both Steve Sweeney and Steve fulli are power players in their respective parts of the state who will likely be well funded as New Jersey grows increasingly more democratic but the race is still two years away that's an eternity in political timekeeping which means plenty of curveballs could be ahead I asked Mammoth University pollster Patrick Murray and ruer Eagleton Institute of politics poll director Ashley coning how the gubinatorial race is shaping up Pat Murray and Ashley coning thanks so much for joining me so Patrick let me start with you what does this say about the state of New Jersey politics when we have two of the same candidates running as uh was presumed to be six years ago well it's because they didn't get a chance six years ago uh basically for whatever reason Steve FIP pulled out Phil Murphy uh swooped in got more than enough of the north Jersey and Central Jersey uh backing uh from the party leaders that basically squeezed Steve Sweeney out he saw the writing on the wall and didn't run so basically we have two candidates the two Steves there uh who definitely wanted to run uh the last time around that it was an open seat and now have taken that shot I think it says a lot and we're seeing this uh certainly there's a lot of debate going on about the senate seat uh and who's running for that uh about our system here in primer is where it's easy for somebody particularly somebody with a lot of money to come in and try to clear the field Maybe we we don't know it's very early days yet we're still talking about the 2025 election but uh hopefully we'll see an actual competitive primary for governor that would be a nice thing yeah that is what's expected to be the case Ashley and I'm wondering how Steve Sweeney's South Jersey footprint plays into this and maybe the political help that he'll get yeah we're really revisiting this Geographic divide that we would have had with Steve North versus Steve South if we saw this uh so many years ago in the first time they were possibly going to run you know this is probably going to be more divisive as Patrick had mentioned than uh pork roll versus Taylor ham and asking new jerseyans we also have to keep in mind that even though we know who these political players are most new jerseyans really don't the last time we pulled Sweeny back in 2019 about two-thirds of new jerseyans didn't have an opinion of him or didn't know who he was now certainly he's gone through a a national uh you know nationally known loss against Ed dur and he certainly will have some support to rebuild in South J Jersey but this is going to be really geographically divisive and especially come down to probably seeing a lot of division among the different counties and county chairs which is something I presume Ashley uh Steve Sweeney would want to see right I mean more Lanes opened up for him to really uh find a path for himself he's already got it looks like Anyway an endorsement from the uh carpenters union of course uh we saw that one coming and the state building and construction trades Council not officially but they're behind him so how will this shape up in terms of getting the you know coveted County Line support yeah the union story has always been a part of his background and he's definitely already said that within his announcement and you know almost kind of hinted in his announcement that he knows that he has work to do to come back from that devastating for him loss a few years ago and so it'll really be interesting to see how George Norcross may come into play uh had said that if Sweeny decided to run for governor he might come back into the political Arena within South Jersey and how this shakes out especially if we know of any other North Jersey or Central Jersey candidates who may still enter this race on the Democratic side it looks more and more crowded and we're we're not even to 2024 yet Patrick who do we expect to still jump in and do you agree with Ashley's assessment about the the county line yeah I mean the county lines are key and this is why I think Steve Sweeney's um Gambit here is based on what he was going to do a few years ago which was basically get entire South Jersey organizations behind him he can count on about a third of the vote coming out of South Jersey not as strong as they used to be because now the there's a shift to Middle sex's terms in terms of a power center but if you have other candidates coming into this race from the northern part of the State uh we're talking about people like Josh got Heimer and Mikey Cheryl two of our members of a Congressional Delegation who people are talking about people are also talking about the speaker of uh the uh assembly uh Craig Coughlin who comes from middle sex County I'm not so sure how serious he is or if that's kind of a stalking horse in order for to allow middle sex County to keep their powder dry while this is all shaking out but if you have all those candidates running it's likely that the county uh endorsements are going to be spread among those different uh candidates and so that's what will lead to a competitive primary nonetheless the South Jersey Democratic machine is resurging uh Patrick Murray Ashley coning lots of conversations ahead thank you so much my pleasure than so much [Music]