>> major funding for Reporters Roundtable with David Cruz is provided by RWJ Barnabas health, let's be healthy together.

Rowan University, educating New Jersey leaders, partnering with New Jersey businesses, transforming New Jersey's future.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey business magazine, the magazine of the New Jersey business and industry Association, reporting to executive and legislative leaders in all 21 counties of the Garden State since 1954.

And by Politico's New Jersey playbook, a topical newsletter on Garden State politics, online at Politico.com.

♪ David: when it comes to crazy news weeks, New Jersey never lets you down.

Hi everybody.

It's Reporters Roundtable, I'm David Cruz.

Our panel today includes Colleen O'Day, the senior writer and products editor here at NJ Spotlight News.

P Kenneth Burns is the New Jersey reporter for WHIY.

And John Sullivan is the reporter with NJ advance media.

The panel will have a lot to say about the Menendez news but let's begin by talking about the party line and its potential demise.

Julia sass Rubin is the associate Dean of the Blaustein school at Rutgers University.

Her research is go to stuff nowadays and put her in the center of the court hearing this week in the Andy Kim suit where she served as an excerpt -- expert witness for the plaintiffs.

Professor, good to see you again.

>> great to see you.

Thank you.

David: you've reached almost celebrity status among government and politics nerds.

Your research has been referenced regularly since you first published version one in 2020 and updated it in 2023.

Let's start there.

What were you trying to find out in this research?

what did you find out?

>> thank you so much.

I don't know about celebrity status but that's very kind of you.

I was trying to quantify the impact of the county line primary ballot and to see if any other states had a ballot like this.

So that's where my research began.

In 2020, I collected data from all 50 states to see whether our ballot was replicated elsewhere.

I found that it was not.

Our ballot was unique.

I wanted to understand what the impact of this unique structure was on election outcomes.

I looked at the 2020 primary which was unusual because everybody was voting on paper and there was a greater diversity of ballot designs.

More recently, I extended that analysis back historically for 20 years, looking at legislative races, looking at house races, looking at Senate races and even the governorship to see what the impact of the line was.

Consistently, no matter which level of government I looked at, the impact of the line was substantial.

And positive for the person on the county line.

Being on the county line was just very powerful in ensuring that someone got elected.

David: so, why did this research come about?

did you see the impact of a particular race that spurred you to do this?

was it just an accumulation?

>> when you live in New Jersey, and you study New Jersey politics and policy, it's difficult to avoid the fact that we have an interesting system with very strong, local organizations.

I would say political machines.

This is some of the things I've been looking at.

We are one of the last strong political machine states.

I'm thinking 100 plus years ago.

So I was very curious to understand what drove that.

I quickly learned that the county line was an important factor in enabling county level machines to control who won elections.

If you control who wins elections, you can control the politics of the state more broadly.

So it doesn't take very long as a political observer to understand that.

I couldn't find any quantification of the impact.

So there was a lot of -- of talk of well, it's not that big of a deal.

I'm an academic so I wanted to try to understand that in a research-based way and that's what drove the original research.

Steve: -- David: so how old is the line system?

what was its original purpose?

>> the best person to speak to that is one of the attorneys on the plaintiff side in the Andy Kim lawsuit.

Before that, he wrote a really good piece published in the records lot review in 2020 that looks at the legal history of the line.

I know that there are ballots going back at least into the 40's that I've seen that half the county line.

I don't know exactly when the first ballot appeared with the county line on it.

What Brett found was that there were reforms roughly 100 years ago that were implemented to try to take the power away from political machines which were very powerful in the state.

Which made these decisions -- a lot of those reforms were pushed forward by then Governor Woodrow Wilson.

Over the subsequent 50 years, the reforms were watered down through legislative action and court decisions including a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 which struck down what was known as the open primary law.

Sub sub -- so subsequent to that, there have been additional court decisions.

It has continually weakens the ability to keep the party machines from essentially controlling the election process.

I can't tell you exactly when the first line appeared.

David: I did want to get this question in from John Sullivan.

He had an interesting question.

>> There's a piece in insider New Jersey this week that was a lot of party insiders speaking candidly on background stuff.

Their perspective was -- you mentioned Tammany Hall.

Machines are efficient.

They do a good job of vetting candidates, providing services, stuff like that.

I'm sure there's a little graph that goes around.

These are still effective machines.

I wonder what your take is on that defense of the line.

>> in other words, they were better off having a small group of insiders decide who is going to represent us in Congress, be our governor, be our legislator.

Yeah.

Efficient is an interesting term.

I'm a big believer in democracy.

I would like to live in a small D democracy.

I don't think having a small group of insiders making those decisions is efficient for the people at large.

I think it's very efficient for that small group of insiders.

Efficient in the sense of beneficial.

So 49 other states seem to do this whole democracy process well.

Some of them better than others.

But they are able to put forward candidates and let the voters decide for themselves.

I suspect that if you act the people of New Jersey, they would like to have that kind of democracy where they decide who is going to represent them rather than very efficient five or six people across the state who makes those decisions for them.

David: Ben efficient efficiency.

Good to see you again.

Thanks for coming on.

>> thank you so much.

Thanks.

David: all right, panel.

Welcome.

Good to see you all again.

Crazy two weeks.

Oprah, Kim lawsuit, endorsements, candidates blocked from conventions.

Unprecedented, no?

>> yeah.

It really is.

There have been challenges to the line in the past.

If I can speak for myself, I thought these people have a point but it's not going to go anywhere.

Boy, it seems this year with the backlash against the line, the lawsuit, certainly the image of those five men blocking one smaller woman from being able to get through the doors is the icing on the cake to show just how undemocratic this process really is.

David: even people who had no idea about the line system were talking about the system, which is as Jersey yesterday gets.

Does it feel to you like it's all going to come tumbling down?

>> a little bit.

I've been comparing it to PVA cards in New Jersey.

Everybody is familiar with the phenomenon.

And when you talk to people outside of New Jersey they are like, that's a thing.

You are getting similar reactions about the line.

People are starting to realize, maybe the way that New Jersey does this isn't extraordinary.

Extraordinary just because other states have gotten their act together.

David: lawmakers look to-looked like they were shaken by how it eroded over the past two weeks.

Can we trust them to self medicate and fix it themselves?

>> I don't know if we can trust them to self medicate or not.

It's rather telling that you have a united front from both sides of the aisle.

We hear you.

We are going to fix it.

We don't know when, we don't know how.

By the way, the primary is into her three months or something like that -- is in two or three months or something like that.

David: pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Bob Menendez.

He announced that we -- he won't run for reelection as a Democrat this June but could if he's found not guilty run as an independent Democrat in the fall.

What is an independent Democrat?

>> that's funny.

David: let's hear from the Senator yesterday and then we will come back.

>> I will not file for the Democratic primary this June.

I'm hopeful that my exoneration will take place this summer and allow me to pursue my candidacy as an independent Democrat in the general election.

This would allow me the time to not only remind New Jerseyans of how I succeeded in being your champion, but how we will secure our financial futures, meet the challenges of raising a family, owning a home, provide for a college education, and secure a more peaceful world for all of us to live in.

I know many of you are hurt and disappointed in me with the accusations I'm facing.

Believe me, I am disappointed at the false accusations as well.

All I can ask of you is to withhold judgment until justice takes place.

David: not much of a surprise that he's not running in the primary.

But boy, could he make a mess of things for Democrats if he ran in the fall, no?

>> there's been no discussion from his people at all.

We haven't been seeing any press releases from his campaign.

His fundraising was really lackluster, to put it generously.

So it's not a surprise that he's not running in the primary.

Not to mention that he was pulling at 8% in the last bowl.

Can he make a mess in November?

he can but I do want to point out that when he ran in 2018, after these allegations that he was exonerated from the last time, his margin over Bobby again -- Bobby again was 11%.

It is still certainly possible that a Democrat could win in a squeaker.

Menendez does not necessarily have to be a spoiler.

David: you do some court adjacent reporting.

Menendez has a trial that starts in May.

18 count indictment.

Seems unlikely that that is going to be resolved by the time it's the filing deadline for November, no?

>> the wheels of justice move very slowly.

A little bit at the whims of judges.

It does seem in this particular case that they are sticking to a fairly aggressive schedule.

We may still see a trial by May.

But with any trial like this, the size and scope of it, you are dealing with mountains of evidence.

There's always the possibility that something comes up and derails things by weeks or months.

So it's very easy to see a situation where this continues through November.

But it's not outside the realm of possibility that this all wrapped up in May -- wraps up in May and he decides he is going to throw his hat in.

David: we leave it to you to write the lead for the Menendez political career obituary.

Go.

>> Bobby gold bars is done.

[LAUGHTER] David: very nicely sustained.

>> among that, evidence of a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible.

$60,000.

That sounds pedestrian and is on the low side.

David: let's move on to the OPRA reform bill.

Lawmakers are giving new meaning to the word reform.

The bill was pulled for tweaking , can lawmakers really tweak the tweaks that need to be tweaked in this?

>> let's put on the table all of the conflict of interests that are in play.

This is the law that I used to do my job.

I file hundreds of OPRA requests.

I rely on the material that I get to do it.

Lawmakers have a conflict of interest because they are the ones now deciding how the government -- how transparent the government should be.

The thing that I always point out to people, the current law doesn't even allow you to OPRA legislators.

So I take a dim view of the idea that tweaks behind closed doors is going to result in any kind of substantive changes other than what we saw before.

I think that lawmakers were frankly surprised that the public cared about this issue and that they got the pushback that they did.

So they are licking their wounds a little bit and figuring out what the next step is.

David: it would be cool to OPRA the backroom deliberations on this.

Wait a minute, lawmakers are not subject to OPRA.

Are they just really spooked right now?

>> I to have a conflict even though New Jersey Society of professional journalists do use OPRA.

It is clear that they had a reaction from everybody.

And it was quite clear that they weren't going to be able to rush this through as they thought they would, that nobody would notice.

Everybody noticed across New Jersey.

They took time out of their busy Monday schedules to attend to hearings for several hours to say, don't do this.

David: a process question here.

Our legislators leaders saying that they can fix this bill in time to vote on it in a special session in April?

is that is what has happening -- is happening?

>> conflict of interest right here.

David: join the club.

[LAUGHTER] >> we've all got it.

It certainly seems concerning to someone who also relies on this and feels very strongly that there needs to be transparency in government and as many normal, regular people who came out said, these are my documents.

My taxes fund government.

So the documents that you create are my documents and I should have a right to see them.

My fear is that without hearing, and it's been weeks since this thing was pulled, without hearing that there are talks going on, that anyone has reached out -- not just to an GPA or the press situations, to also -- all those other organizations that came out and all those individuals who came out.

April 15 could come around.

The Senate could come back in session and senators can say, it's been more than a month, we've taken the time to look at this and here is essentially the same bill.

David: Colleen mentioned this before.

Patricia men Dena being barred from the Camden County convention last week.

Doesn't that just say it all right there?

>> yeah.

Really iconic image of people literally just blocking the entrance of a candidate who is trying to be brought in by a committee member.

I think what we are seeing a little bit here is the Democratic establishment in New Jersey being caught on its heels over this race.

They failed to realize the significance of the accusations against Menendez and how he became emblematic in a lot of minds of the problems with the Democratic Party.

All these processes that nobody scrutinized before are suddenly being defended in real-time.

We thought this was all normal.

It's quite a spectacle to watch.

David: I mentioned the other day, that was like straight out of central casting.

>> Oh my goodness.

I've seen somewhere before but that is the situation in a nutshell.

By the way, woman of color political candidate.

It's a bad look all around at this point.

David: time for our only in Jersey moments, headlines and notes that are quintessentially Jersey.

>> while we are talking about OPRA, I'm looking at my phone right now because I filed and OPRA request about OPRA requests.

This was an educational exercise .

There's a lot of talk about emails, getting access to government emails.

I filed a records request for Governor Phil Murphy's emails sent and received this year so far that contained the words OPRA or open Publix record act.

Just trying to see, demonstrate -- as reporters, we know the real business doesn't get passed out -- hashed out in email.

So I just wanted to do the exercise and show what happened.

As expected, I got a very polite response back from the governor's office that told me that they did a search of records and the only response they found were news clips.

So they are reading our stories but they are not discussing them, at least not in email.

David: Colleen, have you got one for us?

>> let's keep up with a transparency and the great job Democrats are doing, acting transparently.

Monday morning, there was a hearing at 9:00 a.m. which is early for legislative hearings.

So they stopped the hearing.

This is Senator Beach.

Right before they got to two very controversial bills about defining antisemitism in New Jersey.

It all goes back to what's happening over in Israel and Gaza.

Senator Beach was alone because his members had left to go to their caucuses.

He said, sorry that they can't make it but I'm going to pause the meeting and come back.

There was an outcry because a lot of people had come out to testify on this.

Fast forward a few hours, the Senate is done.

Senator Beach comes back and says very quickly, we are going to hold those bills and meeting adjourned.

Not only did people come down to try to testify and were not able to, they may have had to have stayed hours and then still couldn't testify.

David: bring it home for us.

>> so only in Jersey can you make money at New York's expense when they make a detrimental decision.

Dr. Burns reminds me of this during football season by saying, New York didn't want the Giants.

New York has this law that's been on the books limiting the number of temporary rentals or Airbnb's.

It has to be more than 30 days.

Anything less than that, the owner has to be on the premises.

This has driven the numbers up in New Jersey.

People wanting to come to New York but want to stay in an Airbnb.

They tracked this short-term rental stuff.

Short-term rentals increased by 77% in Jersey City.

45% in we hearken.

32% in Hoboken over last year because New York wanted to solve its housing crisis at the expense of short-term rentals.

David: I'm going to start fixing my basement up.

[LAUGHTER] Mine comes from Trenton where there's been a great human cry over the closing of the city's only Starbucks.

Everyone from the mayor to members of Congress and even Senator Cory Booker have made calls to Starbucks corporate asking them to keep the shop open.

Booker is familiar with this because there was a similar clutching of the pearls when the only Starbucks in Newark closed some years ago.

I got news for you.

If the Newark example is any indication, your Starbucks is as good as gone.

You know what?

that's OK.

If the city, state, and federal officials really want to put their heads together, they should find a local, community-based entrepreneur and shower them with incentives to make it possible for them to give it a go there.

Any town that hitches its economic future to a corporate mud slinger like Starbucks is chasing fools gold.

Starbucks won't care about Trenton as much as a local entrepreneur will.

Officials would do better by Trenton if they told Starbucks to take a walk.

Tell me to -- 102 South Lawrence wouldn't be a great spot for dispensary and consumption lounge.

The social impact we are supposed to have seen from legalizing cannabis, this is the place.

Trenton makes the world takes.

That's roundtable for this week.

Good to see you all.

Thank you.

Thanks to Julia sass Rubin.

You can follow the show on X. Scan the QR code on your screen.

We are off for Easter next week.

For all the crew here in downtown Newark, thanks for watching.

See you next week.

>> major funding for Reporters Roundtable with David Cruz is provided by RWJ Barnabas health, let's be healthy together.

Rowan University, educating New Jersey leaders, partnering with New Jersey businesses, transforming New Jersey's future.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey business magazine, the magazine of the New Jersey business and industry Association, reporting to executive and legislative leaders in all 21 counties of the Garden State since 1954.

And by Politico's New Jersey playbook, a topical newsletter on Garden State politics, online at Politico.com.

♪