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[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Welcome everyone, I'm Steve Adubato.

You know, a lot of people are wondering, hey, what happened on November the second, 2021, when we're taping on November the 16th.

We're going to try to make sense of it.

It'll be seen later, we may date ourselves, but we have a superstar panel to break it down.

First, we're joined by our good friend, Dr. Ben Dworkin, Director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University, one of our higher ed partners.

Tom Bergeron, owner and editor of ROI-NJ and also Dr. Joe Renee Formicola professor of political science at Seton Hall University.

Another higher ed partner of ours.

Hey, Ben, let me start with you real quick, the most significant 'quote' message that we should be taking, I know there are a lot of mixed messages, the biggest message we take from the 2021 election, November 2nd is?

- There's really two and I'll say them quickly.

The first is that if you don't get things done, your party will take a hit.

And I think democratic dysfunction in Washington, DC, clearly depressed Democrats.

They just weren't excited to be Democrats heading into the election and it certainly motivated Republicans.

And the second key takeaway for 2021 was really just how angry, frustrated, and bitter the electorate was.

We all saw that gas prices were going up.

We all saw the trouble with trying to get a new car.

If you wanted to get a more fuel efficient car to avoid paying these high gas prices, we saw frustration with parents who were worried about COVID, learning loss, were worried about having to take time off every time they're un-vaccinated kid got a sniffle because they had to spend three days getting a PCR test.

We saw this, we just didn't quite appreciate how motivating it would be for people, because this was the first time a lot of folks in New Jersey had a chance to express that frustration.

- Dr. Formicola, is that how it works?

If things are not going well, gas prices, you can't get bread, you can't get a Turkey.

Hopefully you can, we're taping before Thanksgiving, get it.

Hopefully you had it and it was great.

You've got to blame somebody.

So whoever's in office, Joe Biden's not running.

It's gotta be Murphy.

Now he won, but he won by close to three percentage points.

The polls showed him winning much bigger than that.

And a state with 1.1 million more Democrats than Republicans does somebody have to take the hit Joe Renee?

- Yes.

And unfortunately incumbency can either be a blessing or a curse.

And if you don't have something that you can show for your time in office, you're on the defensive.

The only way you can be on the offensive is if you have some kind of a great record that somebody else has to beat.

And that certainly did not come across with the voters.

- But Tom...

I'm sorry, go ahead, finish your point.

Because governor Murphy argued he had a great first round.

If you will.

- Well that's part of the problem, he didn't realize that he didn't have a great first round.

He didn't see the anger underneath.

He didn't understand how a lot of people were really dissatisfied with what he had done, especially if... All right, go ahead.

- And then I want you to jump on this and Tom as well, raising the minimum wage, paid family leave, increasing, we're involved in a childcare initiative, Reimagine Childcare, more money for childcare than ever before, which supports the economy if people don't have childcare, right.

Doing a whole range of things, the legalization of marijuana, Jo Renee and then Tom, he doesn't get points for those things?

- He gets points, but they're overshadowed by the other problems that occurred.

The pocket book crisis, the inflation, all those kinds of things.

And final word was, hey, if taxes are not for you, then this isn't your state.

Are you kidding me?

I mean, that just as far as I'm concerned, that sunk him in my mind with a lot of voters.

- Tom Bergeron from our media partner at ROI-NJ do you think when governor Murphy said, if taxes are your issue in New Jersey is probably not your state, he wishes in that moment he had never said it, or does he just believe it?

- Well, it's a little bit of both.

And I was there when he said it, it was down at Rowan and it was stunning to hear him say that, he does believe it.

Let me circle back, you asked about the biggest takeaway or the biggest message from this election, we'll know about that a year from now on whether Murphy did get the message.

He seemingly has come out saying no, you know, I won everybody loves my policies.

Everything is great.

I'm the first Democrat to get reelected in 40 years, he seemingly missed the mark on what the message that's being sent.

Now, a couple other things that you mentioned does he get credit for, this was something that I saw going up to, he does get credit from some things I'm going to turn to the business angle from a business publication, you know, between Pfizer between Hacks, between Party City, between BioGene.

There were a whole lot of business successes that he never touched upon, he ran a different race.

He ran a pro masking vaccine, got us out of this race and that he thought that was playing to the electorate.

And I think it went against him.

He didn't mention his business successes at all, which is unusual for progressive, perhaps.

He stayed away from that oddly.

- And Ben, we are, by the way, we'll put up websites for everyone's connection everyone's organization, and they can find out more there.

Ben let me ask you, we talk a lot offline as well about politics, but also where I'm more fascinated by policy than I am politics, but you can't separate them, can you?

- No, it's almost always.

And you know, the old adage is that a good policy makes good politics, but again, and I think, because this was mentioned before, you had two things going on here.

First of all, you had a Murphy campaign that did not sell its record particularly well.

- Oh, I'm sorry for interrupting.

Ben.

Wasn't it good enough to say Donald Trump is dangerous we don't like them in New Jersey.

Jack Ciattarelli went to the Stop the Steal rally.

He'll be another Donald Trump, that's my campaign.

- If that's all you took away from the Murphy campaign, then yeah, there were plenty of other reasons to not vote, you know, to vote for him or against him.

I don't think that was a particularly effective message.

If you walked around and you asked people, look, governor Murphy deserves re-election because... A lot of people couldn't answer that because they were frustrated because they were overwhelmed by the pocketbook issues that the professor was talking about and that they were willing to give him credit.

I mean, the polls kept showing they're giving Murphy credit for getting us through the pandemic.

But they weren't ready to vote for him because of it.

You know, they were ready to tell a pollster, yeah, he did an okay job, the New Jerseyan thing.

But the people who were upset about it, the minority of New Jerseyans in a poll who were upset, they were going to vote because they were upset about it.

And that's why I think we saw a surge in Republican votes this year.

- By the way, to the folks down at Rowan, congratulations.

They had a whole range of forums, including there was a major debate that was held down at Rowan in this gubernatorial race.

Let me ask you does Donald Trump matter at all in the 2021 gubernatorial race in New Jersey?

Obviously Virginia is Virginia.

Youngkin, the governor, the gubernatorial candidate, Republican party said, Mr. Trump, no, you can stay away.

I think Jack Ciattarelli said, no, you can stay away.

Did Trump play a major role in the outcome in this race?

- No, I think that Trump becomes more irrelevant every day.

Voters have a very short memory and he becomes more irrelevant as other people step up to the plate.

And all you have to do is look at the scene today and who is stepping up, governor Chris Christie.

I saw him on television this morning, what's he doing?

I've seen, you know, every single day I can see DeSantis, I can see Rubio, I can see Cruz, I can see other people making their play.

- 2024.

- That's right.

And I do campaign politics and I can see this as the invisible primary that's already going on.

And you know, one of the people in the primary who was not doing enough or having enough credibility at this point is Trump because the never Trump coalition is going to die.

- You don't see it.

- I think once Republicans get into the next election, the never Trumpers will disappear and they'll come home and they'll be in the Republican camp again, the base will be back.

- We'll moderate, excuse me.

We'll monitor that.

Hey Tom, let me ask you something from as a business publication, as a public policy oriented publication, name three major issues that the governor governor Murphy will have to deal with in the second term with a very different legislature, with a new president of the Senate, Senator Sweeney is out at Senate president.

Nick Scutari, Senator Scutari is in, Craig Coughlin as the speaker of the lower house.

What do you think the top two issues are, let's say, and how will the legislature deal with him differently controlled by the Democrats, all three branches, if you will?

- Well, it's controlled by the Democrats, but let's be clear.

The legislature, most people believe is no longer controlled by Murphy.

They laid down for him during COVID under the idea of this guy has got all the power we need to stand by him.

We'll keep our spot, we'll get through this.

Some people saw how close elections were, some people were eliminated, like Senator Sweeney and a number of other people.

And now they're saying, okay, wait a minute, why are we laying down for this guy?

The electorate doesn't... - What do you mean lie down for him?

I don't even understand what that means.

What do you mean lay down for him?

- He got everything he wanted, he had complete control.

He got the four billion dollars, when he got rid of the state of... - You mean the borrowing of the four billion dollars?

- Four billion, he said yeah, I'll get rid of the state of emergency, but I'm still going to keep these half dozen other things they didn't challenge him on anything.

He made all decisions by executive order.

They went along with it, sort of like, we're just going to ride this coat-tail.

We're going to get through the pandemic.

We're going to go from here.

I didn't see a whole lot of opposition to anything that he said or wanted to do.

He's been calling the shots for four years now.

And I think everyone just went along with the pandemic.

Look, we'll get reelected.

We'll figure it out going on.

I don't think that's the case anymore.

- So Ben let me ask you, you understand polls, you understand democracy, you understand voter moves, the governor after the election, again, took a little bit of time to find out.

He said, listen, we're going to proceed on a progressive agenda.

He never said far left, but people, some people perceive that.

And there are a lot of Democrats in the legislature who are more middle of the road.

He says, he's going to proceed and the message he got was to proceed.

Is that not the message?

- Well, look, I think one of the things that we just have to understand is that now he's a lame duck governor and which means... - What does that mean?

Explain it to folks.

- Yeah, it means he can't run for reelection again.

This is his last term as a governor, which means the moment this election was called well and starting really before.

But the new election season for 2025 began, the number of people in the legislature who could've now start trying to position themselves to be the next governor of a democratic state.

This could be huge and that could affect all of the politics that are going on in Trenton, because everybody understands.

I think most people understand let's put it that way.

That it's very difficult to be a third term of anybody.

And so you've got to distinguish yourself in some way in order... - So how does that affect policy?

But how does that affect policy, the things that need to be done in New Jersey to make our lives better?

- Right and so what's going to happen is that Phil Murphy, because he's governor is still going to appoint the judges he wants to appoint.

He's still gonna have the ability to sign and all the different types of veto powers that he has to shape legislation.

But what we'll see is that his agenda is not merely going to be as important as the agenda that's going to emerge from the state assembly and the state Senate.

- Real quick, 2022 matters.

There are five seats that if the Republicans in the lower house of the United States Congress, if they take five democratic seats, they take control of the lower house, which changes everything in Washington.

Nancy Pelosi is no longer speaker of the house.

At least three of those seats, Dr. Formicola are in New Jersey with Democrats currently holding them in pretty vulnerable swing districts.

Do you believe New Jersey could, if Republicans take those seats from Democrats, could ultimately be the state that decides who controls Congress, at least in the lower house?

- I think we might like to believe that, you know, that we're that powerful.

- Ciattarelli won those districts, big.

Ciattarelli won three of those districts big, where Democrats are currently the members of Congress.

- I know, but there are, you know, 435 seats that we're talking about in the entire Congress.

And so, you know, I don't know that that will make the major difference.

I think it can play a part, but I don't think we're going to end up being the king maker based on those three seats.

- Tom, do you think it's just about some of us in New Jersey want to make it about ourselves?

- Every state wants to make it about themselves, yeah.

No, that that'll be interesting going forward.

- But let me ask you this before Tom, before I let you go, we're not a show that does horse race politics.

We try to understand what's going on here.

Do you think Jack Ciattarelli is the voice of the Republican party in the state of New Jersey moving forward?

He is the voice, not Donald Trump and frankly not Chris Christie.

- Right now I think that's a fair reaction.

Now, again, this is a candidate that most people thought didn't formally get the ground game that he needed, but it looked like he did.

There's nobody else out there.

If not him, who is going to be the question now, as Ben said, other people are going to start jockeying for position.

People are going to start moving around, trying to get that spot.

But right now he's going to be the voice going forward.

And after what he almost pulled off, there's a lot of reasons for people to jump behind.

- To Tom, to Ben, to Jo Renee, I want to thank you so much.

We'll continue our discussion about this election and what it means moving forward, particularly from a policy perspective.

Thanks so much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

That's a great panel, be back after this.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To watch more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- Hey, you want to make sense of an election and figure out what it means in the future?

This is who you have on.

Julie Roginsky, who's the Democratic Strategist and President of Optimus Communications and Mike DuHaime, Republican Strategists and partner at Mercury.

And by the way, check them out, their weekly column in The Star Ledger and NJ.com called Friendly Fire.

Julie, is that the right name?

Friendly Fire?

- That's what they came up with.

We don't take any credit for that one.

Send your complaints to Tom Moran.

- Oh yeah, Tom Moran.

That's your editorial page editor at The Ledger and NJ.com.

Let me ask you something, Julie, real quick.

Your biggest takeaway, because I read you and Mike every week, and you said this in the column, but I want you to say it here.

Biggest message for you, as a democratic strategist, takeaway from the November 2nd election.

This'll be seen well after that, go ahead.

- Wake up, my fellow Democrats, and understand that New Jersey just sent you a very strong message.

It's always been about affordability, it will always be about affordability.

Anything else that we talk about has to take a back seat to the number one perennial issue in New Jersey, which is affordability.

And every time my party forgets about that, every single time, we don't do well in elections.

And this was no exception.

- Mike.

- I agree with Julie completely on that.

I think Governor Murphy and his team, and many Democrats, misread the election of 2017 and then the midterms of 2018 and presidential of 2020 as some sort of mandate to go further left, especially on economic issues.

While New Jersey is certainly to the left when it comes to social issues, it is not economically.

It's very much in the center economically.

And Democrats here embarked on a pretty far left, you know, agenda that was billions in borrowing, higher taxes, more spending, and voters really wanted them to pump the brakes on that.

And given that there are a million more Democrats in this state, it really is shocking to me how close Jack Ciattarelli came, he ran a good campaign, but also Republicans picking up in the legislature for the first time in many years, and really for the first time feeling optimistic about maybe taking back the legislature in two years.

I think that shows you just how far, just how bad this election was for Democrats and what a marked improvement it was for Republicans.

- Julie, let me ask you this.

You've run a lot of campaigns.

You've consulted.

You understand what works, what doesn't work.

So, and again, Governor Murphy, we had him on, an in-depth 30 minute interview, same thing with Jack Ciattarelli.

Check out our website if you want to go back and listen to what they said on the issues.

But a lot of what the Murphy campaign was about was saying that Jack Ciattarelli was tied to Donald Trump, that he was there, which is a fact.

He was there at the Stop the Steal rally.

Ciattarelli argues he didn't know what it was.

Okay.

Ciattarelli voted for Trump twice, he said he liked his policies.

The Murphy campaign, a lot of it said, Ciattarelli is an accolade, if you will, of Trump.

Good enough message?

- No, obviously not.

If, as Mike said, there's more than a million registered Democrats in New Jersey, most of them either stayed home or came out to vote for Jack Ciattarelli.

I mean, not most of them, but enough of them that this made it a two and a half point election as of right now.

Look, Donald Trump is in people's rear view mirror.

And even if he weren't, this is a state election.

Jack Ciattarelli has nothing whatsoever to do with Donald Trump and voters are not stupid.

They understand that.

It's one thing for Mikie Sherrill or Josh Gottheimer or Tom Malinowski or Andy Kim or anybody who's running next year.

- For United States Congress, go ahead.

- For United States Congress, excuse me, thank you, to tie themselves to the opposition, to Donald Trump, because Donald Trump is a federal elected official.

In New Jersey, when it comes to state races, and we're like, you know, Democrats, and I fall prey to this as well, except I learned my lesson in 2019, we're like Lucy with, you know, we're like Charlie Brown, but Lucy's holding the football and we keep going after these social issues constantly when it comes to state elections, when the voters keep saying.

I mean, look, I got involved in the Florio years, which is how old Mike and I are, but, I threw you under the bus there, Mike, by the way, along with me in the age thing, but you know, the first elections I really paid attention to where the Florio gubernatorial election '89, and the reality is, ever since then Democrats, in my memory, have always sent the same message, as well as Republicans and independents.

When it comes to state elections, focus on pocketbook issues, that's all they care about.

Every once in a while, I forget about that as well.

I would not have forgotten about this year.

I think the Murphy administration quite honestly did, and you cannot go around telling people that happy days are here again and things are great when property taxes keep going up, when you're paying more at the pump, when you're paying more in tolls to drive the turnpike.

So on and so forth.

Every focus group I've seen, voters are screaming out and they're saying we can not get blood from the stone anymore.

Democrats need to pay attention to that and speak to voters and meet them where they are and stop telling voters about Donald Trump when they want to hear about pocketbook issues, when it comes to state elections.

- Mike, and again, don't want to do horse race stuff or analyze politics too much.

I'm interested more in policy.

But Jack Ciattarelli saying, Donald Trump, we don't, don't come here.

That mattered.

Don't come here and campaign for me.

- Yeah, I mean, this is, in New Jersey and in Virginia that was successful in that, to Julie's point, voters are thinking about the future, not the past.

Donald Trump is not the president anymore.

While he was president or a candidate, voters were sending a message.

They wanted to go in a different direction.

He's not anymore.

Democrats made the same mistake in 2009, spending tens of millions of dollars trying to make Chris Christie into George W. Bush.

George W. Bush actually had lower approval ratings at that time that Donald Trump does now.

It didn't work then and it's not gonna work in the future.

The same thing happened- - You mean when Christie was running for governor?

- When Governor Christie was running for governor, that's exactly right.

And voters, to Julie's point, voters in New Jersey and Virginia, they separate these state elections from federal elections very well.

The voters who turn out understand the governor here doesn't have a vote for the United States Supreme Court and doesn't have a vote in the United States Senate.

So I think it was a mistake for Democrats to try to nationalize this election on social issues.

And for Republicans, it was beneficial to bring it back to local issues, bring it back to taxes, bring back the bread and butter issues, and actually, and Democrats in Washington not being able to get out of their own way on the trillions of dollars-- - Yeah, okay, I'm, that's what we're about to say, Mike.

I'm sorry for interrupting, Mike.

I want to follow up on that.

Julie, both you and Julie say it's not a national election, but it's so much of so many of the polls that we saw, not the ones that were all wrong about the election and that it would be a blowout.

But the ones that afterwards, the exit polls said people were concerned that the Democrats in the White House, together with Democrats in Congress, yes, we're taping this at the end of November, and some things have happened.

But before that election, they couldn't get it together.

They couldn't get the infrastructure bill passed, the Build Back Better bill did not pass.

You're saying that did not hurt Phil Murphy, Mike?

- I'm saying it did.

I'm saying it did, it made it worse.

You can't ignore the fact that Biden won Virginia by 10 and New Jersey by almost 17.

You can't ignore that that changed partly because it played into the same narrative.

Democrats in Washington were not arguing over the merits of the plan, which I know Julie will comment on, their messaging problems.

They were arguing about how many trillions of dollars to spend, and that's on the heels of, in New Jersey, we're gonna borrow billions, we're gonna raise taxes, we're gonna raise tolls.

At some point, voters say enough is enough.

And so the problem for Democrats in New Jersey was that the message coming out of Washington, it was kind of the same, that narrative of like spend, spend, spend.

Eventually, you know, voters were supportive at the beginning of COVID, but eventually, enough is enough for most voters.

- Julie let me ask, go ahead Julie.

- If I can, Steve, because Democrats, as we're taping this now, just passed, with Republican support I might add, this humongous infrastructure- - We're taping this on the 16th of November, go ahead.

- Right, with this humongous infrastructure bill, which is gonna be boon for New Jersey, and not just New Jersey, but the region.

The reality is that until voters start to feel that in a really tangible way, it's just numbers on a piece of paper.

And so the Democrats could have passed this bill in August and I still don't think- - Why didn't they, Julie?

Why couldn't the moderates and the progressive- - Because my party, and Steve, you know this as well, our party does nothing more, or my party does nothing better than fight amongst themselves until they finally- - We're pretty good at that too, Julie.

- You guys are, I don't even wanna talk.

At least we're still a party.

You guys are a cult.

Not you Mike, but the rest of the Republican party.

Look, I mean.

- That was snarky, but good!

I like that.

- You see how she removed me from it, but took a shot?

That's why it's Friendly Fire.

- 'Cause I love you.

- It's not no friendly fire at this moment, go ahead.

Julie, go ahead.

- But my point is not that.

My point is until voters really start to feel something tangible, until they start to be put to work building bridges and we start to actually drive on roads where they don't have to get a blow out with their tire because the roads are better, they're not gonna be able to really understand, and nor should they, some mythical trillion dollar piece of legislation that doesn't really affect them.

And that- - And inflation's at a 30 year high.

I mean, these things matter cost matter.

Costs matter.

And I think, when Democrats- - But Mike, you can't blame that on one politician.

- Whoever's in charge gets the blame.

You know how it works, Steve.

Whoever.

Joe Biden promised everything would be better.

Phil Murphy said the state was completely broke and he was gonna fix it, and voters don't buy it.

They don't buy that either one of them are doing a good job.

And so Joe Biden can say, this is happening on his watch.

The last time we saw this kind of inflation, it happened under Jimmy Carter's watch, right?

And they're both Democrats.

Voters understand these things and whether they need to do a better job of getting out and explaining, you know, why it's gonna be better, not just explaining that it's not their fault.

- And by the way, we get some of the Democrats, including those in the Biden administration, argue that we in the media have not done a good enough job breaking down and explaining what this is for.

- Blame the media.

- And we're trying to tell people.

- I never heard anybody do that before, blame the media.

- All I'm saying is, we'll tell people the money goes to Amtrak and the Gateway Tunnel and climate change and childcare.

We'll break all that down.

But last time I checked, seriously, it's our job to help inform, it's not our job to push anyone's agenda, Democrat or Republican.

That's Julie, that's Mike.

This is Friendly Fire.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato Is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Hackensack Meridian Health.

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Choose New Jersey.

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And by Summit Health, Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

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