With primary looming, New Jersey Democrats debate transit, taxes, who can beat GOP in November

In their final debate before the June 10 Democratic gubernatorial primary, five candidates seeking to become the next governor of New Jersey clashed over taxes, housing, transportation, school funding, and more.

Candidate Sean Spiller, the president of the New Jersey Education Association, didn’t participate in the debate Sunday because he didn’t qualify for public matching funds for the race. His union is funding his campaign through a super PAC. Participation in the primary debates is limited to candidates who qualified for matching funds. Spiller did address the press after the debate was over, though.

The five Democratic candidates who participated in the two-and-a-half-hour debate sponsored by The New Jersey Globe and ONNJ were: U.S. Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, former state Senate President Steve Sweeney, and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop. They are vying to succeed fellow Democrat and second-term Gov. Phil Murphy, who is limited to two terms.

News broke just before the forum on Sunday that NJ Transit train service would resume on Tuesday. A tentative deal for a new contract between the engineers’ union and the state agency was reached earlier in the day. The news offered an immediate backdrop for a discussion about public transit. Engineers for NJ Transit went without a contract for more than five years. Some candidates said the delay was unacceptable and blamed successive administrations for underfunding infrastructure and ignoring labor concerns.

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“Don’t wait five or six years to settle a contract,” said Sweeney, who led the New Jersey Senate when the last contract expired. “We’ve got to respect our workers. And that means putting the right people in place to run NJ Transit.”

Baraka said funding that was diverted from the millionaire’s tax should have been used to bolster public transit. “We can’t give billionaires tax breaks and fund our infrastructure at the same time,” he said, calling for a statewide expansion of bus service. “Fifty percent of my constituents don’t own a car.”

Fulop, endorsed by several transit unions, criticized “a failure of leadership” and reiterated his support for congestion pricing as a regional solution that could fund public transportation.

Gottheimer, a leading opponent of New York’s congestion pricing plan, forcefully rejected the idea. “They’re killing our kids with more asthma and crushing working families with another tax,” he said.

Sweeney also criticized congestion pricing.

“When you deal with a bully, you punch them right in the nose, and they pay attention. That’s how you deal with a bully,” Sweeney said. “New York is bullying in New Jersey, abusing our citizens.”

Sherrill, who called the current transit system “a 19th-century model,” said she would pursue a new statewide transit plan, including expanded light rail and electric vehicle infrastructure. She acknowledged congestion pricing was politically unpopular and voiced support for transit-oriented development.

The candidates also discussed problems at Newark Liberty International Airport, which has been plagued by staffing shortages and delays.

“We need more air traffic controllers and emergency funding now,” said Gottheimer.

Sherrill said she was a nervous wreck when her daughter recently flew through Newark. “This is unacceptable,” she said of the recent issues.

Baraka called for slowing flights to protect passenger safety. “The economy has to suffer for people’s lives,” he said.

On housing, all five candidates agreed that New Jersey faces a crisis but differed on how to resolve it.

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Sherrill and Gottheimer called for cutting permitting red tape and expanding first-time homebuyer assistance. Gottheimer proposed a “shot clock” to speed up local and state approvals. Fulop backed an executive order to develop idle NJ Transit-owned properties, while Baraka emphasized community-driven affordable housing tied to transit expansion.

“If we had a public bank, we could invest in low-income housing the right way,” Baraka said.

Sweeney and Fulop agreed that executive action might be necessary to override towns that fail to meet affordable housing obligations. “We’ve said pretty please too many times,” Sweeney said. “It’s been 50 years since Mount Laurel.”

GOP opponent looms in the shadows

The Democratic nominee will enter the general election with limited time to unify the party and an electorate facing mounting frustration over costs, infrastructure and other quality-of-life issues.

Jack Ciattarelli, the frontrunner on the Republican side, is running for governor for a third time and is a household name. Sweeney said Ciattarelli, who is dominating the Republican polls, will be a formidable opponent.

“Stop saying the name Jack Ciattarelli tonight,” Baraka said.

As the cost of living and property taxes continue to dominate voter concerns, the candidates offered different approaches to New Jersey’s education system, school funding, and the persistent squeeze on local government and school district budgets.

Sherrill and Fulop called for modernizing the state’s school funding formula and reducing redundancy across the state’s more than 590 school districts.

“We have certain towns that don’t even run K through 12 schools, and they have the whole administrative cost and facility burden that every other administration has for full school systems,” Sherrill said. “I’ll also tell you that right now we’re going to see our student population go down, because in 2007 that was a baby boom, and those kids are graduating from high school now.”

Fulop advocated for a state takeover of special education funding to relieve local taxpayers and called the existing funding model outdated.

Sweeney touted his role in overhauling the funding formula and said it should be reevaluated every five years. He also renewed his longstanding push for consolidating school districts, especially those with only elementary grades.

“We have more superintendents than mayors,” Sweeney said. “We’re not talking about closing schools. We’re talking about eliminating duplicative bureaucracy that’s costing taxpayers millions.”

Baraka pushed back against what he called false equivalencies between income and wealth, particularly when it comes to educational opportunity. He dismissed claims that improving third-grade reading scores alone could close the racial wealth gap, calling that view overly simplistic and historically misguided.

“Wealth and income are not the same,” Baraka said. “We need to build equity through homeownership and capital investment in communities, not just test scores.”

Sherrill said that while she agreed with Baraka’s broader critique, third-grade reading proficiency remains a critical milestone for long-term academic success. “It’s not either-or,” she said.

Gottheimer joined the chorus for consolidation and streamlining, calling New Jersey’s decentralized education bureaucracy inefficient and financially unsustainable. “We’ve got to stop buying things the way we do as 564 municipalities,” Gottheimer said. “We don’t buy things in bulk. We always pay retail instead of negotiating and getting Costco prices. We have to reorient the whole system.”

Asked about the potential threat of federal funding cuts to schools that oppose the Trump administration’s directives on diversity, equity and inclusion, the candidates said New Jersey should brace for a fight.

“This kind of idea that we should moderate ourselves at this moral moment is wrong,” Baraka said.

Fulop pledged to use the state’s surplus funds to shield local districts from retaliatory cuts. “We should fight that fight for New Jersey values and demonstrate to the public that we stand for different things,” he said.

Gottheimer and Sherrill vowed to defend school funding and protect public education from privatization efforts, including the push for school vouchers. “I’m totally against vouchers,” Gottheimer said. “Public dollars belong in public schools.”

Sweeney warned that federal cuts to Medicaid and mental health services could further strain school budgets, while reaffirming his support for a state-run health care plan to lower costs for educators and municipal workers.

“You do have a unique phenomenon in New Jersey where you have hospitals consolidating at a very rapid pace, dictating healthcare outcomes to patients,” Fulop said. “That should not be permitted.”

The candidates agreed that any real solution would require structural changes not only to school funding and local governance, but also in the way health care and housing costs intersect with public education.

“We’re running a structural deficit of $2 billion, and we keep falling further behind, and what do we do? We just keep raising taxes on folks and raising costs,” Gottheimer said. “We’ve got to negotiate our health care costs.”

Later in the debate, the candidates discussed emerging technologies and environmental sustainability, with candidates voicing concerns about how artificial intelligence will reshape New Jersey’s economy and labor force.

Fulop said young people he talks to in Jersey City are extremely concerned about climate change.”Young people are concerned about what the environment and sustainability, and climate change will look like for them,” he said. “They want a governor that’s unapologetic about climate change.”

David Wildstein of The New Jersey Globe pressed candidates on whether they could identify a specific $100 million-plus state program they would be willing to cut if federal funding falls sharply. Gottheimer declined to name one, instead pointing to inefficiencies and advocating for a “chief clawback officer” to help the state recover more federal dollars. He accused New York of unfairly collecting $4 billion in income taxes from New Jersey residents who work for New York-based employers.

Baraka criticized Gottheimer and Sherrill for failing to secure more federal funding in Congress, saying that clawing back resources should not have to wait for a gubernatorial election. “That’s your job today,” Baraka said.

Gottheimer and Baraka traded jabs. Gottheimer cited a 23% increase in property taxes in Newark during Baraka’s tenure as mayor. Baraka accused the congressman of deflection and using “Republican talking points.”

Some candidates said tax breaks for the rich that were implemented under former Gov. Chris Christie should be eliminated.

Fulop said that beyond the health care and raising taxes on the billionaires, the budget process should be scrutinized. He critiqued the opaque state budget process and the way $1 billion for legislators’ pet projects is added right at the end of the process without debate or public scrutiny.

‘The Christmas tree items are a problem. The entire structure of that is problematic,” Fulop said. “I think if the public fully understood what was happening there, as well as this concept of senatorial courtesy, both of those things to a normal person would seem ridiculous, and they definitely need to change. No question about it.”

Fulop also called for scrutiny of Rutgers University’s budget, saying that football is a huge line item that has become a bigger priority than education.

Sweeney emphasized his record on cost-saving through shared services, saying he helped create countywide emergency response and assessment programs. He said structural budget reform would be necessary, especially given the uncertainty of federal support.

Editor’s note: The final Republican gubernatorial candidate debate will take place at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 20.