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Welcome back to Power and Politics. Election day is coming up in just a couple of days. We've got our all star panel here in the studio. Let's get back to our conversation right now. Uh, Brent, we were just talking during the break about the number of people who've already cast their votes. I, I mean, are we gonna be looking, do you think, at, at perhaps record turnout this year for, for a governor's race? We've seen turnout drop precipitously over the last few decades. Like we, we don't have the years of when everybody voted when JFK ran against Richard Nixon in 1960 are well gone. But you know there is a lot of interest in this race. There's been a lot of, you know, TV ads, uh, digital ads, so maybe people are more inclined to go to the polls and early voting numbers have been high. It's, it's, it's about a million so far. So people clearly have been either casting votes by mail or in person, and then we still have to wait for election day. That's when a lot of Republicans tend to vote. So early numbers, both parties have seen optimistic things in early numbers. Democrats are definitely feeling good. Their numbers have been better than than than than they were last year. But you know, a lot can change and it probably will come down to turnout on election day Tuesday. Uh, I, I want to zero in on some issues we were talking about some of the, the kitchen table topics that have been resonating with voters. Brent, in, in your reporting, what are you finding? I mean what are people most concerned with this cycle in terms of cost of living or property taxes, utility rates? Well, we're, we're in an expensive state. It's $10,000 is the average property tax. Bill, you tell that to someone who who lives in a different part of the country they'd be shocked by that. And we also have rising energy rates which everybody can see because you get a bill, you can actually see what you get, uh, and how your costs go up and that's what I keep hearing everyone on the inside being like it's great to talk about Donald Trump and and Phil Murphy and all these attacks, but really you gotta come back just what are you gonna do on on uh on property taxes? What are you gonna do on affordability and. One thing to note, he's really driven home that I'm going to lower your costs, but she also, when she attacks Trump also ties it to an economic message and saying things are worse because of what Donald Trump has done. So the, the economy and affordability are there, but it's kind of gotten obscured sometimes by the attacks. Let's get things back over to uh Ben Tork and Ben, do you have, do you think that the the government shutdown is weighing in on, on, on any of this is weighing down on voters' minds? Well, tangential to the government shutdown, uh, is the fact that they put the gateway project, uh, the tunnel that is desperately needed, uh, between New Jersey and New York, the rail tunnel on hold. Uh, Trump called it terminated his, uh, Department of Transportation is saying no, we just suspended it. But the fact is there are a lot of folks who work and are not gonna work on that project, uh, thousands of people, and I think that, uh, is an impact that gets people angry, uh, with the government and therefore it could weigh in because of the linkage between Jack Ctarelli, the Republican here, uh, and obviously Republican Donald Trump. But who do they ultimately blame here because obviously it depends on which party you're listening to. You'll hear the Republican leadership in Congress saying it's a Democrat shutdown. Yes, but the idea that the funding is terminated is definitely a specific harm. Trump kind of played into Mikey Shell's hand when she did when he did that because it allows her to charge. This is not a generic Trump charge. This is not anti-Trump. This is a specific. Harm to New Jersey and we've heard in the recent days about how Republicans are hoping to cut in and get some support from crossover Democrats. I think what makes it hard to do that is when Jack's run his entire campaign throwing both arms around Trump. I think it really challenges his ability to cross over and get Democratic support. Ashley, we've spoken about some of the specific issues that people want to hear about in this race that affect their monthly finances. Which candidate do you think has been most effective in speaking about those, because of course it's all about the messaging and some candidates are just more effective than others in addressing the things that matter most. Yeah, according to our polling, it's a toss up. So at the very beginning of summer we polled all of these issues, and Cheryl was seen as the one who was doing better on most, maybe slightly less likely on something like taxes. Now they're neck and neck in our latest. Polling talk about taxes, government spending, the economy. Chittarelli and Cheryl are both seeing their voters are split in terms of who would do a better job. It's really only down to Chittarelli significantly doing better on crime and safety and Cheryl significantly doing better on something like health care. So again, voters are very undecided when it comes to who would be better at the helm handling these important kitchen table issues easily overlooked in all the focus on the governor's race. Sprint is the fact that the entire assembly is up and uh besides the assembly we're also focusing on some specific mayoral races like the Jersey City mayoral race. you just weigh in on that one because I mean this seems to be the one because you have a former governor who's involved in this race that people are more interested in. What do you think is gonna happen here? That's it's a 7 person race. It's also the 2nd largest city in the state, so it's it's a very important city after Newark. And uh this is a lot of attention because Jim McGreevy, the former governor who resigned in Scandal, is back on the scene and and seems that the world has changed a lot since, since I was in college when that happened and, and, uh, and, and you know, and now he's able to make some kind of comeback here, but I don't, I don't know, it's a pretty close race right now, very close race. So it's, it's the former governor. You've got the Hudson County commissioner, uh, Bill O'Dea, James Solomon. Musa Ali, Joyce Waterman, but it's really those first three names that seem to be garnering most support. Yeah, I think what's happening, and this is again this is a guess, is that if you are an anti-McGreevy candidate, if you're a stop McGreevy candidate, or if you're a grassroots candidate, you're sharing the lane with several other grassroots and anti-McGreevy candidates, right? And it kind of leaves him with a clearer path to get ahead of those who are splitting up their vote. Interesting. In terms of the assembly, I want to get back to that very quickly. Are you expecting any kind of shift in terms of majority in the assembly this year, or no? No, the majority is too big to overcome. There are maybe as much as 6 seats in play. When Jack Chiarelli had that close loss 4 years ago, he did bring 6 new assembly. Republican Assembly members wins with him in that column. They swung back in the midterm election after that, so we'll see what happens. But I think if you think about the potential of 6 seasons in play, it's a start. It gets the Republicans closer to where they want to be, but it's going to take a couple of cycles, and believe it or not, we have to leave it there. It's been a great conversation. Mike Rasmus and Ashley Conning, Brent Johnson and Ben Durkin, uh, thank you all so much for being here sharing your insight and your expertise. Uh, really no better group of people and political minds to have in studio ahead of an election. So thank you all so much for being here. Thank you and keep it right here on Power and Politics. We continue right after the break.

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I'm not sure that's the right way to approach this. Listen, Joe's a good guy. Latham is a good guy. We've got good working relationships with both of them, but I wanna ask Joe, where were you when the Trump administration shut down 11.5 gigawatts of offshore wind? Uh, where were you that if you've got a supply demand imbalance, uh, the, the last thing on, on, on earth we ought to be doing is pulling supply out of the equation. So Governor Murphy responding to a new bill to ease the burden of sky high energy costs, and I'd like to welcome one of the sponsors of that bill, Republican state senator Joe Penacchio. Senator, uh, thanks so much for being here. I appreciate your time. Thanks for having me on. Listen, first, I want to get your response to what you just heard there. Uh, well, I think the, the governor may be right as far as the president, uh, having affected the one of the outcomes, but he's got the wrong president. Uh, he had the two companies, Orte and he had Shell and, uh, uh, French Consortium. They, they pulled out in August of 2023. This I saw that was under the Joe Biden administration, and they were claiming that they pulled out because of finance issues and supply chain issues. So you're gonna have to. Talked to the, uh, the, the, uh, secretary of transportation and commerce about that. Uh, by the way, when they pulled out, they both roll off each about a billion dollars. So it was a, it was a pretty bad, pretty financed, awful bad, uh, when they, uh, when they initially when they tried to do it. So I don't think you can this Donald Trump. All right, listen, what would your bill do for New Jerseyans here? You're talking about suspending the sales tax for one. Right. Well, right now, what's going on is pretty exploitive to the consumers. You have, uh, uh, a sales taxes actually increased 15 or 16%, uh, from last year because of the high energy costs, and those energy costs are go higher, then the state realizes even more, more money. So we think that's wrong. So we, what we're suggesting to do is take away the societal benefit charge which is about $3 3%, I'm sorry, and take away the, the sales tax, about 7 it's altogether about 10% that we should be able to. Take away from their, uh, from their budget. Uh, the state got us in trouble. I agree with the government. This is a supply and demand issue. But what happened is that the, the, uh, the administration sought to decrease the, uh, the supply by, by not starting up and not, uh, you know, backfilling those, uh, generators that were being taken offline. He wanted to electrify everything. He want to decarbonate this, decarbonize the state and then in the meantime, if you have less of a product and you have more demand, of course, prices are gonna wind up. Oh, that was State Senator Joe Penacchio, and you can see the full interview with the senator on Newstwelve.com. And remember to tune into News12 for election night coverage. We will be live Tuesday when the polls close at 8 p.m. the next morning we'll recap and update the results for you. I'm Eric Lantz Kronner. We thank you for watching New Jersey Power and Politics. Get out and vote. We'll see you again next time.

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I'm not sure that's the right way to approach this. Listen, Joe's a good guy. Latham is a good guy. We've got good working relationships with both of them, but I want to ask Joe, where were you when the Trump administration shut down 11.5 gigawatts of offshore wind? Uh, where were you that if you've got a supply demand imbalance, uh, the, the last thing on, on, on earth we ought to be doing is pulling supply out of the equation. So Governor Murphy responding to a new bill to ease the burden of sky-high energy costs, and I'd like to welcome one of the sponsors of that bill, Republican state senator Joe Penacchio. Senator, uh, thanks so much for being here. I appreciate your time. Thanks for having me on. Listen, first, I want to get your response to what you just heard there. Uh, well, I think that the governor may be right as far as the president, uh, having affected one of the outcomes, but he's got the wrong president. Uh, he had the two companies, Orte and he had Shell and, uh, uh, French Consortium. They, they pulled out in the August of 2023. This I saw that was under the Joe Biden administration, and they were claiming that they pulled out because of finance issues and supply chain issues, so you're gonna have to. Talk to the uh this the uh secretary of transportation and commerce about that. Uh, by the way, when they pulled out, they both roll off each about a billion dollars. So it was a, it was a pretty bad, pretty finance, awful bad, uh, when they, uh, when they initially when they tried to do it. So I don't think you can this Donald Trump. All right, listen, what would your bill do for New Jerseyans here? You're talking about suspending the sales tax for one. Right, well, right now what's going on is pretty exploitive to the consumers. You have, uh, uh, a sales tax that's actually increased 15 or 16%, uh, from last year because of the high energy costs, and those energy costs are go higher, then the state realizes even more, more money. So we think that's wrong. So we, what we're suggesting to do is take away the societal benefits charge, which is about 3, 3%, I'm sorry, and take away the, the sales tax, about 7, it's all together about 10% that we should be able to. Take away from their, uh, from their budget, uh, the state got us in trouble. I agree with the government. This is a supply and demand issue, but what happened is that the, the, the administration sought to decrease the, uh, the supply by, by not starting up and not, uh, you know, backfilling those, uh, generators that were being taken offline. He wanted to electrify everything. He want to decarbonate this, decarbonize the state and then in the meantime, if you have less of a product and you have more demand, of course, prices are gonna wind up. What, what do you say to the governor's uh response that by taking away, by getting rid of the sales tax for a year, that there are going to be some crucial programs that are hurt by that? Well, it's not only sales tax, it's a societal benefit charge, and he's really good at taking that money away because that, that, uh, since his administration came in, they've roughly rated that fund to the tune of about $600 million. Last year, the the fund took in about $355 million and they used about $190 million to plug up their budget holes. So it's supposed to go for for consumers that have a need to, to help them pay for their electric bills. And they've used it for, for all sorts of other things, but I can't think of a better reason to use it now than to help some of these consumers who are really being hurt by these high prices. You've called the Democrats' $100 credit a gimmick. Yeah, it's. Do you, do you think that they'll give your bill a fair shake either now or under the next administration? Uh, hopefully the next administration, it was a scam. They, they took, uh, they gave you a break $60 over spread over two months in the summer time. That way it would lessen a little bit of the impact, but that was crazy. These bills were, they, they were more than 20% higher and yet after you get your $60 then you have to spend the next 6 months paying it off. That, that's a scam. That's a scheme. That's that, that, that is not really trying to help the consumer and trying to help the taxpayers in the state. So let's, let's talk long term here because obviously there's no silver bullet right now that's instantly gonna fix, uh, energy costs and, and the energy cost crisis. So if your party was a party in power right now in Trenton, what's the first thing you do? The first thing I do is I take a look at Oyster Creek and I try to recommission it. They have done that, by the way, in other, other, uh, places in the country, Michigan, I think they recommissioned a plant that had been shut down. If they, if they can't recommission that plant, then I would take a look at putting some of those SMR, small modular reactors, uh, in there. My, my understanding is you can put up to 4 of them in there. They are, they can be built quickly and safely, quickly, meaning a few years as opposed to 20 years. And they're a much safer operation. They're not built at the site. They're, they're actually put together at the site. They're built in factories and at one time Oyster Creek used to supply about 10% of our energy needs. That's gone. So we, that's something that we should plan on, we should think about doing right away. There's also enough room to if you want to put some solar panels in, in that area. It's a pretty large area. So that's the first thing that I would suggest doing. State Senator Joe Penacchio, thanks so much for being here. Eric, thanks for having me on.

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