(upbeat music) - From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi.

- Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Wednesday night.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

Tonight, a few stories we're digging into later in the broadcast.

One-on-one with Congressman Jeff Van Drew, we talk saving the shoreline and the Trump agenda.

Plus, speaking of the president, he's now flip-flopping on mail-in ballots.

And born in Jersey, we get a taste of a new breed of tomato raised and harvested at our very own Rutgers University.

First, though, it's a red-hot political label, but in largely blue New Jersey, the MAGA movement isn't fully sticking.

A new Rutgers-Eagleton poll out today finds about half of likely voters here oppose President Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement, while just 34 percent of all voters polled say they support it to some degree.

But the poll also shows Republicans in the state are overwhelmingly embracing the movement.

Eighty percent of registered GOP voters are behind it.

It's also almost universally rejected by Democrats, and independents appear to be leaning away.

Demographics tell the story here.

White, older, and non-college educated voters are more likely to go MAGA.

Young voters, women, people of color, and those with college degrees are overwhelmingly against it.

The numbers represent a shift in the state's GOP from traditionally moderate routes to embrace the president's far-right national agenda.

And it comes after the president gained ground here in the Jersey election in 2024, losing by just six percentage points.

Poll director Ashley Koning says the Trump factor is key to the election for governor this November.

That's the million-dollar question.

And we know that Chitarelli embraced Trump during the primaries this time around.

And I think, you know, the numbers are somewhat of a mixed bag.

We, of course, see MAGA opponents, who are squarely in Cheryl's corner, but they're not squarely in Cheryl's corner as much as MAGA supporters are in Chitarelli's.

And when we get down once again to that key independent voting block, with independents, we see that they are more mixed, especially even among the MAGA opponent independents and among the MAGA supporter independents, we see large numbers for Chittarelli.

So, you know, this is a very careful game for both candidates to play.

Also tonight, a Toms River church is giving up its plans to open a homeless shelter after facing intense pushback from township officials.

The Toms River Zoning Board earlier this summer rejected a variance needed by Christ Episcopal Church to open the shelter and the church announced this week it won't appeal that decision.

Church leaders first announced their plans roughly a year ago to open a homeless shelter as part of efforts to expand community outreach services.

There's currently no homeless shelters open in Ocean County and residents in the area have consistently opposed opening one.

At a May hearing about the church's plan, some locals raised safety concerns.

Meanwhile, Tom's River Mayor Daniel Roderick had previously made his own proposal using eminent domain to seize the church property and redevelop it into a park.

The mayor's plan is currently on hold and church leaders have vowed to fight any seizure attempts if it moves forward.

And in our Spotlight on Business report, scammers are targeting your electric bills.

The State Board of Public Utilities is warning residents to watch out for fraudsters who are posing as utility representatives over the phone.

They're asking customers for personal and banking information to help them enroll for that $100 credit approved by the BPU earlier this summer.

That credit, by the way, is automatically applied to your account.

And it's meant to offer a little relief for the nearly 4 million customers who have an active account with one of the state's four major public utility companies.

This is all as energy bills spike as high as 20% thanks to rising costs and increased demand on the grid.

Those soaring electric rates have become a major political issue in Trenton this summer too with finger pointing over just who's to blame.

If you do get one of those bogus calls, the BPU says you should immediately hang up and file a complaint by calling the board's hotline or filling out a form on their website.

Support for The Business Report is provided by Riverview Jazz.

Presenting the Jersey City Latin Jazz Festival, September 5th through 6th.

Event details, including performance schedules and location, are online at jerseycitylatinjazzfestival.com.

Coming up, one-on-one with Congressman Jeff Van Drew.

- From saving the shoreline to touting the Trump agenda, we asked the representative what he's doing to bring Jersey's fight to Washington.

- Major funding for NJ Spotlight News is provided in part by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, and by the PSCG Foundation.

- Well, the Jersey Shore is getting ready to wrap up another strong summer, but some beach towns are facing a future of uncertainty after Hurricane Erin stripped away large chunks of the coastline.

Local leaders say a lack of federal support is putting the shore, tourism, and the local economy at risk.

Congressman Jeff Van Drew, whose district includes much of South Jersey's coast, We met this week with Shoretown leaders and the Army Corps of Engineers to talk about beach projects and resilience funding amid mounting pressure as Congress scales back federal dollars to pay for it.

Representative Jeff Van Drew joins me now for more.

Congressman, it's good to see you.

We appreciate your time.

Let's start with Hurricane Erin.

Yesterday you met with several mayors of shore towns and other state officials.

What concerns did they share with you about how this storm battered coastal communities and what assurances did you give them that the federal government will be able to help provide some protection?

Well it was a great meeting.

We had I guess about 30, 35 people there, mostly mayors, council people, but we had some administrators, engineers.

We had the Army Corps of Engineers, their engineers, as well as the Department of Environmental Protection from the state of New Jersey.

I wanted to do a comprehensive meeting where people could really get a sense of where we were, where we are now, and where we want to go, which I think is important with any situation or project.

So let me say about Aaron, first of all, yes, it was a storm, absolutely.

And thank God it didn't hit land because that was a big storm.

Our mayors are used to this part of living at the shore.

And let me say, I have, you know, the largest district in the state of New Jersey.

It is actually bigger than the state of Delaware.

And I have a really big chunk of the Jersey shore.

We had folks from Ocean County, which is in my district, all the way down to Cape May County and everything in between.

And we talked about, you know, the effects of Aaron.

And of course, in some areas, they were virtually untouched.

Other areas had some hotspot erosion and some problems that existed.

Some had exacerbated some conditions.

Some it was new, but they're used to it.

But the big issue is, you know, how is it funded and what do we do?

And there is an erroneous belief out there sometimes that this is funded in budgets.

For years, it's never been funded in budgets straight out.

And in fact, in New Jersey, for years, we have done continuing resolutions.

We've had some rescissions.

We've had some other forms of funding, but we haven't actually done that.

And we've done reconciliation, which is different as well.

The money that we got for all these big projects that have taken place in the past, and we'll talk about the past first, was money that came from supplemental funding, money that came from earmarks that I did, money that came from the Transportation and Infrastructure Bill, which I voted for and supported because I knew it would do a great deal for New Jersey and that was very important as well.

And it came from even a little bit of Sandy funding that was left over.

So we were able to do a lot.

Congressman, if I can just have you to be clear, to clarify for viewers, because Republicans in the House Appropriations Committee did vote to reduce funding for beach replenishment projects from the usual $200 million to $60 million.

So what's the discrepancy here that you're talking about?

- The discrepancy is there hasn't been money in any budget in years now that actually got out of appropriations.

It usually isn't done there.

It is done in reconciliation in some parts, but this reconciliation didn't do that.

It's done by supplemental funding.

It's done by earmarks.

It's done in other ways.

All the money that's come in over the most recent years, there was no cut.

It was never in any budget.

What a committee does is far different than what the final product does.

And many years it's been cut or has not been in there.

Nothing was cut because nothing was in there, which is not unusual.

We knew that this year we're going to take a pause.

And next year we're already working not only on a '26 budget, but on other sources of money to come in.

And the mayors all understand that.

They were, it was very clear with them and they understood it.

Again, the money that came in, the money that came in, came in from supplemental money.

It came from money that came in from earmarks that I did.

It came from a little bit of Sandy funding and it came in from the transportation and infrastructure money, which was a lot.

Now the problem is those sources have run out.

And let me just jump in, Congressman, just to ask you about that then.

Then what have you told the mayors then about how you'll help collect that money through these alternate routes?

Because I know the state has matching funds ready to go.

The DEP says, though, that without the federal dollars there from whatever route, there's nothing to match.

So can you tell me about that conversation?

Yeah, and there's no reason to think there wouldn't be.

And the DEP was there, and they're supportive.

We work hand in glove with the Army Corps of Engineers.

And when erroneous information comes out, which we just spoke about, when we say that something was caught or something was done, frankly, the Army Corps of Engineers was very upset as well, because that was not accurate.

Now, where's the money going to come from?

We are looking at money where we can find it.

And in transportation and infrastructure, we're working with the Office of Management and Budget to find money there that can be moved from projects not at the coastal shore, but that are in other areas, not even in New Jersey, that aren't going to come to fruition or be needed for a number of years.

To move that money through OMB to fund this.

Secondly, we're looking for a permanent source of funding so that nobody has to go through this year after year after year, which has been the history of this, through leases and other things that are done when there's leasing going on, that there be a permanent fund from those lease dollars that come in that would go right to beach replenishment.

So we're looking at multiple sources.

What we're also looking at is to make beach restoration more permanent.

One of the things the mayors agreed on, and we all agreed on, it is a shame.

Literally, there were projects that had just finished up a couple of weeks ago, that 50% of the sand was washed away with just one storm.

We have that all the time.

So we're looking into doing permanent structure and new ideas.

We got money in there to actually $16.5 billion to look at, I'm sorry, million dollars, to look at different alternative ways to keep sand where we place it instead of having it immediately wash away.

So we're doing all of that.

What are some of those alternatives, Congressman?

I mean, given the intensity that these storms are bringing, the frequency, as you mentioned, is it a sustainable strategy, the replenishment, the nourishment projects that you would support continuing?

Of course, we would look the shore.

We rely on beautiful beaches.

New Jersey has some of the most beautiful beaches in the country.

We were the only state in the entire union when we got this money to study this and for hot spot erosion as well in Atlantic City, we did get money there as well.

The only state in the union that got it was New Jersey.

And by the way, we are number two in the country for beach funding.

Only Florida, which has a lot more coasts than we do, gets more money than we do in New Jersey.

We've been damn successful.

We're doing well.

We're going to continue to do well.

One of the things we need to look at are groins.

And we need to make sure that, again, we establish structure that won't create harm, that will actually be good, in keeping the sand there.

That's a real big deal.

The one thing that the mayors agree, we all agree, certainly the public and the taxpayer agrees, we've got to figure out better ways to do this.

And it's become more expensive than ever to do it.

Congressman, let me switch gears just for a very quick moment.

Just to -- we're, of course, looking at the November election coming up here in the state with the governor's race.

Vote-by-mail ballots are set to go out in just a couple of weeks.

I wanted to give you a chance to clarify.

I know there were comments made recently about vote-by-mail ballots going out to deceased residents in the state that you had been notified about.

Can you clarify that for us?

- I think it's pretty clear, when especially when we had the COVID, I'm particularly talking about the election during COVID, I had many people, not one, not two, not three, but good numbers of people who brought them in.

They had relatives who had passed away and yet they were still sent ballots.

We had people that came into our office with multiple ballots for them, for the same person.

We had people who had moved and since didn't live there that had gone through that.

We had people in apartment buildings that said there were ballots, vote-by-mail ballots, that were just strewn around the apartment building, just laying around.

They didn't know who they belonged to, what was going on, and nobody was really monitoring that.

That's unacceptable.

We shouldn't do that.

I believe in early voting.

Here's what I believe in.

Early voting on the machine, no problem.

We can do that weeks early.

It's great.

It helps people with schedules.

If you are sick, if you are disabled, if you are away in business for a long, prolonged period of time and there's nothing you can do, certainly you can still have vote by mail.

But vote by mail, the way it was done, is not the main way people should be voting.

Representative Jeff Van Drew, we have to leave it there.

We thank you for your time and your insight.

You got it.

Yeah, as you heard there in that conversation, mail-in voting is getting a lot of attention at the national level as we get closer to New Jersey's gubernatorial election in November with ballots set to go out across the state in just three weeks.

President Trump is also renewing his push to end the option by issuing an executive order banning the method outright, writing on Truth Social recently that, quote, "Elections can never be honest with mail-in ballots or voting," although there's no evidence that mail-in ballots are used to commit voter fraud on a large scale in the U.S. Our senior writer Colleen Odea joins us for more on how it works, what safeguards are in place, and why it's once again a flashpoint ahead of key races this fall.

- Colleen, lots going on in the vote by mail conversation.

I wanna ask you though, do you expect vote by mail to be a major factor for the November election here?

When we consider recent primary races or past cycles, where does it stand?

- Yeah, so certainly this year in New Jersey, I think it will continue, there will be vote by mail, and it will be a big factor.

New Jerseyans have embraced vote by mail really very strongly since the 2018 midterms, the congressional midterms.

And so now we pretty much have, I mean, at the least 20% of votes cast in a general election are by mail, but it can range as high as 35 or 36%.

- You note in your reporting in the past that three Democrats for every one Republican use this method.

How then is that shaping how campaigns, how candidates look at it, where they spend their time, their money, their efforts?

- I mean, it's really changed what, the way that elections are run here.

You know, it used to be that you tried to get all of your, you know, you ran ads, you sent out mailers, but you really tried to concentrate things in that month leading up to election day.

Now there's a lot more of front loading.

There's a lot more that happens, you know, now, but it's been happening over the summer, but certainly happens in September because the campaigns know that people are going to start voting by the end of September as well as then through till election day.

Yeah, there's so much that goes on behind the scenes before most folks anyway really think about it in earnest.

I'm curious though, I mean that number, three Democrats for every one Republican who use vote by mail, is that perhaps a reason why we're seeing this being targeted, why it's under attack and really being repealed in a lot of states outside of New Jersey that were on the forefront of it, that were red states that pushed for vote by mail decades ago.

Right.

So we know that one of the first states in 1991 was Arizona, and it was controlled by Republicans at the time.

And yeah, there's a, you know, there's, things have, things have changed so much.

Utah is a state that allows all elections to be fully by, by mail.

And that's something that, again, is under attack in that state, another, another red state.

You know, there's always been a little bit of a divide between Democrats and Republicans, but it really got much, the gap got much larger when Donald Trump came in in the first term in 2016 and he questioned vote by mail and the, you know, the safety of it, the integrity of it.

And, you know, that continued until the 2024 election when Republicans said, you know, we've been lagging behind this.

If we don't embrace this process that a lot of people find to be very, it's convenient, right?

You can vote whenever you want.

You're sitting in your, you know, in front of the TV or in front of your computer, in your comfy chair at home.

You know, if we don't embrace this, we're going to lose some votes.

There are going to be people we don't get.

And so, in fact, in the spring of 2024, Donald Trump said, you know, absentee balloting is what he called it.

And there is a slight difference.

But, you know, he did embrace it then.

And, certainly, we saw a lot of congressional candidates in New Jersey sending out mailers saying, don't forget to vote by mail.

Here's how you can get your mail in ballot.

Well, and now he claims that he can end it nationwide through an executive order.

Legally, can he do that?

So, legal experts say that he cannot.

The Constitution provides that the states conduct elections in the manner that they see fit.

Now, if Congress were to pass a law saying that vote by mail could not, couldn't be used, or at least no excuse vote by mail could be used in federal elections, that is something that legal experts say they could do.

It still could be challenged in courts, but certainly for statewide elections like we are having this year, that is not a place that the federal government could step in and tell us how or how not to conduct the election.

Colleen O'Day, thank you so much.

Thanks very much, Brie.

There is a new Jersey tomato in town, and it's got scientists, farmers, and just Jersey fresh lovers talking.

Rutgers University today officially unveiled its latest tomato variety called the Scarlet Sunrise.

It took nearly a decade of research, crossbreeding, trial and error to perfect it, and it made its public debut today at the university's annual tomato tasting event, where visitors got a first bite and a behind-the-scenes look at the science that brought it to life.

Raven Santana was there and even got to try one.

She joins us now from the event.

Hey, Raven.

Hi, Brie.

Yes, the star of the show is a Jersey tomato and it's called the Scarlet Sunrise.

It's a sweet, crack-resistant grape tomato that took researchers over 10 years to perfect.

And today, the public will get to taste it at this annual tomato tasting event.

10 out of 10.

10 out of 10.

Super sweet.

Delicious.

Juicy.

Scale of 1 to 10.

Developed by Rutgers scientists Peter Nisch and Tom Orton, the Scarlet Sunrise blends the firmness of a traditional grape tomato with the sweetness and striking color of a bi-color variety.

In this case, Tom and I got together and we were working with a seed company with a red grape tomato that they had, a commercial red grape, which tasted great.

But we realized quickly that in the marketplace, good tasting red grape tomatoes look exactly like not so great tasting red grape tomatoes.

So we decided to try and make an identifiable grape tomato.

We did this by, well Tom did this mostly in the greenhouse, by moving the pollen from one tomato plant to another.

We identified an heirloom variety called Isis Candy, which is a cherry tomato, which tastes good but cracks a lot.

And so he crossed that with the red grape commercial variety to give it some crack resistance, give it that grape tomato shape, and the result is Scarlet Sunrise.

Visitors were able to taste dozens of tomato the farm and meet the rese cross pollinating to bring from the lab to the field get it to market.

We're w available to farmers and the launch of Scarlet Sun Prize offers a little good news for Jersey agriculture.

So in addition to tasting, there's also wagon tours because what's so important to this annual event is also education.

Yeah, we have a lot of different faculty doing all kinds of research in agriculture and natural resources.

So lots of interesting projects that the public learn about what we're doing to help the farmers, local farmers, and protect the environment at the same time.

You talked about having a really tough growing season.

Can you elaborate as to why?

- It's been tough, 'cause early on we had a lot of rain, some water-soaked fields, hard to plant, and also a lot of rain encourages diseases, fungals diseases, likes moisture.

And then it got hot, really hot.

And tomatoes, while they like it warm, it gets above 90 degrees, 70 degrees at night.

The flowers don't pollinate well, sometimes they actually drop off and abort.

- And right behind where we're standing, you are actually working on a new variety of tomatoes.

- Yeah, so this is Scarlet Sunrise here, which gets over eight feet tall.

You can see it taller than me.

And we're working to make it a more compact plant.

So this is hard to manage sometimes for farmers and gardeners.

We're working to make a Scarlet Sunrise that's shorter.

I'm not sure what we're gonna name it.

So whether you're a farmer, a foodie, or just someone who loves Jersey tomatoes, the event is a chance to see and taste the science behind the scarlet sunrise.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Raven Santana.

That's gonna do it for us tonight, but a reminder, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, you can always follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

And if you want to help support the programming public media brings you and keep stations like this one thriving, head to NJSpotlightNews.org/donate.

I'm Briana Vannozzi for the entire team at NJ Spotlight News.

Thanks for being with us.

Have a great night.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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