials.

There have been some experiments with AI by different news organizations.

We are familiar with Sports Illustrated that got stoned very badly with the use of AI.

So we have to be -- David: More importantly, I'm not going to be replaced is what you are saying?

Larry: No.

Absolutely not.

David: Next week we are presenting a special one-hour addition of "Chat Box," a conversation with Republican candidates for governor lived, Wednesday, May 7 at 7:00 p.m. on NJPBS and streaming on YouTube, working with our partners on the radio.

Michael Hill will be joining us.

It is Bramnick, Cirelli, no timeclock, just real talk, 7:00 on NJPBS and streaming.

Finally today, we lost a dear friend and colleague this week, MattA -- Matt Arco died at age 39.

Larry, a shock, to say the least.

Larry: An incredible shock.

Six years ago, we would have all been in the newsroom and heard the news, and we would have heard the audible gasps.

This was shared by email, and just had to stop.

The tribute I would pay to Matt, I would call him the gold standard.

At a young age for someone with that talent to distinguish himself, and the guy was helping anybody he would ask him.

My favorite story about him was he was basically assigned, the last beat he had, to cover presidential politics.

And he won an award for that, and his boss told the story about how it was an assignment he did not necessarily want, but he took it and ran with it.

This is not just a loss for journalism and officials but a loss for the state because for the public, he was the guy who looked out for you.

He was a watchdog.

David: He was a great journalist, direct, dogged, and always well sourced, but he was an even better person and friend.

He shared an office in the state house a dozen years ago and became pretty fast friends.

To me, he was kind, generous, honest and funny, when I ran into him in Iowa or New Hampshire covering the presidential campaigns, it was always such a gas.

His recent assignmen took him over -- his recent assignment took him away from New Jersey nine I would tell him a missed him.

Rest in peace, my friend.

That is roundtable this week.

Thank you to a panel for joining us.

We are on blue skies now, follow me and stay updated on what the rest of the team is up to by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

I am David Cruz.

for all the crew here, thank you for watching.

We will see you Wednesday.

♪ >> Major funding for "Reporters Roundtable" with David Cruz is provided by RWJBarnabas Health, let's be healthy together.

Rowan University, educating New Jersey leaders, partnering with New Jersey businesses, transforming New jersey's future.

♪