[music]
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As some of you know, our Nancy Solomon host in Ask Governor Murphy call in once a month. Now, she is coming on the show the morning after to recap and talk about some Jersey issues and play some clips of the governor. Some of the context right now, of course, as some of you know, that every single seat in the New Jersey legislature was up on the ballot on Tuesday. While the Democrats were able to hold onto both houses, there were culture war issues at play, mainly brewing battles over trans rights in schools and clean energy.
In the end, Democrats did maintain their 25 to 15 lead in the state senate and actually increased their majority in the assembly when there was speculation that there would be erosion. Nancy joins us now with some clips of the governor, and we'll talk about all these issues. Hey, Nancy, welcome back to the show.
Nancy Solomon: Thanks, Brian. Good morning.
Brian: Yesterday, you spoke with Governor Murphy. He chalked up the Democratic wins to a couple of what he called culture war issues that the Republicans were trying to rope Democrats into. That's his framing. Let's start with a clip on parental control in schools.
Governor Murphy: Claiming that we didn't care about parent's input in public education, when in fact, how do you get to be the number one public education system in America and not care about parents? I think people saw through that.
Brian: Nancy, remind us of what this issue was, and how the election results seem to come down on it?
Nancy Solomon: Right. Republicans call this and parents who are part of this movement, a fairly conservative movement, call this parental rights or parental control. What they're upset about, it's primarily about transgender students and whether or not schools are supposed to alert a parent if they detect or a student comes forward to say that they're changing their gender identity or moving maybe to something in the middle, nonbinary, whatever it is. Parents say they're upset about the protection rights that mean that schools are supposed to protect students and not out them to their parents. Basically, the state's argument with their guidance on this is that trans kids are a protected class.
All LGBT students, all the LGBT people in the state are a protected class, and anything that would discriminate against them is wrong. This fight has spun out from that. Republicans pretty much across the board, lots and lots of Republican candidates had this as one of their primary issues that they were talking about during the election. Now, we can see that that issue did not work for them.
Brian: Yes. There was a Rutgers Eagleton Institute poll that seemed to show that it's just not where the voters are to force teachers to out students regarding their gender identity to the parents. I think there's been a misunderstanding or some confusion about what it is exactly that the current policy does require or allow. Clear this up for me. Is it that teachers may never contact parents about their student's changing gender identity, or is it simply that teachers are not required to notify the parents?
Nancy Solomon: [chuckles] I'm not sure I'd fully understand it either, Brian, I'm afraid to say. I believe it's that they are not required to contact parents. That's the higher level.
Brian: That's my understanding because we've had callers on this show who are teachers who say, "Under some circumstances, if I'm concerned about the student's mental health, for example, I might make a judgment to involve the parents. If I make the judgment that it's in the student's interest to protect their privacy from their parents, then I want that judgment to be available to me." I think there's been confusion about what teachers were prohibited from doing versus what they were allowed to do. All right. Let's move on to another issue. Actually, one more thing on that, if you know, and did you address it with the governor last night because it wasn't just seats in the legislature?
It was all these school boards where the so-called Parental Rights Movement were trying to gain power to flip that policy. Do we have results? These have been very slow to come into my eye.
Nancy Solomon: Yes, they are slow to come in. I know that because I was caught up doing other things. Yesterday, in the newsroom, we had a general assignment reporter looking at the New Jersey school board races. My understanding is that the groups that are involved on both sides of this issue are still trying to tally the-- you got to go town by town by town or school district by school district, really to look at all of the results. What I was hearing is that from the Districts for Democracy side, they're the pro-public education, pro teachers protecting the rights of LGBT students and against book banning, which is a whole other part of this issue.
They say that they thought it was a good night, but they were still tallying the results.
Brian: Another issue in New Jersey, and as we've been discussing in other swing states nationally was reproductive freedom. Governor Murphy with you last night keyed in on that a few times. Let's take a listen to one 40 second clip.
Governor Murphy: You saw that I think resonates through all races. It wasn't just, "Hey, take my word for it." The Republican leadership, as you no doubt, saw a couple of weeks ago, started saying it themselves that if they could get control in Trenton, they would defund Planned Parenthood. They'd restrict abortion rights. It gets pretty powerful when in fact they're not just accusing me of saying that they would do that but in fact, when they go on record and say it themselves. By the way, I don't think that this was unique to New Jersey. You saw the implications in Virginia. You saw the referendum in Ohio.
Andy Beshear aggressively leaning into this in Kentucky, four very different states where it resonated.
Brian: Yes, Nancy. Four very different states because while the national media was certainly focused on the implications for abortion rights in Virginia in this election, in Ohio with the explicit referendum on the ballot, with how it was an issue in the Kentucky Governor's race. Everybody was talking about that. Wait, reproductive rights were an issue in New Jersey legislative races where reproductive rights are fairly protected?
Nancy Solomon: Yes, because many Republicans and Republican candidates voiced antiabortion sentiment during the election. I think that was Governor Murphy's point that they went out and talked about this, and it is not an issue that is a winning issue for them. They alerted people who were pro-choice in the state that in a very low turnout election, they better go vote because obviously, we have Governor Murphy for two more years. He would veto anything that a Republican-led legislature, if they had gotten elected, would have done on restricting reproductive rights. Then, 2025 new governor election, takes office '26, all bets are off.
Right now, the state of the Republican Party, if you've got a Republican-led legislature, so I think it clearly was an issue here. The big question of course is will this continue to be a driving issue for voters next year when the stakes are so, so much higher.
Brian: Listeners, if you're just joining us, WNYC's Nancy Solomon is our guest coming on as she does monthly now on the morning after her monthly call-in show, Ask Governor Murphy with New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. Now, it's ask Nancy Solomon. You can call in and talk about what you may have heard if you were listening last night from the governor or other Jersey issues that we're discussing with her based on her Governor Murphy call in. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. Listeners, we're actually going to take a little detour, do something maybe a little unusual, which is bring a Long Island voice into this New Jersey segment.
Why? Well, as we've been discussing, Democrats around the country did well in this week's elections. The same is true in New York's northern suburbs, Westchester and Rockland counties, but not on Long Island, where Democrats just basically don't have any seats anymore. They used to have two of the four congressional seats from Long Island. Those went away in last year's elections. They used to have both county executive positions, Nassau and Suffolk County executive.
The last one of those went away in Tuesday's election. The new Suffolk County Executive-elect is a Republican, and he wanted decisive victory in a seat that had been held by a Democrat. Now, all the major elected positions on the Island are red. Joining us now as well for just a couple of minutes to try to explain why Long Island and suburban areas in New Jersey, both suburbs of New York City seemed to be going in politically different directions, is Larry Levy, Executive Dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University on the Island. He also spent years as a Newsday political columnist. Larry, always good to have you on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.
Larry Levy: Well, thanks for having me back.
Brian: Why is Long Island bucking this apparent national, and even local if you look at New Jersey and the northern suburbs trend of suburbs voting blue?
Larry Levy: Well, in the absence of exit polls, you can't really know exactly what people are thinking, but it's a cliché. It's a perfect storm that's been enduring for almost three years now. It's a combination of a bunch of things, and I'll try not to get too wonky or deep into the weeds. It starts with having a map that was gerrymandered to the benefit of the Republicans who took control a few years ago, just at the time when the census figures were released, and they drew the new district. You start with a great playing field for the Republicans.
You also have very strong local Republican organizations, which is not true in a lot of suburbs around the country where political parties are just not as powerful in an organizational sense. On Long Island, there's a tradition of strong Republican leadership. Then you also have control by the Republicans of huge townships that if they were in the middle of a cornfield, they would be major American cities. Hempstead with 700,000, Brookhaven with 400,000-plus, and they have thousands of employees and billions of dollars in contracts that they could use to create an army of political foot soldiers and fund it with dollars from businesses that have an interest in keeping their contracts.
More important than that, you have leadership that understands something that a lot of national Republicans don't, that if you want to have a win year after year in a suburban swing district, you've got to build a base. You've got to build a bridge from your base, your conservative base, to the moderate middle, and the Long Island leaders are really pragmatic. They understand that. They've understood it for many, many years. If for example, in North Hempstead Town, which people in New Jersey may not be familiar with, but it's a 300,000 population township, Republican Jennifer DeSena could never have beaten Jon Kaiman, the Democrat, if she ran as a MAGA Republican.
Even Ed Romaine out in Suffolk, which is a little more conservative, if he had run as a right-wing Republican, it would've been a much, much closer race. They pay attention to that moderate middle that around the country determines who gets the keys to the White House and the gavels in Congress. Then just finally, and I know I'm going on and on here, but there's a bundle of issues that came from Albany, which was housing, it was bail reform. The Republicans are very, very good at messaging out here. They're pros, and they have been able to frighten a lot of Long Islanders into fear of crime, New York City media doesn't help that, in an area where there's still very little crime.
Then, of course, try to build affordable housing in communities that are a little sketchy about that just added to it this year.
Brian: Nancy, you want to compare and contrast at all with New Jersey on anything that we've heard suburb to suburb?
Nancy Solomon: Yes, it's fascinating, Larry, what you're saying. In terms of compare and contrast, I think the point about Republicans on Long Island being able to leverage their incumbency to fund races and handout contracts, jobs, I think that is also going on in New Jersey, but it's the Democrats who are in control.
Larry Levy: That's right.
Nancy Solomon: It has a force that helps them, so there's that. Then I think in New Jersey, exactly what you said, Larry, that the Republican candidates aren't building a connection to moderate Republicans. In fact, in many of the races that we had going, these legislative races, I think what you saw was Democrats who were pretty middle of the road in terms of their politics, pretty moderate Democrats who were match the politics of the overwhelming number of people who were moderates in the state. Many are unaffiliated, swing back-and-forth in terms of what party they'll vote for. I think that many of the Democratic candidates did a much better job of talking to those voters.
They themselves come off that political stripe. Again, in New Jersey, the Democrats were disciplined about their messaging this time in a way that they hadn't been two years ago when they got clobbered, and they learned a lesson. That was to stick with the pocketbook issues. You don't have to really solve those issues or say that you've solved them. What people want to hear is that you get it. You get that it's important. You get that that's what you should be focused on.
Brian: Larry, one more thought.
Larry Levy: Sure. That's fascinating about how two communities that are so similar operate politically so differently. On Long Island, it's going to be a tough road for the Democrats to recoup, partly because as I mentioned, gerrymandering and partly because they have really no patronage base left. What's ironic, or it might be very frustrating to Democrats, is that on Long Island, there are 140,000 more Democrats than Republicans and--
Brian: Registered?
Larry Levy: Yes, registered. The blanks though, who are not registered in either party are the fastest growing group, and they broke very hard toward Republicans this year for probably last year. That's the challenge, to get that moderate middle to support you, and Republicans just have done a much better job the last few years. I was looking at this race as a bellwether, so to speak, for 2024, and it really wasn't because it was such an outlier on Long Island. It does have lessons for both political parties, but particularly for the Republicans, that they have not done well. Forget what they did on Long Island, but they have not done well outside of Philadelphia, outside of Detroit, outside of Milwaukee.
You can go on the list of swing states. It's because they are running more often than not MAGA Republicans who just turn off moderate suburban voters who shy away from extremism of any stripe. On Long Island, it happens to be Democrats. Around the country, it's Republicans.
Brian: Larry Levy, Executive Dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra, thanks for dropping in for a few minutes. This was really interesting.
Larry Levy: Well, thank you for having me. At any time you need me, I'm here.
Brian: Nancy, that is really interesting. I think you're both agreeing that a big problem for New Jersey Republicans is there are two MAGA.
Nancy Solomon: Yes. That was said last night by the governor. It's been said by every political analyst that I've spoken with. It was said by Jon Bramnick, the Republican State Senator from Westfield, who is one of the last few moderate Republicans in the legislature. He railed on Republican candidates on election night for not being civil and for really that. He's been an outlier, he's been alone, but he won his election handily and I think was having a moment of vindication on Tuesday night. It's definitely a problem. It predates MAGA. This problem that Republicans have in New Jersey of running far to the right during the primary and then pivoting back to the general, this is something both parties do.
We see it all over the country, but I think in New Jersey, Republican candidates have really had a tough time with that pivot. Maybe, Democrats are doing a better job of holding them, holding their feet to the fire and saying, "Wait a minute, you're the guy who said this during the primary." Then, of course, Trumpism has just sharpened those divisions within the Republican party. Particularly in a place like New Jersey where there's such a long tradition of moderate republicanism, this has just been a real problem for the party here.
Brian: Yes. What about those big three issues for Long Islanders that Larry, I think correctly identified? I would've named the same three. Are they not salient for voters in the New Jersey suburbs, and that is the asylum seekers and how they spill over in terms of where they might get housed from New York City to Jersey affordable housing plans, which there's such a rebellion against in New York State when Governor Hochul has tried to propose that statewide? That's an issue in New Jersey. Also, crime, as Larry says, is driven by the New York City media beyond what the actual crime stats may be in the suburbs. Jerseyans are less concerned in the suburbs in the Garden State about those same big three issues?
Nancy Solomon: Yes, I think that is right. Those issues were not the salient issues in this election. I don't think they were the salient issues two years ago when Republicans had a better go of it. I think what was driving that was the Democrats were not talking about affordability and were not talking about property taxes. They were punished. I think asylum and refugees and immigration, it has not been a big issue here. I think affordable housing is super complicated here in the ways that towns are able to subvert the intention of New Jersey's affordable housing law, and pass their obligations onto cities and not build affordable housing in suburbs.
It does come up in some communities, but it is not a big issue driving the elections over the last few cycles.
Brian: Right. Of course, affordable housing. We definitely heard it even in the Bronx where a Republican took a seat for the first time since the dinosaurs roamed Pelham Parkway. The backlash was in Throgs Neck as we're understanding it now against an affordable housing proposal because some of the residents there thought it would impact public safety. There's that there, and we're going to talk about that more on subsequent shows. Right now, we continue to talk about New Jersey and breakdown last night's Ask Governor Murphy call-in on the station with the host Nancy Solomon.
One more clip of the governor with you from last night, outlining how he sees the future of wind farm energy in the state after the company Ørsted pulled out the other day from two major offshore wind farm projects.
Governor Murphy: Two things. One, this industry, I'd argue more than any other that I'm aware of, has been more hit by inflation and supply chain issues than any other that I'm aware of. Secondly, the BPU, the Board of Public Utilities is in a solicitation right now. There's lots of folks interested. How this actually ultimately works out in terms of their leases, I can't tell you right now sitting here, but we're going to go after that $300 million worth of vengeance that they owe us. Secondly, we're going to ultimately get there. It's just going to be maybe a little bit more circuitous or maybe take a little bit longer than we wanted to.
Brian: The governor pointed to the fact that jobs come with offshore wind farms, that there are thousands of high-end union jobs as he described them that could be an economic boon to the state. Nancy, did he make it clear at all what the plan ahead is?
Nancy Solomon: Yes. He says that other wind developers now that Ørsted has left will come in and take over those leases and that this is a delay, but not an end to his wind energy program. He's prone to sugarcoating things, and I think you heard some sugarcoating in that tape. The fact, it's yes, inflation problems are affecting projects all up and down the coast, and it's a big problem. He's not really accepting responsibility for the fact that this is a failure. To have not somehow understood that the economics of this weren't working and that they needed to somehow come back to the table, which New York State has done.
New York State has reopened the bidding process for deals that were already done with wind developers because they came back and said, "These prices are not sustainable for us. We cannot build these projects." Then, 10 years down the road after all our investment, we're not going to be able to make it back because the price of the electricity that we're generating is going to be too low because that's what the bid is all about. New York State is allowing companies to come back and rebid. Every state is grappling with this. I believe the governor's heart is in this, that he wants this to happen, but I think somewhere along the line, his administration was--
Brian: Oops, did we lose Nancy? [silence] All right. We're going to get Nancy back up. In the meantime, we have a caller on the wind farms issue. Patricia in Ocean County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Patricia.
Patricia: Hi, Brian. Hi, Nancy. I listened to the program last night with Governor Murphy, and I'd like to just share my opinion. When Governor Murphy said that he never gave Ørsted the $1.6 billion, if you look up the Bill S, as in Sam, 5651, that is the bill in which Governor Murphy did give Ørsted $1.6 billion from the New Jersey taxpayers' money. That money was originally earmarked for people who would've gotten solar rebates. They're not getting their solar rebates as a result of Governor Murphy giving that money to Ørsted. The other fact that you guys keep, or you guys keep saying that Ørsted is pulled out, that was just like a smoke and mirrors thing. Ørsted is still working.
Their survey vessels are out there. They're still pile driving. They're still lying cables right now, as we speak, through LBI, through Island Beach State Park. They're starting into Sea Girt today, and they're all Ørsted people. The other thing that I didn't agree with is that if Ørsted pulls out, we'll lose thousands of jobs in New Jersey. If we continue to allow these wind turbines to go in, we're going to lose much more than thousands of jobs because nobody is going to want to come to the beach. We're going to lose all the tourism money. We're going to lose all the restaurants, everything. It's already affecting the fishing industry and so much.
I know Nancy just said something about the price of electricity is too low. They've already shown that if we go to this offshore wind power, our electric bills are going to be estimated to increase by at least 40%.
Brian: You've got a number of things on the table, Patricia. Nancy is back with us now. I think she heard most of your call. Why do you think, Patricia, that people wouldn't go to the beach if there are wind turbines? I think they're like 15 miles off the shore.
Patricia: Because most of them, Brian, are actually going to be between 6 and 8 miles, and these things are so high. New Jersey is getting the most. We're also getting the tallest ones. Nobody else in the world has the height of the wind turbines that might be installed here in New Jersey.
Brian: Patricia, let me get some thoughts from Nancy on some of your points. How about on that last one? Tall, relatively close in wind turbines, that would be an [unintelligible 00:28:55] from the beach.
Nancy Solomon: I was sent a lot of the information that the group that's organizing against the offshore wind projects off of Long Beach Island. It looks to me that the drawings are misrepresentations of what it's going to look like. I understand the concern, that people want the shore to remain a beautiful place to go, but the devil is really in the details. This group has distributed flyers and stuff online that makes it look much, much bigger. The perspective is not quite right of what one of these wind turbines is going to look like from the shore. That has been a point of contention.
Brian: What about then her argument that energy rates for ratepayers, for homeowners and businesses would go up under this conversion.
Nancy Solomon: Yes. This relates to the misunderstanding about the tax break. Let me talk about both of these things at once because Governor Murphy, the bill that he signed was not a tax break for Ørsted. What it was, was the ability of Ørsted to-- under their agreement, they were going to have to pass on their federal tax break, those savings to ratepayers. They weren't going to be able to use that to recoup their costs or increase their profit. It was going to go to ratepayers, anything that they saved. What the deal was is, "Okay, you can keep your federal tax break. This is going to impact what ratepayers pay down the line for wind energy or for electricity generally."
At the same time, what Ørsted did was they put $100 million in escrow saying, "We will deliver this project on time. If we don't, the State of New Jersey gets that $100 million." They pledged another $200 million to go towards wind energy infrastructure like the wind port that is being built on the Delaware River that is expected to create tons of jobs, shipping wind turbines up and down the coast. That's a big part of Murphy's strategy and plan. That's what that deal was about. It was not a state tax break. It did not cost state taxpayers anything. In the future, it won't cost [crosstalk]
Brian: Didn't divert money from the solar energy rebates, which the caller said?
Nancy Solomon: That's a new one on me. I have not heard that.
Brian: That's an allegation?
Nancy Solomon: I do not know, but there's a lot of misinformation out there. Each thing really needs to be tracked down. That one, I can't say.
Brian: Patricia, let me ask you one follow-up question. Do you want New Jersey to be fossil fuel dependent forever?
Patricia: No, but from looking at wind power in other countries and even on Block Island, it's ineffective. It's not green. They run on fossil fuels. They're made out of fossil fuels. They're filled with fossil fuels.
I don't know what the green energy solution will be, but I don't believe that offshore wind turbines will be, because in the short amount of time that they were doing the preconstruction for it, between the sonar mapping and the pile driving, we've had all this citation deaths, unprecedented deaths, which if you actually go into the Ørsted Environmental Impact Study, or if you read the [unintelligible 00:33:02] documents or the NOA documents, it states that they knew this was going to kill, harm the citations as well as they've been giving these IHA applications where they--
Brian: I'm going to leave it there because we're out of time of the segment, but Patricia, thank you for your points of view. I know we had a marine biologist on the show who said, "No, windmill construction does not actually kill whales," that that's something that got put out there falsely. On whether wind farms really produce energy, I've seen a stat that Ireland now gets about 1/3 of its energy from wind power, so it definitely produces energy. We're not going to solve it, Nancy, but we hear how many different arguments are being thrown out there.
Nancy Solomon: Yes. As you said, I'm sorry, Patricia, but a lot of this stuff is misinformation. It's being passed through social media, and there are no fossil fuels involved in-- once the wind turbines are there, I don't know where this comes from, this idea that it would be expending fossil fuels. To the question about, "So what are we going to do?" The Jersey Shore is one of the first places in the country that we will lose through climate change and rising sea levels. Florida is first, and the Jersey Shore is second. The whales that are floating up onto the beach dead, this is a climate change issue. The warmer seas are driving whales closer to shore, chasing after fish, and into the pathway of shipping canals.
We are in a crisis. The amount of information, and a lot of it is coming from the oil and gas industry is just very, very damaging.
Brian: We're not going to solve the wind turbine debate today, but there are a number of issues that Nancy Solomon discussed with Governor Murphy last night on the Ask Governor Murphy monthly call-in Show, which airs the second Wednesday of every month at 7:00 PM. Mark your calendars for Wednesday night, December 13th, everyone, and then Thursday morning, December 14th, when Nancy will be back here to discuss next month's edition. Nancy, always great that you do this. Thanks.
Nancy Solomon: Thanks, Brian.
Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.
New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.