- [Announcer] Funding for tonight's "NJ Decides 2025 Gubernatorial Conversation" is provided by the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, dedicated to protecting our environment, empowering communities, and strengthening democracy.

(dramatic music) This is the NJ Spotlight News Special Edition, coming to you from the Rutgers Institute for Health.

"NJ decides 2025 Gubernatorial Conversation with the Candidates."

- Good evening and welcome to a special edition of NJ Spotlight News on this President's Day.

I'm Joanna Gagis.

Last week I sat down with several of the gubernatorial candidates running to replace Governor Murphy.

We partnered with Rutgers Institute for Health and the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters Education Fund to bring you a conversation focused on environmental issues in the state and how they intersect with public health.

We did invite all the major candidates to participate, but many had scheduling conflicts.

So who did participate?

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, State Senator Jon Bramnick, NJEA President Sean Spiller, also a member of the NJ PBS Community Advisory Board, and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop.

Here now is a portion of that hour-long chat.

Many of the state's urban communities experience heavy truck traffic and the impacts of industrial facilities in their backyards.

Mayor Baraka, I see you nodding.

In the most recent state of the Air Report, eight of New Jersey's counties scored a C, D, or F for poor air quality.

Now, as the federal government reduces support for climate regulations and environmental justice programs, do you believe that the state policies should continue to address environmental concerns in these communities?

If so, what's your plan?

Mayor Baraka, I'll start with you.

- Well, you know, unfortunately we live on the front porch of these climate crisis and environmental issues that, you know, that we're talking about.

Most black and brown and poor communities face this disproportionately to others.

Besides the fact that we're next to the port, the particulate matter in the air is very dangerous.

In fact, our kids have higher asthma rates than many other kids across the state of New Jersey.

Some even die from asthma in our cities.

It's incredibly unfortunate.

What we do is obviously we try to plant more trees, right?

We work with the state and our community organizations to change the trucks, right?

To be able to get cleaner trucks on the roads or, you know, change the traffic patterns so the trucks aren't moving through our communities the way they are.

But this is a very serious issue and I think, yeah, the state's policies should continue going forward the way they're going.

We need to partner with our federal delegation to make sure we put pressure on President of the United States to continue, or to not back away from climate change policies to make sure that the environmental justice is happening throughout this country.

But more importantly, the cumulative impact ordinance that the state has that we also have in Newark, they have to double down on that and make it enforceable to make sure that things that are having a deleterious effect on people's community that have the dangerous impact, that something is done about it immediately.

- Senator Bramnick, I wanna just ask you, you're the only Republican who agreed to join our conversation.

Thank you for being here.

And of course, we said scheduling issues for others, but I wanna ask, do you believe that this is something the state should continue to move forward on, and do you agree or disagree or have no opinion on where the federal government is right now?

- Well, first of all, it's interesting that all the other Republicans had a scheduling conflict.

Let me start off that I'm the Republican who's not afraid to say I believe in science and I will follow science.

When I'm governor of this state, I will rely on science if it calls for infectious disease experts, or scientists who study the environment, that's who I rely on.

I don't rely on politicians' opinions.

I rely on scientists' opinions and that's how I solve problems, and the minute we get off that, if we have another Covid, or this type of pandemic, and we start going to the internet as opposed to scientists, it's gonna be very dangerous.

I'm a Republican who believes in science and that's why I'm here.

- The mayor brought up electric vehicles and that's the next question that we have.

The transportation sector is the main source of air pollution in the state.

The Murphy administration has pushed for the adoption of electric vehicles, even adopted California's emission standards that drastically increase the number of EVs and hybrids sold in the coming years.

That includes heavy and medium-sized trucks that we know, as you mentioned, Mayor, come through communities.

But some in the legislature, as I'm sure you're aware, did attempt to delay adopting those standards.

They say it creates an undue cost and burden for business.

As governor, would you remain committed to the California rules and to the switch to electric vehicles in particular?

- I wanna talk about those standards and I wanna also talk about the air quality because I think they're very closely related.

Everybody talks about climate change and the environment and I think not all candidates are equal on that front.

You could look at the substance that we put forward in our platform.

It's different than any Republican or Democrat, the amount of detail, or you look at our 12 years as far as a track record on that front.

With regards to air pollution, that ties in directly into truck traffic.

You gotta think about a track record here.

There's no administration that has moved more aggressively towards electrification of vehicles and creating more infrastructure than we've done.

With regards to congestion pricing, which directly ties to pollution, every other politician took the easy approach.

I was on an island and I happened to be right with regards to saying this is an environment issue.

With regards to the turnpike widening, same sort of thing.

Truck traffics and cars coming through there.

I think the Murphy administration legislature entertaining delays to the truck standards is a gross mistake.

- So you would keep that going?

- 100%, and we should be putting it in place aggressively and moving on.

You see time and again that they take temporary bandaid approach and they put goals very far out and then they delay them.

I think the urgency of now, and that is something that we can control and try and reach to move forward on.

- Congresswoman, do you have any thoughts?

Sean.

- Yeah, no, well, Congresswoman, if you wanna go.

- Well, thank you.

I would just say that as we've seen these goals set out by the administration, we need to put the surrounding infrastructure in place.

So we have these goals for trucking, for example, 7% right now to move into heavy trucking, but we don't have any charging stations for trucking.

If we are going to build out infrastructure, if we're gonna build out the Gateway Tunnel Project and we're going to see this utilized by a lot of companies with heavy trucking, they need to build out the infrastructure.

We're putting a lot of money into our infrastructure here in New Jersey that is going to really benefit a lot of our companies, a lot of our port facilities, they're gonna need to put in money into the infrastructure to charge these heavy trucks, for example.

I think too, as we're looking at a Trump administration coming in, I've dealt with a Trump administration in office and all of the rollbacks of the programs that we here in New Jersey rely on.

One of the areas that was so bad in the last administration was they were taking off the requirements for factory stacks where we know we have cancer clusters around those factories.

We kept those in place in the state.

We need to continue to move forward in this state on our environmental protections to make sure that despite what the administration is doing, we can continue to move forward and be ready for the next administration where we can take advantage of having already put in place so many of the structures that we'll need to continue to move forward in the state.

- So you would, yes, keep the California rules, you would keep, is that a yes for you too, Mayor?

- Yes, I would.

- I wanna thank you.

I wanna make sure I bring Sean in here.

Go ahead, Sean.

- Well, I certainly would as well.

And I think even the framing of that question, right, that there are some who are looking to delay it because of the cost, just understanding there's a massive cost to not doing something here, right?

There's a massive cost each and every day.

I say that somebody with a seven-year-old and four-year-old who is checking that air quality alert and just shocked by how often it is poor, every day, you know, and we see it.

I've seen it, really proud to be part of Healthy Schools Now Coalition and the work that we do because the impact that that has when you've got more students who are suffering from asthma, more students who have health concerns, and quite frankly, we don't have the infrastructure to help them when they get into that school building that's 100 years old, that doesn't have an HVAC unit, can't keep them cool, this is costing us in terms of our students' education, it's costing us in terms of their health, it's costing us in terms of families being able to enjoy our communities and if we're not moving forward, if we're not being leaders in this space, we're hurting every single New Jerseyan and we're costing ourselves.

- Sean raises an interesting point because it is something that's come up before the Assembly and the Senate hearings about absenteeism, chronic absenteeism tied to health-related issues for students.

- One group of people that we do not talk about in this discussion is independently owned and operated truck drivers who are, you know, mostly black, brown and poor working class folks who we, who would love to have a green economy, who would love to have a better environment, but what we do is we juxtapose the clean environment next to their ability to feed their family, and to them that's a no brainer and so they move in another direction and we allow these people to be organized by our opposition to say, oh, they wanna clean the environment, but they're taking food off of your table.

We have to figure out a way we change these people's trucks when we start talking about going over to electric or to cleaner trucks that if we're giving people money, if we give 'em 30,000, $40,000, but ask them to buy a $160,000 truck, that gap has to be dealt with, right?

We have to be smarter in how we bring people into what it is that we believe, which is why we lose a lot of folks on the Democrat side.

- Yeah, the things I hear you and Congressman Sherrill talk about seem that like they would require federal funding and federal support in order to be able to bring those costs down in order to be able to build the infrastructure.

Everyone has a thought.

I wanna move on to congestion pricing.

If you have something else you wanna work in, feel free, but we have a lot we wanna get in.

New York's congestion pricing plan, while very controversial, has shown some early signs of being effective at reducing traffic and thus pollution.

Would you support implementing similar congestion pricing schemes in parts of New Jersey to pay for public transit?

Go ahead, Mayor.

- Yeah, I've been at the forefront of this issue from the beginning.

The people that have questions on whether I was right or wrong, look who supports congestion pricing, President Biden, President Obama, they say it works for the environment.

Who doesn't support it?

President Trump doesn't support it.

That is a starting point when people, the political world pull it and they say that it is a problem, it is bad, people are adverse to it, you have a lot of politicians that take the approach and say this is bad and they repeat back to you what you wanna hear and that is not leadership on the environment.

You ask yourself who drives their personal vehicle to Midtown Manhattan every single day and pays 1,200, $1,500 to park their personal vehicle?

It's not working class people.

It's the wealthiest 2% of the population that the governor was fighting for.

From the get go, I said, "yes, we should be bringing New York back to the table," and a reverse congestion price is very, very important.

We should be leveraging and investing in this thought around a regional economy, a regional transit system, it's good for the environment, it's good for health, it's good for transportation.

And you know what?

It's working.

The data shows that it's working.

So we need to continue on this path.

It is the right thing to do and I've been there from the beginning.

- Senator, would you support a reverse congestion pricing plan, and is congestion pricing the wrong thing for this area in your mind?

- It's the wrong thing to balance the budget for the MTA on the backs of New Jersey residents.

And would I do a reverse congestion pricing?

If I get away with it, I mean, we're saying it violates the Constitution, I would do anything to stop New York from taxing our people and we actually co-sponsored a bill trying to actually bring New Yorkers here to try to fight the taxation that's going on in New York.

And just wanted to comment, you think a Republican could wear Baraka sneakers?

- I don't think anyone but Baraka can wear Barca sneakers.

- I wanna try that.

- Maybe I get a little more.

- I don't think you can wear whether you are Democrat or Republican.

(all laughing) - Well, let me ask you, let me ask this.

Is it wrong to balance the budget of NJ Transit on the backs of New Yorkers, Congresswoman Sherrill?

- Well, I think that's what we've been trying to negotiate with Governor Hochul and I think that's why so many of us have been opposed to this because it is simply a money grab for MTA, and I have spoken to working people who work really early hours or have to go in and out of the city for emergencies and they do take their cars into the city and they can't take public transit at odd hours to get there and they've struggled with this and so I think what we need to see is we're desperately trying to get people onto public transportation, if you truly, if that is truly your goal, then you need a plan to get money into New Jersey Transit.

I mean, I've been very, you know, outspoken on this because my husband takes New Jersey Transit every day and doesn't come home most days of the week on time because of it, can't come home, as I've said, to coach our kids' soccer team.

Some of his friends have said that's lucky for our kids, but nevertheless, and, you know, can't make dinner, can't, you know, again and again, is not there when I need him for carpools or something, so this is a quality of life issue and we are not investing in public transit in the way we need to and when we don't do that, we see people moving away from it.

And so if we really want a clean environment, we need to make sure not only train transit, we need to make sure we have a lot of commercial busing that has gone out of business recently and those bus lines have not been filled with New Jersey transit trains.

We have areas of our state which have been developed and we're not seeing New Jersey Transit move in there in a way that is gonna be helpful.

- South Jersey in particular.

- So South Jersey in particular.

So we really need to be thoughtful about this and we have a tough budgetary crisis, so that's why we're so upset about congestion pricing is we're desperately trying to find ways to fund this and get people off the roads here.

We're getting a punch in the face from New York so they can fund their own transportation needs.

And finally, I think when I say innovative ways, we have to look around world.

How do transit systems get funded well elsewhere?

It's through transit-oriented development.

It's through making sure you're doing advertising on your transit and utilizing some of the spaces that transit owns in a way to bring in revenue.

- Yeah, we talk, I just wanted say we've done this though.

We talk about the burdens that so many New Jerseyans are facing, right?

Making sure New Jersey is affordable.

And I think this is a space where we can understand that multiple things can be true, right?

When do you absolutely have those firefighters who are trying to get to the station, who, because of those hours that they work, are going in and having to pay this fee, right?

You have those nurses and others who are trying to get into those hospitals to make sure people are safe and they're paying these fees.

That's a burden in already a state where it's hard to afford, hard to get by, and the biggest thing, the biggest challenges folks are having is being able to afford it, right?

So we can look at things and say, hey, the Wall Street guys who probably don't even know what they're paying right now and have never seen a bill, you know, that they have any impact on them, yeah, we should make sure that they're paying the dollars that they should.

We should be making sure they're not utilizing this and just getting away with it, but we've gotta be mindful that there are plenty of working folks who are getting hit with this as well.

- There is a problem with New Jersey Transit.

There's a problem with transit period.

There needs to be Capitol money put in it so we can begin to advance it.

If there was better transportation, more transportation, more access to it, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

If people were taking public transportation the way they do in Europe, this wouldn't be a discussion.

And we allowed a wealthy to get away while transit is not funded, but the congestion is a problem.

I would be hypocritical to not support any form of anything that kind of dissolves the congestion because of the air quality 'cause we're getting beat up in Newark about it so we have to be on the side of what is gonna make sure the air is cleaner and safer, and so, yeah, we need to figure out how to do that without hurting working people at the same time.

And I agree, the governor should have come to the table to figure this out and they didn't, and that's the problem.

- You think there should have been a negotiation.

Very quickly, please.

- I just wanna say that what you're hearing here is where is the environmental priorities versus affordability?

And I think that the moment now is really crucial that we speak to the environment.

There's nobody that has a more detailed plan on funding New Jersey Transit than I do, and we've dealt with bike shares and the ferry program, and the largest micro transit system in the country we built in Jersey City, so I have a lot of familiarity with this, but to say that we don't have a regional transportation system and a regional economy is just foolish.

New Jersey people take the train into the Port Authority or the bus into Penn Station of the Port Authority and then they do use MTA infrastructure there.

And you know what?

It's working because commuter times are down, quality life is up, and that is an important part of this conversation here, so I think it's where we prioritize it and I gotta push back on the others that say, "Well, maybe not now.

We gotta wait, we just gotta talk in platitudes about funding."

That's not what the moment calls for right now.

- [Sen. Bramnick] Joanne, I'd like to respond to that.

- Yeah, go ahead.

- See that's why you need balance in Trenton.

Mayor Phillips talking about, "Well, let's not really look at affordability."

- No, I think affordability is important.

- Well, you talked about prioritizing.

- I think the environment is important.

- You need those funds from the people who live here to support the clean environment, and if you continue to forget about or put affordability as the second or third issue, you're gonna have a problem with people staying here.

- Affordability is important.

Jon, Senator, affordability is important.

I don't minimize it.

We put a detailed plan out there on how to fund New Jersey Transit, detailed.

- Okay.

- Really based on experience.

- I'm gonna jump in here, I'm gonna jump in here because I wanna ask you, Senator Bramnick, the current administration right now is moving towards 100% clean energy by 2035.

You're smiling already.

As governor, would you continue with these goals, or would you change them?

What would be your energy plans?

- As the Republican governor, I actually bring in the people who have some ideas here and I do a balanced approach.

There's policy and politics and I think sometimes what you have on the democratic side is the politics tends to have a little bit more weight than the policy.

- [Joanna] What would your policy look like?

- My policy would be if we can find solar, if we can find wind, if we can find energy sources that really support industry and really support the people who wanna do business here, I wanna move in that direction, but I'm not setting any goals because I, look, I wanna hear from the experts as to can we really do these things and can we continue to grow the environment?

So balancing these two things is what New Jersey wants.

- Well, it's hard to know if we can do things when we know the federal government has, they've stopped all leasing for offshore wind, as one example.

- Well, actually, New Jersey couldn't do it.

The Democrats gave a billion dollars to Orsted, they couldn't do.

Was it Shell just pulled out.

I'm not blaming the federal government.

This has been a disaster.

PSC&G pulled out of that at the beginning saying it just doesn't work, so I'm not blaming the federal government.

New Jersey couldn't do it.

- You can't depend on the electric companies to say if it's gonna work or not because they're losing money.

- But all the companies... (all chattering) - How do you make it work at a time when we know this- - 2035 was the right goal.

These companies were already getting their licenses from the federal government.

We have one, Atlantic Shores has it already, right, that everybody is bailing out because of the environment, because of the environment that Trump, and Jeff Van Drew, by the way, collectively created here in this state, right?

Atlantic Shores could have provided 700,000 homes with electricity alone.

And if we had three, four more of those, then places like Hunterdon County wouldn't have a brownout, right?

This is important.

It's not just about clean energy, which is important, it's also sustainability, about our ability to, we can't depend on one form or one source of energy, drive prices up and our grid isn't strong enough to deal with all of the weight that it's taking now.

- Congresswoman, you talked about the grid earlier.

You also wrote recently in an op-ed that offshore wind is the next frontier of New Jersey innovation, but as the Senator mentioned, it has been hard to get off the ground here in New Jersey with or without the federal government.

- You know, I think what we see here is a real failure of permitting and regulation in our state.

Part of why I say that is because Virginia entered into wind and they have been able to build it out to the point where they are moving forward on this and the federal government is not able to pull back from it because they are so far along.

We, because of many regulatory and permitting problems, took way too long.

That cost us money.

It made some of the finances really difficult for our state, and now with Trump pulling out the permitting, almost impossible in the near term, but we need an all-of-the-above approach.

We need to move forward on all different types of clean energy right now.

When the clean energy plan was put forward, I don't think anybody really realized what the data centers were gonna bring, what the weight on the grid was gonna bring, so we have seen a real need to update our grid.

We see a need to move into other energy sources.

I think community solar.

I mean, we look across the nation.

Texas is the number one solar state.

They're not pushing clean energy.

They're doing it because their permitting is right.

People wanna move into it.

It's a cheaper source of power and we can drive costs down.

So we really have to get more innovative in this state as we move forward.

- Sean, I wanna ask you, do you believe that we need an all-of-the-above energy, and is nuclear a part of that plan for you in your mind?

- I think we do need an all-of-the-above, right?

When we talk about it and you know who's to blame, but yeah, I do have some blame for the federal government.

I think that the climate that's being created right now is why we're seeing the major pushback against wind and people are worried about retribution, right?

You know that even if you were gonna put some dollars there, you might face challenges in another part of your business, but we've gotta look at everything, right?

So when we're maybe pulling away in that space, or we're delayed in that space or where we wanna be over the next few years, we can continue to invest in solar and these other innovative technologies to talk about storage with our battery capabilities.

There are options to keep us moving forward because we do have to meet that goal, right?

This is not, again, about just, this is some goal and a number that we have there.

This has an impact.

This is impacting folks each and every day.

- We have direct experience with this.

We spent $20 million in the last two years in Jersey City to retrofit all of our municipal buildings with solar and electrification.

So we're at the forefront of this conversation more than just in words, in actual action.

I think the goals for 2035 and keeping those are very important.

I don't think we should be moving them.

I think in a administration that is less friendly towards climate change and the environment, there's a lot of things that we can be doing in New Jersey to continue to move forward.

I think in all-hands-on-deck approach, everything on deck should be considered with regards to wind, solar, energy, and clearly I agree with Mayor Baraka that our grid cannot support the amount of need that we have with growth right now so we need to be thinking about this sort of stuff.

We can be thinking about wind energy over the next four years and preparing for a friendlier administration when they do get in there because it does take a lot of time, like the Congresswoman said, and we should be doing that now because we could control that output.

On the same time, we should be investing in solar, in mass transit, in things that help the climate now, despite what we have in Washington.

- Would you pass a moratorium on any new fossil fuel projects?

- No, absolutely not.

This is the problem with extremism where you go like this, "No more fossil fuels."

Really?

You know, if you're playing to, let's say, a strong leftist party or parties, that's what you do.

But if you're talking to real people about real solutions, it's just not, and I like Phil Murphy, I just think that's ridiculous.

- Do you believe we should be moving towards clean renewable energy?

- Of course, the question is, you gotta do it with like, with some common sense.

You don't just say we're gonna do it and then all of a sudden it doesn't happen.

- You need goals, you can't do it.

- You need goals.

You can't say that and say, I wouldn't put a goal, right?

So if you're opposed to the 2035 goal and a moratorium, then you're not serious about going in that direction.

We need a goal, so the goal- - We can go in a direction and not set a date.

- Right, meandering down the street.

We need to get a goal, so I wouldn't automatically say that there should be a moratorium that you should stop everything right now today.

I think it's a mistake to do that.

- That's gonna do it for us today.

Our thanks to the candidates for a robust conversation and exchange of ideas, and to Rutgers for hosting us and our partner, the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.

If you'd like to see the entire conversation that includes more important topics that affect you, you can find it on our NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

I'm Joanna Gagis.

For all of us here at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

Have a great night and we'll see you back here tomorrow.

- [Announcer] Funding for tonight's "NJ Decides 2025 Gubernatorial Conversation" is provided by the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, dedicated to protecting our environment, empowering communities, and strengthening democracy.

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