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[music] Hey everybody, welcome to Chat Box.

I'm David Cruz.

We're heading towards the final week of the governor's race, and with recent polls all over the place, the only certainty is that this will be a close contest maybe.

Two debates in the books now.

We'll take a look at the latest face-to-face and what may lie ahead in the race for governor with two guys close to the contestants.

Republican strategist Chris Russell is with Checkmate Strategies and consultant to the Cittarelli campaign.

And Democratic strategist Dan Bryan is a Sherrill supporter with no official role in the campaign.

Gents, good to see you both.

Welcome.

So we got one poll showing Sherrill's up by eight and another one showing it as a dead heat.

Who's right, Chris?

Well, listen, the idea that Cheryl's up eight is laughable.

And I think last night's debate was proof of that.

If you're up eight, you don't accuse your opponent of killing 10,000 people, which was one of the more vile and despicable attacks in a political debate in New Jersey in a while.

And that's saying something.

So I saw a Mikie Sherrill last night that's cracking under the pressure of someone who has been running a fairly vapid campaign.

She doesn't understand the issues of the state.

She can't articulate them.

She hides from interviews.

And people in this state want change, and they know that she is really a functional incumbent of a Democratic Party that has run the state into the ground, made it unaffordable, and is really driving the middle working class out of the state.

So I feel great about where we are right now, and I'm looking forward to the final month.

Dan, what do you see out there that makes you think Chris is dead wrong?

Yeah, it won't surprise you, David, to say I see things a bit differently than Chris does.

Listen, if you're looking at polling, which I do only sparingly, the polling does look very good for Mikie Sherrill.

I think what you see not only in terms of the horse race, but favorabilities are good for her.

Favorabilities are good for the incumbent governor, obviously, which is important for her.

The person favorabilities aren't good for right now is Jack Ciattarelli.

Most of the public polling we've seen released, he's underwater fairly significantly.

And listen, I think what you saw last night is Mikie doing what she's been doing for the last year.

She's been running for governor, which is showing that she can throw a punch, not holding back, holding people accountable for things that they've done in the past.

I think she was excellent last night, as she was in the first debate.

And I think she's - things are lining up for her in these last few weeks exactly how she would like them to.

I think a lot of people would question whether or not she's been doing that for a year now.

But let's move on.

Let's talk about this final debate.

Last chance for voters to see these candidates face to face.

Sherrill's camp was feeling pretty good about their performance.

Why are you saying they shouldn't be, Chris?

Because again, Mikie Sherrill has run this entire campaign without any real substance whatsoever.

She's been lying about Jack Shudder's record, again, last night, taking it to a level that Terrence McDonald in the Monitor today called irresponsible and inflammatory.

And again, it's because she has problems on her own side, which is involvement in the largest cheating scandal in the history of the Navy, Naval Academy, refuses to release disciplinary records about that, constantly changes her story in that regard, like she did last night.

She's gone from, I didn't rat out my friends, to I told investigators everything I knew, which is last time I checked, completely contradictory.

And she's running on the Murphy record in a state where people think the state is overwhelmingly heading in the wrong direction.

So if the polling that I'm looking at, I don't look at public polls because public polls are largely trash.

And I think that was proved last time and proved in 2024.

We feel great about where we are.

And I think Mikie Sherrill is the candidate who in those last few weeks is the one who's going to be under a lot of pressure.

All right, Dan, you see what Chris said there?

Why is he wrong?

Listen, I think that we tend to remember the polling misses that go the Republican way, and we tend to forget the ones that go the Democratic way, right?

And I work with DAC, the Legislative Campaign Committee here in New Jersey for Democrats.

And there was a pretty big polling miss in 2023, but it was for the Democrats, right?

The Democrats outperformed polls broadly throughout the state.

So it can go both ways, right?

So does polling miss sometimes?

Sure, of course it does, but it can go either way, right?

So just because Mikie Sherrill shows that she's up by six or eight, doesn't mean that she's not going to win by that much, doesn't mean she's not going to buy more, just as much of a chance that she loses, I'm sorry, that it underperforms slightly, right?

So start there, number one.

Number two, listen, what Mikie has done very smartly is not let Jack off the hook on things that he has done and said in the past, regardless of what he's saying now.

A great example is the 10% sales tax that he talks about.

He has spoken about numerous times in public in the past.

He's now saying, well, of course I wouldn't have done it.

Well, that reminds me, David, a lot of Project 2025 last year, when we all knew that Donald Trump and his allies were fully with Project 2025.

But then he was saying in public, well, I have nothing to do with that now.

So we all had to drop it.

And then what did they do?

They got into office and they're enacting Project 2025.

That reminds me a lot of what Jack Ciattarelli is doing here with things like the 10% sales tax.

And she very smartly is not letting him off the hook on it.

She's saying, listen, these are your words.

You've said this in the past.

I don't care what you're saying right now.

We know what you said either behind closed doors or in public when you weren't running for governor, and that's what I'm holding you to.

- All right, let's go to the moment that a lot of people are talking about today.

This is an abbreviated segment.

It's Cheryl talking about Jack Cittarelli's medical publishing business.

- You know, my opponent likes to talk a lot about being a businessman, but I think what New Jersey doesn't know is much about his business, how he made his millions, by working with some of the worst offenders and saying that opioids were safe, putting out propaganda, publishing their propaganda, while tens of thousands of New Jerseyans died.

And as if that wasn't enough, then he was paid to develop an app so that people who were addicted could more easily get access to opioids.

And so as he made millions, as these opioid companies made billions, tens of thousands of New Jerseyans died.

Mr.

Ciattarelli.

First of all, shame on you.

Second of all.

Shame on you, sir.

Shame on you.

During the Biden administration, she had no problem whatsoever with tens of thousands of people crashing our border each and every day, not knowing what impact they had in our communities with regard to fentanyl crisis, fentanyl abuse, fentanyl distribution, vaccination rates and the like.

Talk to your local police, talk to your county prosecutors in New Jersey.

Since the border's been secured, fentanyl crisis has decreased significantly.

She supported those open border policies.

But with regard to everything she just said about my professional career, which provided my family, it's a lie.

I'm proud of my career.

First time I've ever seen your guy rattled, Chris, was he?

I don't think he was rattled.

Listen, David, when, and I said before, if you say you killed 10,000 people, including kids, that's what she said last night.

Dan is a good guy.

I'd ask Dan, Dan, did Jack Kidder really kill 10,000 people?

Are you guys really willing to stand behind what she said last night?

It's insanity that she would say that.

And I'm challenging a Democrat to stand there and back it up.

I don't think Dan will.

On top of that, talking about making millions, this is someone who made millions while she was in the United States Congress, tripled her net worth, broke laws on stock trades, got incredibly wealthy while serving in Congress, including trading defense stocks sitting on the House Armed Services Committee.

Talk about someone who's got ethics problems.

Talk about somebody who's profited off of public service.

All right.

We should also note just for some context that Jack Ciattarelli is also a millionaire.

That's OK.

I mean, it's OK to make money, David, but getting rich while you're in Congress is a different story, and that's what she did.

All right.

Dan, yesterday's debate, that particular segment, low blow or fair game?

>> Listen, I'm in a little bit of a different place than Chris is.

I'm not directly involved in this race, obviously, massive Mikie Cheryl supporter.

Here's what I would say.

Candidates tend to get- >> In other words, Dan's not gonna say Jack Ciattarelli killed 10,000 people, because he knows it's insane.

>> Candidates tend to get very upset, especially what Jack Ciattarelli did there, when facts are brought up against them.

What you didn't see him do was deny a single fact.

Here's what he did, and by the way, we brought this up in 2021, David.

You might remember there was commercials out there.

We've talked about it.

There was a little bit of talk about this in 2021.

Didn't really come up then, 'cause no one thought he was going to win, so it wasn't really taken seriously as a narrative, but here are the facts.

He owned a publishing company that published a whole lot of misleading fact about opioids.

The opioid crisis was one of the biggest, I think still, we haven't really fully come to terms with how big this opioid crisis is, not only in our state, but in our country, and he did profit off of it.

He was a part of it, he profited off of it.

That could be an uncomfortable fact, but that is a fact, right?

And rather than addressing that and saying what he thought about it.

Owning a medical publishing company is not killing 10,000 people.

That is what she said last night.

So words matter, right?

Words matter.

And this is what Mikie Charles said last night.

And that to me is disqualifying rhetoric, right?

She talked, we have an issue of political violence in our country where people are getting shot and killed for rhetoric.

And she then says her opponent killed 10,000 people.

I find it egregious.

Let me let him finish.

Go ahead, Dan.

Thank you.

So, rather than addressing the facts, what he did was get indignant and offended, right?

That is not an answer, right?

Here are the facts.

He owned a publishing company and developed an app that helped ease the access to opioids for thousands and thousands of people in New Jersey, right?

We know that as a fact.

He killed 10,000 people.

That's did he kill 10,000 people like Phil Murphy killed 10,000 seniors and veterans?

Are we talking about kind of the same rhetoric here?

David, here is what I'm saying.

I'm not saying what anyone else said.

I'm saying what I'm saying here.

Here are the facts.

He did those things.

That is not an argument.

Those are facts.

Rather than address that and address the charges that came against him, as Mikie Sherrill has many times when Jack Ciattarelli said, "You've made millions," obviously not true.

She went above and beyond being as transparent as I've ever seen a candidate in releasing all of her finances.

Obviously, none of that was true.

She addressed the facts.

He's not just a perfect, what he did was get offended and indignant and say, "I can't believe you would say that about me."

All right, let me let Chris get the last word on this.

Go ahead, Chris.

>> Now listen, I respect Dan and I think he's a good guy, which is why he won't say what you said last night, right?

It's because he knows it's insane and he's in a tough spot.

The end of the day, this campaign is gonna be about who people trust to make New Jersey more affordable, who they trust to make it safer, who they trust to have it not be the place that people are fleeing left and right.

Jack Ciattarelli is the only candidate who's the agent of change in this race and he's gonna win for that reason.

>> All right, let me move on here.

>> Just one last statement.

>> Dan, you got ten seconds for it, go.

It's a charge we levied in 2021 because it's a fair attack.

Okay.

You never levy that charge Dan, cause you wouldn't.

I don't think Phil Murphy would have allowed you to levy that charge.

Chris, your guy was in Hudson recently, a couple of times, actually.

He picked up support from a few errant Democrats.

Is your base so secure that you're trying to pick off Democrats and Democratic strongholds?

No, listen, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, David.

So, I mean, our campaign is out there every day, reaching out to other -- to Democrats, to independents.

Obviously, we want our base to come out, too, and we are confident they're going to.

But our campaign is all over the state, pushing voters of every political persuasion to come out and support Jack Ciattarelli if they worry about change in the state.

It's Mikie Sherrill, whose campaign is really a series of photo ops with people who already support her and will smile and not ask her hard questions because we know if she gets a hard question, she can't get her tongue untied.

So in terms of our campaign, we're aggressive.

Jack's out there every day meeting with, talking to people, bringing people along.

The Hudson County thing last week, Mikie Sherrill was invisible in Hudson County while Jack Ciattarelli was dominating parades.

That says a lot about what this campaign is.

Is your base secure?

We see a lot of enthusiastic audiences for the Republican.

I think the answer is yes.

And here's the biggest problem that Jack Ciattarelli has.

He's running up against a really good candidate.

There's data out there, David, that shows that veterans that run as Democrats outperform non-veterans by six points, right?

So running a veteran in the Democratic Party has become a really good avenue for the Democrats, and that's why we're seeing him try to attack her service record.

That's why we're seeing him try to go at her strengths the same way that the Bush campaign did with Kerry when they swift-boated him, right?

Because they know it's a problem for him.

So I think they are scrambling a little bit because she is going to pick up a whole lot of independents, as we've seen in the polls.

She's going to pick up a little bit of Republicans, as she's done in her past campaigns.

So I think she's broadened her net.

I think she's always trying to do the same thing.

I haven't really seen it done yet.

All right, Chris, you guys are still pushing this military record story.

Yesterday, Jack Cittarelli said, I think she was punished for something else.

What are you guys trying to suggest there?

I'm suggesting that she is claimed, right?

We know what she's admitted.

She's admitted she was involved in the largest cheating scandal in the history of the Naval Academy.

She's claimed that she was punished because she said, "I didn't rat out my friends."

Yet after the debate yesterday, she said she told investigators everything she knew.

Those things are diametrically opposed.

They can't both be true.

There's only one way.

What do you think she did?

What is it that you guys feel so strongly about that she did?

I know she did more than rat on her friends.

That is a nonsense story.

If she did, if that's what her story was, she would just release the records and show it.

So the fact that she hasn't done that tells me her story doesn't match what the records say.

We believe it's pretty clear she likely lied to investigators.

I don't know whether she had possession of this test or not at the Naval Academy.

Only person who can clear any of that up is Mikie Sherrill, yet she continues to change her story, dodge, conflate, do whatever she can, because she built her narrative eight years ago around this issue of being a Navy veteran.

And we're not-- her service is great.

Jack's son is in the Middle East right now.

This is the Naval Academy cheating scandal.

She was part of it.

She was implicated in it.

And she won't share the records because she knows they're devastating to her narrative.

Dan, I see you.

You're indignant.

I'm going to give you 15 seconds to respond to that before I move on to the last thing on my agenda here.

Go.

Here's what's happening right now.

Mikie Sherrill's beating Jack Cittarelli in this election, in part because of her bio and because of her service to the country.

They are attacking it because they're trying to bring her down politically.

It's vile.

It's gross.

She served this country for almost a decade, fighting for it, put her life on the line to protect our freedoms.

Going after her in this direction is absolutely gross, and I think it's something that the Republican Party is going to pay for.

Vile and gross sounds like a steakhouse.

Let me stay here with you, Dan, as we come-- Not one I'd go to.

I will say.

Exactly.

One of the arguments Jack Ciattarelli is making is that Mikie Sherrill is Phil Murphy 2.0.

You know the governor for a long time.

You got one or two ways that Mikie Sherrill is not Murphy 2.0?

Give you 30 seconds because I'm running out of time.

Listen, I will say as someone who's worked for a very successful governor for the last eight years, I'm not sure that there's anyone.

And by the way, we see this in Jack Ciattarelli.

He never talks about Phil Murphy.

And there's a reason for that, because Phil Murphy is pretty popular and successful.

So if he was, you know, this disaster that you'd be talking about in these debates, he's not.

He barely mentions his name, right?

Listen, she's going to be different.

Everyone's different.

She's going to have her own set of priorities.

All right.

I'm going to cut you off, Dan, only because I know what you're going to say, and I got to give Chris 30 seconds to say what he's going to say.

But they don't know what I'm going to say, David.

Yes, I do.

I do.

I think what Dan just admitted is that she's Murphy 2.0.

So listen, she's going to be-- I don't think he did, but let me ask you this, Chris.

All right?

Cheryl says Cittarelli is a Donald Trump toady.

I'm paraphrasing there.

But what one or two policy differences does Cittarelli have with the president?

He's already talked about the Picatinny Arsenal cuts.

He disagrees with that.

He said last night offshore wind.

The president's decision to allow offshore wind to go forward in New York.

He does not want that to happen here.

Those are the last one.

All right.

That's good because I've run out of time.

Republican Chris Russell Democrat Dan Bryan I appreciate you guys coming on.

Good sports to you both.

Good luck to you and we'll see you out there.

Thanks guys.

Take care.

As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month we turn our attention to Puerto Rico which has been very much in our consciousness after Bad Bunny's two month 31 show residency at El Coliseo de Puerto Rico.

No me quiero ir de aquí.

I don't want to leave here is the theme.

And it resounded with a lot of Puerto Ricans because sadly the island is losing its brightest minds.

Let's talk about La Isla del Encanto with one got the Hanna.

He is a lecturer at Columbia Law and attorney former municipal judge folklorist musician and rocker of the Kangol although not today like no other among other things.

Juan welcome back to the show man good to see you.

Good to see you David wonderful to be here.

Also a coquitero is that a word?

A coquitero?

The highest order?

A person who loves coquito and makes coquito.

All right that's good see our almost viral video sharing your mom's coquito recipe you folks can go check that out online.

Anyway coquito is kind of a perfect metaphor I think of the duality of being Puerto Rican in America.

Coquito, Bad Bunny, beautiful beaches, but life on the island is getting harder and harder, no?

Definitely.

A lot of that is, you know, centuries old.

So it's been a colony for a long time under different flags of other foreign nations.

But I think most recent issues have been after Maria, Hurricane Maria in 2017.

And then also the incredibly, the incentives that the local government has given for persons to travel to and make a residency in Puerto Rico from the U.S.

Major tax breaks are being given to them that are not available to people who live on the island.

So David, there's a major level of gentrification on the island of Puerto Rico that has been unheard of and unseen of before today.

Yeah, I was going to say it's an island-wide gentrification.

Tax benefits encouraging outside investment while islanders really have to leave the island for opportunities, no?

They have to leave the island for opportunities for at least several reasons.

Number one is the economic recession and the economic crunch that occurred when the local government started to engage in a major public debt.

They were engaged in public debt and couldn't find a way out.

Puerto Rico is not allowed to access certain avenues for bankruptcy that would allow for restructuring of the debt.

So that's all tied up in litigation.

The second thing is Hurricane Maria, and Hurricane Maria devastated a lot of the infrastructure of Puerto Rico and led to a lot of closing of institutions, like public schools were being closed left and right.

After Maria and during the economic crisis, the United States government instituted a junta, la junta it's called.

It's basically a fiscal oversight board of Puerto Rico which controls a lot of its decision-making and budget-making in a way from unelected persons both appointed from the mainland from the United States and also appointed in Puerto Rico.

So all that combined plus the fact that you know in the reality we know this very well David, Puerto Rico is a beautiful gorgeous island.

So to imagine that you can find property near the beach or on the beach at relatively accessible prices and then the local government's giving incentives to people to do so in a way that displaces the people who were there, it's exactly the crisis that we're undergoing today.

You know you talk about gentrification, let's talk about closer to home.

We've seen gentrification impact gentrification's impact in our lifetime.

We grew up not far from one another in Jersey City.

We were on seventh and the Cartagenas were on second.

Right.

This used to be a largely Puerto Rican community.

Those old row houses and brownstones are now million dollar homes.

You've seen it.

And now you've made it part of a presentation and panel discussion that's happening this weekend at the Museum of Jersey City History.

Tell me about that.

Sure.

We're taking the opportunity that the museum has given us.

The Museum of Jersey City History is relatively new on the scene but it's been very intentional in making sure that it's a museum not just of artifacts from the American Revolution of the 1700s and the forging of the beginnings of both New Jersey as sovereign entities and the United States as a sovereign entity.

The museum wants to incorporate people who have been living here who call these neighborhoods their homes and they've reached out to a handful of racial and ethnic communities but also reached out to geographic communities.

And most recently they reached out to the Puerto Rican community.

Council member Danny Rivera was one of the people who started spearheading a series of conversations about what would it look like to have a discussion about the history of Puerto Ricans in Jersey City.

And I just jumped at the opportunity because I'm looking, I have a couple of research projects that all revolve around the same issue, the history of Puerto Ricans in Jersey City, because there's not enough writing about our incredible richness and longevity in Jersey City.

And the change of downtown, how a lot of Puerto Ricans were displaced from there and real estate prices went through the roof and you have a kind of cultural whitewashing, for lack of a better word, of what used to be a very vibrant ethnic community.

There's definitely a lot of that, David.

Here's some good news.

I've lived my life in Jersey City.

Hernandez, my wife, and I have raised a family in Jersey City since the 1980s when we were married.

We have seen really beautiful people come to Jersey City to raise families of all racial backgrounds.

And those who plant their bandera, their flag, in downtown Jersey City because they want to live here and make it better are always going to be welcomed.

The problem started happening when the development, the housing developments on the, closer to the water, closer to the river, started creating what are called bedroom communities, right?

Communities that are people who live in Jersey City, but basically hang out and do, spend all their free time as much as possible, and their work lives in Manhattan.

And that disconnect, there were people that I recognized and saw and met that never traveled west of Marine Boulevard, which is behind us.

Like literally don't even know the past taste station called Grove Street.

That kind of gentrification occurred in a way that just really economically started to squeeze out the people in the businesses that that were all over downtown.

Cause downtown Jersey City.

When you and I grew up where it has been and what was worth the center of Puerto Rican life.

Now that migration has slowly moved slightly south definitely north towards the Heights and then eventually even outside of Jersey City as well.

You talk about an acceptance and an appreciation of the history of downtown though, right?

You feel that from newcomers.

Definitely because in many ways, you know, I'm sure you would agree, Jersey City has a lot to do with the way I personally have been, you know, thinking about my trajectory as an attorney and as an activist, as someone involved in social justice and racial justice.

Jersey City has a lot to do with that.

It's a gritty place to live.

It was very rough growing up in Jersey City when we were young, but it's also a place where at least everyone recognized the value of hard work and working with your hands.

And that's the kind of disconnect that's happening today, where knowledge economy has basically changed the landscape of what it is to work and live in Jersey City, and has made it much more difficult to connect with the older generations, people who worked in factories.

Jersey City was littered with factories at the time we were growing up.

So that kind of history, and especially the history about what it means to be recognized as a vibrant community in the city, is something we're going to start addressing both.

I'm going to address it in research projects and writing, but we're addressing it this Saturday coming up on October 11th.

All right.

Juan Catejena, always a pleasure, man.

Thanks for coming on with us.

Good to see you.

You take care.

And that's chat box for this week.

Just a note here because some of you have been asking about why we haven't had Democrat Mikie Sherrill on after Republican Jack Cittarelli was on last week.

Believe me, we've asked, we've been asking, and we're still asking.

Our thanks also to Chris Russell and Dan Bryan for joining us earlier.

We're on Blue Sky now.

Follow us there at DavidCruzNJ and scan the QR code on your screen for more "Chat Box."

I'm David Cruz.

For all the crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, we thank you for watching.

We'll see you next week.

Major funding for "Chat Box" with David Cruz is provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association, making public schools great for every child.

Promotional support for "Chat Box" with David Cruz is provided by Insider NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.

Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players an interactive forum for ideas, discussion, and insight.

Online at InsiderNJ.com.

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