(upbeat music) - So who has the momentum with less than two weeks to go in the governor's race?

We'll talk about that and much more.

Hi everyone, I'm Joanna Gagis and this is Reporters Roundtable.

A note before we start the show, David Cruz, the host of this show and senior political correspondent for NJPBS, has been separated from our organization.

NJPBS acknowledges David's many contributions to this network and to this program.

Now this show will continue covering politics and public policy and examining the issues that affect New Jersey residents.

With that, let's meet our panel of journalists.

Aliya Schneider, welcome to the show.

Aliya is political reporter for Philadelphia Inquirer.

Jelani Gibson, Statehouse Reporter for NJ Advanced Media, and Daniel Hahn, reporter for Politico NJ.

So Republican candidate, Jack Cittarelli, looks positioned to lock in the endorsement of the Lakewood VOD, that's the Ultra-Orthodox Leadership Council.

That could mean some 18,000 votes for Ciattarelli in Lakewood alone.

We know there's an impact in the surrounding area as well.

And then on the Democratic side, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill has gotten the endorsement of former President Barack Obama.

Aliya, I'm going to start with you.

How impactful do you believe that endorsement of the former president will be for Sherrill?

You know it's hard to say.

I think that it helps drive some excitement.

I guess what I question is whether the people who are excited by that are people whether they were going to vote or not in the first place.

They will be rallying together next weekend and so I do think that especially as Mikie Sherrill tries to reach out to Black voters in particular and strengthen her support there.

I think having the first Black president definitely could help.

I'm not sure how concrete that impact will be.

We also see Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, is going around with her this weekend.

Do you think that that's going to have any more impact for her?

Josh Shapiro is a pretty popular politician.

He's consistently had pretty high approval ratings, and he's really become a national figure beyond Pennsylvania.

I think how much he connects in New Jersey, I don't know, but it's interesting because Jack Ciattarelli actually mentions Josh Shapiro and Pennsylvania policies quite often when talking about some things that he might want to do with taxes, for example.

And Mikie Sherrill has mentioned Pennsylvania as well, but it is sort of interesting that the Republican candidate is kind of praising this governor who's actually supporting Mikie Sherrill.

So I do think that, you know, perhaps Josh Shapiro is seen as as more of like a current national leader in the Democratic Party right now or rising, I should say, potential rising national leader that has raised his national profile.

I think it definitely is a potential for growing enthusiasm.

However, again, I do wonder like how many people are excited to go see Josh Shapiro, who weren't already planning on voting.

And I think right now it's a turnout game, which can get people to show up who weren't already going to show up.

Yeah, great point.

Jelani, on the flip side, we do see this Lakewood VOD has come out, likely to endorse Jack Cittarelli.

We don't have that in hand as of yet.

But what impact does that have not only in Lakewood, where the population's booming, but in the outskirts of Lakewood as well?

- Well, what we see with a variety of these endorsements, whether we're talking about the local level or the national level, is that there's going to be a turnout gain, there's going to be an engagement gain, but it's quite frankly also going to come down to how many independent voters that each candidate is able to get.

And when you go after independent voters, that means that you're usually going to go after a mixture of people that may fall outside of your traditional tent, and that certainly seems to be a tactic that's going on here, although the campaign has been solidly conservative.

It's also made inroads into populations, whether we're talking about the Jewish population, populations of color, populations that have traditionally been courted by the Democrats are now also being courted by the Republicans.

You know, the mob have been conservative.

There was also once upon a time where they were also talking to Democrats as well.

You know, Jack, you raise a good point.

Jack has really made an effort throughout this campaign to go into those places where Democrats usually have a stronghold.

And one of those places right now is the Muslim community.

But one of his advisers made some really interesting and controversial comments this week, said that he's been accused by people in his own community of taking money from Jews.

And he says, I check my bank account every day.

The money is not there.

And so while we do see that this ultra-Orthodox group of Jewish voters is endorsing him, it's also, we're seeing some pushback from other Jewish groups saying, you know, he should have called those comments out.

How does a candidate like Cittarelli try to balance those two kind of groups right now at this point in time, Jelani?

The Cittarelli campaign has a PR machine that essentially has a tactic where he's going to speak to MAGA people about MAGA and where he's going to try to speak to other populations about their concerns with the Democratic Party.

And anything that usually falls outside of that spectrum of communication, the campaign has, you know, they haven't exactly been forward in answering a lot of those questions.

But this is the same thing that you ask with, you know, Black populations about, you know, why they're supporting the Republican Party.

The same thing that you ask about Hispanic populations when it comes to the immigration policy.

And the thing is, is that, you know, the Ciattarelli campaign know that they don't need to win all of these populations outright.

They just need to shave enough of them off of the Democratic Party to make it harder for them to win.

Yeah.

Great point there.

New Eagleton poll came out today that's looking at the issues that likely New Jersey voters care most about.

Shocker.

It's affordability.

36 percent see taxes as the top problem.

21 percent says just affordability affordability overall.

It's actually I'm surprised to see that only 6 percent say housing affordability even though we've heard a lot about that on the campaign trail.

And then 6 percent say that the MAGA effect and Donald Trump's ideology are their top priority.

Those are pretty small numbers.

Daniel I'm curious when you see these attack ads playing all over the state and tailored for different communities do you think that the candidates are focused enough on those issues that voters care most about?

I think what you're seeing in a lot of the attack ads and a lot of the political communications in the final stretch of the race is candidates trying to basically tell voters I am your affordability candidate and my opponent will make your life more unaffordable.

And I think you've seen that with attacks over, for example, the sales tax, the Sherril campaign taking a clip of Jack Cittarelli, somewhat misleadingly suggesting that he would have a 10% sales tax hike on everything.

And the Cittarelli campaign has tried to flip that narrative, taking some footage of Mikie Sherril saying that she won't commit to anything regarding the sales tax, although it's important to add that she has in fact come out and said, "I will not increase the sales tax."

So I think that both campaigns know that this election, in large part, will be won or lost based off of who can convince voters that they're best for their pocketbooks.

And you've seen that with some of the other things.

The Sherril campaign has tried to brand Ciattarelli as "a high-tax jack."

The Ciattarelli campaign has tried to portray Sherril as someone who would hike your utility bills even further.

And I think that when you look at some of the campaign promises that are being made and the ones that are being told on the airwaves particularly, you see Sherril's promise of having a utility freeze hike on day one when she enters office, Ciattarelli promising to cap property taxes and freeze them at a certain age.

So I think that this race largely comes down to affordability and who can tell voters, who can convince voters that they're the best for their pocketbooks.

You know, Daniel, to that point, Ciattarelli has made a lot of promises about the things that he's going to fully fund, from the pensions to schools, although he wants to change the school formula.

And also, he wants to take on this state health care, the state health care costs.

If he's freezing property taxes, does he run into his own affordability issues if he were to be elected governor with the plans that he's laid out?

I think that this has been something of an unexplored narrative within Ciattarelli's campaign promises, because if you take a step back at what he's proposing, he wants tax cuts across the board.

He wants to cut the business tax in half.

As Aliya mentioned, he often says that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is trying to do that, so New Jersey should as well.

He's promising to not increase the sales tax.

He wants to eliminate the mansion tax.

And at the same time, he's promising all these programs like a cost of living adjustment, cost of living adjustment for first responders pensions, promising a full pension payment.

He has suggested that he wants to increase Medicaid rates to pay health care providers better.

So he hasn't explained fully how this will all be accounted for, other than the fact that his gamble is that by cutting taxes, you grow the economy, more businesses come in.

That's his theory of the case.

Aliya, do you give him points at all for the level of specificity at which he's run the campaign that looks a lot different than Mikie Sherrill's campaign, where there's not been a ton of specifics on any of the real plans that she's laid out.

Yeah, so, you know, Jack Chiarilli's campaign attacks Mikie Sherrill's campaign for not giving commitments, not being specific with what she's going to do.

On the other hand, her campaign says that, to your previous point, that the math is not adding up with what Jack is promising.

And so Jack will give promises, and Mikie will say, you know, he can't do that, or he's just telling you what he wants to hear, but she's not really giving an alternative.

I think there's a few kind of niche-specific policies that she will repeatedly mention, but she doesn't give the same specifics in terms of what she wants to do with taxes in the way Jack Ciattarelli does.

And she will say, I'm going to make New Jersey more affordable.

And she repeats that message.

But she's not really giving much of an alternative in terms of how she's going to do that.

So I think part of that comes to do voters trust her?

Do they trust her based on her kind of overall persona and delivery?

You know, she leans a lot into her biography.

Do they trust her that even though she's not saying how that she's going to do this?

Or is the fact that even if he may not be able to deliver on all of it, the fact that Jack is giving specifics, he is saying, you know, I want to do this and that with the tax brackets.

He's giving these specifics.

You know, it shows that he is thinking about specifically what he wants to do versus just saying, I'm going to make it more affordable.

Yeah.

And I think he's tried to use that as a point to say, I know, New Jersey, I know the issues.

A recent Quinnipiac poll puts Cheryl about six points ahead of Ciattarelli right now.

That's a smaller margin than we've seen just even a couple of weeks ago.

But Aliya, we are seeing some trends emerge within that poll and it breaks down along gender lines.

What can you tell us about how each candidate is playing among the different genders?

Yeah, so Mikie Sherrill has more of a lead among women and Jack Chitorelli has more of a lead among men.

Her lead among women is bigger than his lead among men.

However, hers has been pretty consistent from polling over the past couple of months, while Jack really improved his support among men.

So it's kind of showing that Mikie Sherrill has been able to hold on to that face of women voters who gravitate to Democrats, while Jack Torelli has been able to bring people in who he really speaks to them, they really make up his base, and he's put in that work to bring more people in or more people have been paying attention.

However, it's not necessarily just because Mikie Sherrill's a woman and that's why women want to vote for her.

Jack definitely accuses her of talking about being a woman on the campaign trail and he says, "Well, I'm a man."

But, you know, of course she talks about being a mother and she talks about her experience as a woman, but the support that we're seeing for her among women is pretty consistent with the support that we saw for Phil Murphy around the same time in 2021.

So what it's really saying is, as we see nationally, there is a gender gap between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

And we do see that in the Republican messaging.

It's a little bit more macho.

There's a little bit more about strength.

And we've seen a lot of this coming from President Donald Trump.

So what we're seeing does reflect nationalism.

So we see this Quinnipiac poll also shows that there is more momentum for the Cittarelli camp right now.

Daniel, I want to just ask you, as much as Mikie Sherrill's tried to make this a referendum on Donald Trump, at the end of the day, seeing these polls come out and seeing that right now it looks like Cittarelli has more momentum, is this election really just a referendum on Governor Phil Murphy?

I think that that really depends on what campaign you're talking to, because if you talk to the Democrats, they'll say, "This is a referendum on the Trump presidency."

If you talk to the Republicans, they'll say, "This is a referendum on the Trenton Democrats, and if you want eight more years of Phil Murphy."

And I think that another key part of the election in determining who comes out on top is what message resonates more.

Is it the message that Donald Trump is going to make your life unaffordable, and that there are threats to democracy and therefore he's on the ballot, or is the message going to be New Jersey is headed on the wrong path, taxes are very high, and the same party has been in control for, in the state legislature, for two decades or so now.

So I think that you're going to see both.

I was just going to say, so I think that's a really key part of it, and we'll see which moment is out.

Yeah, Jelani, we are still in a government shutdown right now.

It is the second longest in U.S.

history.

We've heard some rumblings, the president doubling down this week on the fact that he says he's going to terminate gateway funding.

Obviously, this has given the Sherril campaign some teeth where she can come out pretty boldly against this.

It's one of the areas where she's been strongest in terms of her messaging on the campaign trail.

Do you think that this is actually an issue that gets voters engaged who might not otherwise come out to the polls?

Well, it'll be an issue that may get some North Jersey voters out to the polls as far as whether or not South Jersey or you know Central Jersey residents are that plugged in to the Gateway Tunnel Project.

That's always been the magic question when it comes to transit in New Jersey period.

You know transit in New Jersey has always been a very North Jersey centric thing but to be clear you know New Jerseyans don't exactly have the best relationship with public transit as it relates to New York.

You know you've got the congestion pricing and now you've got this getting shut down.

And so it may get some North Jersey voters to the poll, but as far as Central Jerseyans and South Jerseyans, more than likely no.

A couple of follow-ups there.

Cittarelli really has stayed out of this.

He's stayed pretty quiet and Sherril's tried to come after him and say, "Look, this is a major New Jersey issue.

He doesn't care about it.

He's not speaking out on it."

Do you think it's been a smart political strategy for him to hang back, obviously not incurring any ire from the president?

Well, what the Ciattarelli campaign is betting on is exactly what I talked about earlier, to a certain extent, that Central Jerseyans and South Jerseyans won't really care a lot about it, and that also a lot of the Republicans who feel as if public transit doesn't really affect them in the areas that they live in, the Ciattarelli campaign is essentially making that bet that it's not worth it to begin with.

And that's really what it comes down to, is the demographics of who's really into public transit.

Aliya, we've got some early voting numbers coming in already.

Vote by mail has been an option that seems isn't going anywhere.

Voters are increasingly using it.

We also know that early in-person voting starts this week.

But what can you tell us just in terms of who's actually still using this vote by mail option this election season?

- Yeah, so perhaps unsurprisingly, we're seeing more Democrats using the vote by mail option.

I think that's kind of in line with what we would expect and I'd hesitate to make, to draw any big conclusions about the race based off of that.

You know, we have seen a shift in messaging nationally on the Republican side to be more open to vote by mail, but really just looking at the messaging from when vote by mail began, it really is something that Democrats are embracing more.

So I'm really looking forward to seeing what turnout looks like for the early voting that, as you said, starts this weekend, because with that, Republicans who maybe are skeptical of putting their ballots in the mailbox, they can still vote at a time that's more convenient for them than election day, but still do that in-person process.

- Yeah, so far, 439,000 mail-in ballots have been returned as of this morning.

That number is changing constantly.

We get updates throughout the day.

Daniel, what are you thinking in terms of voter turnout for this election?

Do you think we see record numbers like we did in the presidential election, given the fact that it's a non-federal election?

- Well, I don't think that... The thing about New Jersey has always been that there's less attention in the off-year elections than in the even-year elections or whether it be the midterms or presidential race.

So it's really hard to predict what the turnout model could be and it's also a little bit hard to say what a larger turnout would be because what we saw in 2021 is that the turnout in the governor's race was much higher than what people anticipated and all those people that came to turn out were Republicans or conservative leaning independents.

If you have a large turnout in this election, it could also mean that you have a lot of energized Democrats who don't like what's happening with the Trump administration and who do feel like that this is in fact a referendum on the Trump presidency.

So I think it's a little bit hard to interpret what a large turnout would mean at this moment.

Yeah, we will be watching.

Aliya Schneider, Jelani Gibson, and Daniel Hahn, thank you for joining us this week.

That's all we've got for this week's Reporters Roundtable.

You can follow me on Instagram @joannagagisNJ and go ahead and scan that QR code on your screen for more Reporters Roundtable.

For all the crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, I'm Joanna Gagis.

Thanks for being with us.

Have a great weekend.

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