- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

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The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

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- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We continue celebrating the 30th, that's right, the 30th anniversary of our programming.

And which means we've been on the air for a long time.

All kinds of interviews that we've done over the years.

This next group of interviews are with public officials, government officials, elected officials.

Yes, we ask tough questions, but we're always civil.

We're always trying to understand the impact government officials have, elected officials have.

And when we think they're not being totally honest, we press them a little harder.

Let's look at 30 years of public officials.

(upbeat music) - What do you believe it will take for some of your colleagues in the United States Senate to simply agree on a basic background check?

- Americans, gun owners, Republicans, if you just poll us on simple things like comprehensive background checks to make sure that people who should not have guns, who we all agree should not have the guns, don't get them.

We have a 80, 85% or more of Americans agree with that, and we can't get a bill done in Congress to do it.

And so I'm frustrated, I'm hurt, I'm angry.

I'm just in disbelief that we are a nation that tolerates now such high levels of carnage.

Where the number one killer of our children, is gun violence.

In fact, guns kill more kids than AIDS, than opioids, than influenza, asthma attacks, all of that combined.

- The most significant challenge facing the nursing profession today is?

- Right now, the biggest challenge, I believe is, we have a tremendous shortage of nurses.

And having this tremendous shortage of nurses impacts the ability to deliver care, 'cause we simply don't have enough nurses.

I think COVID had an impact on people who were near retirement, decided that it was time to retire.

People were stressed out because of COVID and young people aren't entering the profession.

The other problem we have, Steve, is that we probably don't have enough slots for a professional nursing education in the state, which is an issue.

- Most frustrating part about being governor.

- The most frustrating part about being governor is that you can't change an institution alone.

And I came into office with a staff comprised of Pataki holdovers, Spitzer staff persons, who were very upset about his leaving office and sometimes just couldn't decide whether they wanted to be there or not.

And a few people that I brought, if I could do it again, and I came into office two weeks before a budget was due, somehow we still passed the budget within a week of when it was constitutionally mandated to be passed.

What I should have done was stopped and reorganized this staff because I never really got that I was getting the cooperation that I should have.

- You mentioned race.

You and I have had this discussion on and off the air for at least 10 years now.

Where are we today?

And is that place any better than where we were five years ago?

- It is better exponentially than we were five years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

But it's because the economics has, the economic conditions have changed such that a lot of us have been able to access- - [Steve] Us being?

- People of color.

We've been able to access wealth.

And so some of us have individually made it.

But the question of race itself is just as bad as far as I'm concerned as it was 30, 40 years ago because we've not been able to go beyond the economic question in race.

We've not been able to, you know, we set up barriers for each other.

Whites set up barriers that make it impossible to speak to Blacks and other people of color.

People of color set up barriers that make it impossible for whites to feel comfortable.

Instead of trying to actually engage in conversations, we actually shout at each other.

We don't try to listen to each other and we don't try to feel each other's pain in those conversations.

And so I see things just as bad from the individual perspective, from the perspective of where we should be as a nation.

But to say that things haven't improved, I mean, my God, I'm a living example of how this country works.

- Fentanyl is one of the biggest risks to our kids right now.

People don't understand that a large portion of fentanyl now is being put into counterfeit pills.

So people think, ah, you know, it's not heroin, it's not cocaine, it's not this, it's not that.

And think that they're gain a Valium or Ativan or something like that on college campuses.

70% of those pills are counterfeit.

They're being manufactured in China, coming up through Mexico.

Our border is completely open, and many, if not most of those pills contain a lethal dosage of Fentanyl.

- And in just a few minutes, we're gonna show the iconic, for all the wrong reasons, photos of you cleaning up the rotunda floor after the riots, the insurrection of January 6th.

But we're also gonna show some video just to remind people.

People say, I've seen it enough.

Have you?

I'm not sure.

Describe what was going on that day for you, what you saw, what you felt.

- You know, it's says, you know we were talking, I come from a national security background.

You know, I have the chance to work in Afghanistan and Iraq and I've been in lockdown situations and shelter in place situations before, but it was just never imagined in my wildest dreams that we would have anything remotely like that at the United States Capitol, you know, to have a situation.

I remember, you know, when we were, I was, you know, here hiding away, trying to figure out what was going on, I received an email from the Capitol Police describing the situation.

And what they described was, you know, that we should not be going anywhere near the Capitol building.

And said, 'cause we have lost control of the building.

And you know, it was just such a surreal moment to understand what they were saying there.

That for a period of time we have lost control over the United States capitol.

That the United States government did not have control over this most sacred of the buildings.

And that's what happened on that day.

It's not something that we should never forget.

You understand this not just as a senator, as a teacher, as a mother.

Explain to folks the devastating impact for children who struggle with the kind of literacy issues you're talking about and the learning loss exacerbated by COVID.

Long-winded question, I know.

Please.

- No, it's very simple.

From the womb or zero to third grade, you learn to read.

Identification of letters, sounds, putting things together in context.

From third grade and beyond, just you and I, even today, when you're prepping for your interviews, you're reading to learn.

If you just from a common sense approach look at that and say, from zero to third grade, you learn to read.

From third grade and beyond, you read to learn.

What happens to that child who doesn't have the infrastructure and the foundation to read to learn?

They're destined to an obstacle, an academic career lifespan that will be filled with obstacles because everything transitions.

Math begins to present itself in reading context with word problems, science.

Everything is based on the science and reading and fundamentally secured in that.

So if we're socially promoting students who are not prepared to move on, then we are complicit in a behavior of creating a pipeline of next generation that will not be looking to meet and reach STEM jobs that are available, but perhaps, going down pathways that we don't even wanna talk about.

- [Steve] You jumped into this race, it wasn't part of your plan.

You were up at Harvard, I think at the time, right?

- Teaching.

- Teaching.

You were outspent like 11 to 1 plus in the US Senate race with John Corzine.

You almost win it, and you say, all right, I'm getting away for a while.

And then you get a call because acting governor and Senate President Don DiFrancisco drops out of the race.

You remember when you got the call, the moment you got the call?

- I was at Harvard at a faculty reception and my cell phone rang and it was the governor's chief of staff and he said, hold on a moment for Governor DiFrancesco.

I'll never forget that moment.

- [Steve] Did you have any doubt in your mind that you were going do it?

- For about two hours, I thought about it.

I talked to my wife because I didn't wanna make this decision alone because it impacts your family to such an extraordinary extent.

And I wanted her to be a partner in this decision, but I knew that the party needed to have a competitive primary.

That we shouldn't leave elections to one choice.

Democracy doesn't work best when you offer voters only one choice.

- Democracy is in peril here.

We see what's happening on the other side.

I know this is not, you know, Republicans versus Democrats, but Donald Trump, et al have made this an issue of a contrast that says, do you support democracy?

Do you support equality of opportunity?

Do you support the rule of law?

Or do you support autocracy and greed and corruption?

So I am telling you that what's on the ballot is what you can teach your children at school, whether or not libraries are gonna have the books that they need, whether or not women are gonna have access to the freedom of their healthcare decisions, whether or not there's gonna be environmental justice, investments into communities, whether or not there's gonna be serious climate change recognition and investments for the whole country and the whole world.

- Is it as hard to talk honestly about racism as it appears to me to be?

- Absolutely, Steve.

It is a difficult conversation.

And you know, being an African American, I think we need to have honest conversations amongst ourselves because we are racist too.

- [Steve] What do you mean by that?

- That African Americans also hold stereotypical view of Caucasians, of Asians, of people that come from African nations, people that come from Caribbean nations.

I think racism is broader than just black versus white in the United States.

- I think our state is in a fiscal crisis and that really difficult, horrendous decisions have to be made because of all the bad choices that have led to this point.

- Just bad choices?

- Horrendous choices.

I mean, look, giving employees an 11% raise at a time when we had- - [Steve] You mean public employee unions.

- Of course.

But, you know, you can't have both.

You can't spend that kind of money and then argue on the other side when we run out of money that we need to keep spending.

And I think that's the problem.

That's why New Jersey is in an absolute fiscal turmoil right now.

- New Jersey transit is in trouble financially on a fiscal cliff, if you will, potentially about to fall off, which would be devastating for commuters across this state and the region.

Why shouldn't we have this corporate business tax for companies that are making $10 million or more Senator?

- Same answer.

You know, this is really a situation where people go, well, why wouldn't you wanna tax corporations?

You know, it doesn't really affect you.

Why don't we help out New Jersey Transit?

Same answer.

If you're gonna spend money and you're gonna increase budgets by billions of dollars by 11 or 12%, and then you come to me and go, okay, now let's raise these other taxes.

I said, well wait a minute now, why did we spend all this other money on, we'll call 'em Christmas tree items or pork items, and now all of a sudden you come to me and you go, oh, well by the way, don't you support New Jersey Transit?

I do, but I also support smart budgeting in the last four or five years.

So you can limit the impact on corporations, you can limit the impact on people driving cars.

It's not a question as to what to do now, it's a question, what have you done in the last five years?

- I think we should all be very cognizant of the people across this country who don't believe in our democracy.

Mitt Romney in a recent article laid out what he sees as people who don't share these values and don't believe in the constitution.

And I think we should all be very concerned about that and ensuring that we vote for people who care about this country.

And when they take that oath to the Constitution, they do, as we say in our military oath, they do so freely and without any mental reservations or purposes of evasion.

- [Announcer] To watch more One-on-One with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We talk to more our government officials, more specifically governors.

It said that New Jersey has the most powerful governorship in the nation based on the 1947 Constitution.

Yes, they're powerful, but you also have to challenge them.

Ask them tough questions and get them to be as candid as possible.

Democrats, Republicans, I've gotten more governors over the years peeved at me than I care to count.

You know, just trying to do my job.

30 years of engaging New Jersey governors.

(upbeat music) Let's talk budget.

Your favorite topic.

It's coming up again.

Looks like there's a $1 billion deficit, if not more.

Again, boy, you are optimistic today.

You have argued that it was wrong to cut the budget the way the Republicans tried to do last year.

You felt it was irresponsible.

You are not alone in that.

You obviously do not- - Well, they have new allies.

The Republicans are now trying to restore all the money that they took outta the budget.

I mean, a big rally yesterday.

They promised $10 million.

Where they're gonna get it from, I'm not sure, to go and restore the general assistance programs.

NJN, they promised to restore the money.

And I'm more than happy as soon as someone walks through the door with the money.

- So are the Republicans what, coming around now to seeing what existed before?

- No, I think they understood.

They understand now that the things they did last year were not responsible.

And in some respects, they didn't fully understand the dimensions of the reductions.

I mean, you go and you eliminate medication for AIDS patients... - People are gonna get hurt.

- You gotta have some apprehensions about the consequences of that.

- Your relationship with the media?

Final question.

How would you describe it?

- I think it's been honest.

You know, on my end, like I tell them exactly what I think.

- [Steve] Adversarial?

- At times.

At times really friendly.

I mean, you know, you saw before we started, David Cruz came in, you know, David and I have a really good relationship and there have been times I've really let him have it.

And other times where he's asked me really awful questions.

- We've seen it on the air, we've seen both ends.

So you let, by the way, to be clear, you've done the same thing with me.

- Right.

So here's the thing.

I think your job as governor is to be available and to be direct and to not take crap from them.

- [Steve] What?

- Yeah.

- Our job is to- hold on, respectfully, governor.

Our job is to give you crap.

No?

- Yeah.

And I don't think you have to take it.

- How mad were people at you when you led the effort to institute the first income tax in the history of the state of New Jersey?

- Well the day that the per first deduction came from your payroll from the New Jersey State tax was the day that we opened the Meadowlands.

And if I had gone there by myself, I would've gotten killed.

- [Steve] You really, you're not joking.

You're not throwing shtick right now.

- No, no.

They hated that.

- [Steve] Did you care that lots of people- - Oh yeah.

You always wanna be loved, see?

- But if you wanted to be loved, why did you lead the effort to institute the income tax?

- More than that you wanna accomplish.

I mean, you gotta spend eight years in the governor's office and you wanna leave without accomplishing anything.

What a waste of, a waste of the people's trust.

- Governor, let's define the term.

Education reform gets thrown around a lot.

Be precise and specific.

What does it mean to you?

- Education reform means creating schools in this country which will enable us to compete with the rest of the world.

Your children, my children, our grandkids to get jobs and to have the kind of prosperity and good life that we've had in our generation.

Expand it to the next, right now, if our schools aren't doing it, if our schools aren't educating kids to compete with the rest of the world, this country and those of us who live in it are not gonna have the standard of living we do now.

And if we, and the schools are it.

If we have to educate students up to world standards.

- [Steve] Governor, over the next year at least, you're gonna be focused on a few areas.

And again, to me, this is not political.

When you talk about this issue of depression, I mean you, for as a legislator, you spend a lot of time examining and fighting for the rights of those who are mentally ill. What exactly do you wanna accomplish and what do you believe public opinion is, public perception is of those who have mental illness?

- Well, you wanna change the perception of how society views people with mental illness.

As my wife says- - [Steve] Why do you care so much about this?

- Well, you know, my wife is also a breast cancer survivor.

And as she would say, when she came down with breast cancer, she's treated one way.

But when she has mental illness, she's looked at it in a different way.

And it's a big, big difference.

There's a stigma still attached to mental illness, but not when you have breast cancer.

Everybody wants to help you, you know, raise money for breast cancer research, but not so for postpartum depression or any form of illness, and she's right.

- Homeland security, you served on a federal level, you saw the big picture.

Now you come back to the state level.

Biggest issue in terms of protecting us is?

- Mass transit.

A lot of our infrastructure in the private hands is not as well guarded as I think it should be.

And the third area is in schools.

I think we've seen breakdowns in school safety.

I think it is of vulnerability that we saw happen in Chechnyna, in Breslin.

And I think we need to make sure that we've given greater focus to the safety of our kids.

- How optimistic are you about the big picture situation, the war in Afghanistan, our resolve, you know, not just in New Jersey and New York metropolitan area, but in this country to deal with what is ahead?

How optimistic are you, confident are you about us dealing with these incredibly difficult, uncertain times?

- Well, I'm very optimistic and I'm very optimistic because, and I'm more optimistic now than I was before September 11th, because I've seen the reaction and anger to what happened on September 11th from people literally all over the world, but particularly all over the country and all over New Jersey and the outpouring of love, of help, of blood, of comfort, of prayers, of every single thing that people can do.

From Cape to High Point in New Jersey.

They will do, people call and called and called and wanna know what can we do to help.

I think that attitude prevails unbelievably.

You know, you see it at, you might see it at a Yankee game, you see it in church, you see it in schools.

The attitude is very positive.

And I don't think that's gonna change.

- [Steve] You wanna talk about addiction?

- Sure.

- [Steve] What's the problem?

- Governor Christie was kind enough to put me on this opiate task force.

We have a crisis.

People comfortable in suburban New Jersey thought it was happening in urban areas, code word for African American and Latino.

And then all of a sudden people woke up to the fact that due to prescription drugs, whether it's Oxycontin or Percocet, we have this ravage that's now impacting suburban communities.

- When you tweeted that quote, "Hitler has nothing on Trump," and then took that quote down, but then never said, "I wanna change the spirit of that tweet," I'm confused - Now, I put it up to be a shock value, to get people's attention and then I took it down so we could engage in the further conversation.

Why would I say something like that?

- [Steve] Yeah, why?

- Look at what's happening.

Look at the way, if you do some comparisons between the 1920s and 30s and the rhetoric then and the rhetoric we're hearing now, again, this idea of, "It's a certain group that's doing it all to you.

You'll be all fine if we'd never have any Mexicans.

It's really the Muslim.

Any Muslim is terrible.

- Or is bad-" - Or the deep state.

- Or, yeah, exactly, the deep state.

He's undermining companies and everything.

And he has said, "Don't believe what you see.

Don't believe what you hear.

Believe me."

- Governor, let's start with the most pressing issue of our time on many levels, so many aspects to COVID-19.

What has been the biggest lesson you have learned to date as we tape this program on the 23rd of September, 19 months in the biggest lesson about leadership and frankly about being governor?

- Yeah.

And again, it's good to be with you.

And the loss in New Jersey has been overwhelming.

Over 27,000 losses of life.

An awful first wave, a tough second wave.

We're still in the fight as we sit here.

It's not as bad as it was by a long shot, but it's not as good as it was a few months ago.

I wouldn't trade our hand with any other American state, as I sit here, in terms of the level of vaccination, we're among the most vaccinated.

We've got the smallest number of ICU beds occupied by COVID patients of any state in America.

Those are good facts, as tough as it still is.

I think the biggest lesson of leadership, Steve, is to get a balance right.

And I've said this before, but Churchill, early World War 2, when the Germans had overrun the continent, the Americans were not yet in the war.

If I could channel a fingernail of Churchill, it would be balancing telling folks the absolute truth, even if that truth really hurts.

Make sure that they understand the facts, but at the same time, giving them a realistic path forward of hope, of optimism.

If we do X and Y together, this is the path that will get us out of this, this really dark spot of this dark moment.

(bright upbeat music) - [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Kean University.

New Jersey’s Clean Energy program.

Operating Engineers, Local 825.

Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters.

IBEW Local 102.

And by these public spirited organizations, individuals and associations committed to informing New Jersey citizens about the important issues facing the Garden State.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

And by Insider NJ.

- I'm Tim Sullivan, CEO of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Since joining the NJEDA, I've been struck by the incredible assets and resources that New Jersey has to offer.

The NJEDA is working every day to grow New Jersey's economy in a way that maximizes the values of those assets to benefit every single New Jersey resident.

This includes more support for small businesses and a focus on reclaiming New Jersey's position as a leader in the innovation economy.

Visit njeda.com to learn more about how NJEDA is building a stronger and fairer New Jersey economy.