(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone, Steve Adubato.

Welcome to another edition of a compelling important series called New Jersey's Next Governor.

Yeah, 2025.

Big decision to make.

We're now joined by United States Congresswoman, Mikie Sherrill, a Democratic candidate for Governor.

Congresswoman, thank you for joining us.

- Thanks so much for having me.

Great to be back.

- Do this for us, one minute or less on your personal bio that particularly matters if you were New Jersey's next governor, because a lot of it does have to do with that.

- Sure, I went to the Naval Academy, graduated, served in the Navy for almost 10 years as a helicopter pilot and a Russian policy officer, developing a lot of leadership skills as I led men and women from across the country in missions across the world.

And then when I got out, I went back to law school, I became a federal prosecutor.

I'm raising my four kids in New Jersey.

And now, after six years in Congress, after working really incredibly hard on those issues that matter most to New Jerseyans, whether it's flooding or auto thefts, or mental health of our children, I really would love to run for governor to bring a fresh perspective down to Trenton, to work hard on affordability and opportunity, while at the same time protecting rights and freedoms here in the garden state.

- Thank you, Congresswoman.

Do this for us.

Affordability, easy to talk about, hard to impact in a positive way.

How the heck, if you were governor, would you make New Jersey more affordable, particularly for those who are struggling financially, which is most of the state?

- Well, let's face it, we can't make New Jersey more affordable if we don't make housing more affordable.

And it's impacting people at every level.

So whether it's that first starter home you want to move into, or all of the people that can't do that, that are going into the rental market and driving prices up there, and we've gotta build houses, we just don't have the inventory we need.

I've seen statistics that we are 150,000 to over 200,000 housing units short of where we need to be in this state.

And I hear it all the time.

You know, I hear people who are in a two-bedroom apartment in Madison, New Jersey to be in a good school system with their two kids.

And we're losing out to other states who provide a lot more affordability.

New Jersey's been lucky, unlike a lot of other blue states, we haven't seen that mass exodus.

We've actually grown in population, but we are not gonna continue to be able to do that to fuel this innovative workforce if we don't address the cost of living here.

- Hey, you talk about New Jersey being a blue state, the color may be changing according to some, we'll see.

- Not if I can help.

- What did you say?

- I said not if I can help it.

- Not if you can, but let's put this out there.

This is not a show on political prognostication or polling or anything like that.

I told you before we started, it's policy-centric, but Donald Trump loses the state by only a few percentage points in a so-called blue state.

And let's just say this, while we are doing this a couple days before President Trump is inaugurated, becomes president officially, again, from a policy point of view, a couple of areas, if you were governor and there was an effort to engage in mass deportation of those who are here illegally, what would your responsibility be as governor in New Jersey to either implement what the federal government does in the Trump administration or something other than that?

- Well, look, I think we'd have to see exactly what it is that the administration tries to implement and how they want that to operate.

Because here's the thing, we desperately need comprehensive immigration reform.

We have a broken immigration system that's not working for anyone.

The mass deportations alone would be, would make it almost impossible in many cases to run our economy.

I know what we hear from, say, rural farm workers about the food supply in the event that that would happen, just as one example.

So what we need to do is make sure that we have secure borders, that we have a pathway to citizenship for people who are here, that we have better processing so that when people do want to come here legally, they can be processed through the system quickly.

And none of this is happening.

And this has been on the table for years.

That is what we have to do because let's face it, without comprehensive immigration reform, we continue to have a huge drain on our wages as we see unscrupulous employers go with, you know, for example, non-union employees so they can drive down workforce wages.

In fact, I had a union member I was talking to who was recently down in South Carolina with a bunch of Trump people, some big developers in South Carolina, and he said, well, what are you gonna do?

Because you guys are all employing non-union.

And the guy's like, yeah, I employ a lot of undocumented people and you know, we keep their wages down really low.

And he said, well, what are you gonna do?

'cause Trump said he's gonna deport them.

And he said, oh, we're not gonna let him do that.

You know, that's not how we run our economy.

Here in New Jersey, we wanna make sure that we have a pathway for people to become documented so that when you are going forward, you have the ability to ensure that wages, fair wages are being met, that workforce conditions are being met.

And if you have people here who are undocumented, they're not gonna go to the police.

They're not gonna go to the police if they have insecure conditions, they're not even gonna go to the police if they see some, you know, something going on in their neighborhood.

We need to run our economy better, and that starts with comprehensive immigration reform.

- State funding of public schools.

The formula that has been in place for a while, it's been tweaked here and there, but there are many communities that are arguing that the current formula gives them the shaft, that the state is not providing those dollars to their communities, which forces them to raise property taxes to make up for the difference.

What if, as governor, what if anything, would you do to try to change the state funding formula in public schools?

- You know, we need to modernize it.

We have a formula that was set up in 2008, and so we need a formula now that's modernized, that's really addressing the needs of our schools in the best possible ways.

And we also need to give some understanding to schools what's coming.

We have these funding formulas that change, and it really catches some of our towns in a vice really, as they've tried to employ more teachers and then they see rollbacks in funding.

So we really have to address this, make sure towns are aware of what is coming, understand the formula better year over year, and then also modernize that formula across the state.

- I've asked you many times in previous interviews, by the way, go back and check at SteveAdubato.org, website up, many interviews with the congresswoman.

I asked her about this from a national perspective because she's a federal official, but if you were governor, you know, I've told you that we're involved in this public awareness initiative around childcare, affordable, accessible, quality childcare, first 1,000 days, the graphic will come up.

If as governor, which is different than being a member of Congress.

Your priorities as it relates to childcare are?

- Oh my gosh, Steve, they're largely my priorities at the federal level.

As you know, I have legislation with Elizabeth Warren that no one should pay more than 7% of their income on childcare.

And this comes from a really personal place for me because I struggled very much with childcare with my four kids as they were young and before they went into kindergarten.

And it was really, really difficult.

There were times when I was sort of on the verge of quitting my job to handle this and if I had done that, I don't think I'd be in congress today.

So childcare is really central to many parents' lives and what their future economic gains are gonna be.

And we know that not finding quality and affordable childcare for families can be like a 20% hit on someone's lifetime earnings.

So it's really crucial to families.

Here in the garden state, we need to make sure as a, I'm very much for universal pre-K, which is great, but as we know that upends the infant-based model that we have in the state and how we pay for infants, which is a really, really expensive time to provide childcare.

In fact, in about the states in our nation, the cost of center-based infant care is more than the cost of in-state college tuition.

So we really have to make sure that as we're creating this universal pre-K type system in our state, which is really great for kids, really helps with learning and can keep our state at the cutting edge.

We also have to figure out how we are going to pay childcare workers.

I think on the job training is one of the ways in which we need to get this done.

Because as we know now, they have so many certifications and they're not making enough in wages and many times they have to take time off to get those certifications.

So on-the-job training is key.

And then we also need to make sure we are pushing in on those childcare worker wages while at the same time ensuring that we don't have these infant care deserts, because quite frankly, that sometimes is the hardest time when you're told you have to get back to work and you don't know where you're going to send your child.

Your local childcare center doesn't take children until they're two years old or they do take young children, but the waiting list is two years long.

You're really caught in a bad situation.

And that's when we see so many parents, especially women dropping out of the workforce.

- Do this for us.

There is gonna be a new president as we do this program a couple days, as I said, President Trump.

What's your greatest concern about a President Trump vis-a-vis his policies and their impact on New Jersey, particularly if you were governor?

Number one concern?

- You know, it's how we run our economy because for people to continue to move into our state, for people to continue to get the great jobs and to fuel our economy, for people to continue to build in the state.

If we're gonna build out affordable homes for people to live in, for your starter home or that home you wanna move into after you sell the home you raised your family in, in so many ways, the way we wanna move our economy forward, the way we wanna invest in our future, like the Gateway Tunnel Project, which requires annual appropriations, how we wanna make sure we continue to run that great school system while not being double taxed by a cap on the state and local tax deduction.

These are all- - Hold on one second.

The state and local tax deduction otherwise known as SALT, which was taken away in the previous Trump administration.

Do you believe President Trump is now in a position to reinstate the state and local tax deduction?

Do you believe he'll do that?

- We are fighting it tooth and nail.

I am on the SALT Caucus.

It's a bipartisan group.

So we were hearing from our colleagues who were just in Mar-a-Lago with Trump, I believe he tried to sell a, okay, I'll double it to 20,000.

They said that is not gonna cut it.

So we are working very hard as the SALT Caucus to figure out how to make sure that we get of this double taxation for people in New Jersey.

- Congresswoman Mikie Sherril, a Democrat running for governor of the great state of New Jersey, part of our series, Mew Jersey's Next Governor, a huge decision to make in 2025.

Thank you, Congresswoman.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you so much.

Have a great one.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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