last night the three major Republican candidates for governor had their last debate of the primary season former Assemblyman Jack Chidarelli who has the endorsement of President Trump former radio host Bill Spadia and State Senator John Bramnik took jabs at each other where they could making their case for why they should be their party's nominee ted Goldberg has more on the key takeaways from the debate i'm just hoping that tonight's debate doesn't turn into a Jerry Springer show again senator John Bramnik mostly got his wish tuesday's debate was the last for electqualified candidates and the first since President Donald Trump endorsed Jack Chidarelli president Trump endorsed me because he knows I'm the only person that can unify our party he endorsed me because of the energy I bring to the campaign he endorsed me because of the money we're able to raise to deliver a win let me be very clear the president endorsed a poll a poll that was conducted and paid for by Jack's campaign the president did not endorse a plan the president did not endorse a set of principles i did not get the endorsement from Donald Trump i waited up late at night no phone call the more moderate Bramnik was being sarcastic former radio host Bill Spadia was particularly combative with Chitterelli going back and forth with him on subjects like energy production we put an unofficial moratorium on the burning of natural gas to generate electricity they haven't expanded our car our nuclear footprint in South Jersey that all changes on day one of Governor Chedarelli's administration jack I'm sure knows that it takes 10 years to get a new nuclear reactor built and online mr spade is wrong on the timeline the new micro modular nuclear reactors can come online within 6 years is this from a man who spent millions of dollars trying to tear me down well Jack I'm still here we're not on the radio Bill you can't talk over people um Mike when you're a radio host you just hang up on the person you disagree with when you represent people you listen to all your constituents the candidates found common ground on wanting to bring back the death penalty and encouraging school choice they also supported with varying degrees of enthusiasm the assault charges brought against Congresswoman Lam Monica Maccgyver accused of interfering with the arrest of Newark Mayor Ros Baraka outside an ICE facility earlier this month you can't get in the way of an arrest i mean I hate to tell you Congress I don't like the fact that you're arresting Congress i would hope we wouldn't do that i would hope we wouldn't arrest mayors i also saw that they dropped the charges against Roz Baraka that's pretty quick so it sounds as if maybe those allegations weren't so strong the video shows that this person who you mentioned laid her hands on another person and so that to me says that the charges are legitimate i would hope that a member of Congress would have more sense than to hit a police officer that that's what I would hope so I I hope she is charged to the full extent of the law and serves whatever punishment is appropriate we need to protect our members of law enforcement this was a total political stunt an analysis done by state officials says proposed cuts to Medicaid could cost New Jersey a little more than $ three.5 billion dollars in federal funding the candidates had sharper disagreements about how they felt i look at cuts as a drive toward efficiency but not one person who is in need will go without help if there's a sit down and we can go over the Medicaid money in in New Jersey that makes sense but to cut it to be honest with you I hope the Republicans in uh Washington stand up support New Jersey and not make those cuts the best way to solve Medicaid is to prevent waste fraud in Medicaid and it's a multi-billion dollar program so I think that the president is right and trying to hit the reset button in eliminating waste and fraud to close things out the candidates gave their final sales pitch for voters ahead of primary day on June 10th the goal is to win in November and I wouldn't be asking Republicans for the nomination unless I believed I was the best candidate to deliver that win and President Trump agrees my two opponents have a combined 80 years as political insiders if you want more of the same you've got two choices right here if we simply follow some new script of hateful rhetoric of us versus them we are going to lose it is now less than three weeks to go until primary day so based on last night's performance will voters follow the president's lead or not for NJ Spotlight News I'm Ted Goldberg