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Credit: (Screenshot from YouTube)The two women seeking to become New Jersey lieutenant governors made clear the political differences of their tickets during a Tuesday night debate that was calm and silent compared to last week’s heated gubernatorial debate.
Democrat Sheila Y. Oliver, elected with Gov. Phil Murphy in 2017, spent much of the hour-long debate in front of a small audience at Rider University in Lawrenceville defending the Murphy’s administration’s response to the pandemic COVID-19 and other issues. Republican Diane Allen, a former state senator alongside Jack Ciattarelli, has spent much of her time criticizing the actions of the Murphy administration for the past four years.
“New Jersey is broken,” Allen said in his closing statement. “I don’t think Phil Murphy and Sheila Oliver care enough about the people of New Jersey… If you cared about the people of New Jersey, you wouldn’t have handed over sick COVID patients to nursing homes and 8,000 people would die. You wouldn’t have closed the small businesses… You would have got people unemployment checks on time, you wouldn’t have had to wait months, motor vehicles would have been taken care of.
In his conclusion, Oliver repeated one of Murphy’s talking points about “moving New Jersey forward” and not going back, presumably to the policies in place when former Republican Gov. Chris Christie was in power.
“In the Murphy-Oliver administration, we can walk and chew gum at the same time; we can focus on investing in education and health care, and making sure our small businesses can thrive, ”said Oliver. “We are going to move New Jersey forward, include everyone and not perpetuate the division in the state of New Jersey.”
Murphy, Ciattarelli will debate again
The debate was the only one between the candidates for the post of lieutenant governor. Murphy debated Ciattarelli for the first time last week and the two are due to meet one last time before the November 2 election Tuesday night at 8 p.m. in a debate co-sponsored by NJ Spotlight News at Rowan University of Glassboro.
In New Jersey, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor are elected like a ticket.
The lieutenant governor takes over whenever the governor is out of state or incapacitated and would take over if he left office. The post was created in 2005 when voters approved a proposed change to the state’s constitution after a succession of Senate Speakers served as acting governor for the previous five years. The first lieutenant governor, Republican Kim Guadagno, was elected in 2009.
Allen and Oliver both said in response to a question that they believed the post was important and New Jersey needed it. Responding to a recent poll that found few people know who the candidates for lieutenant governor are, Oliver said more people need to be “civically” involved, to which Allen agreed.
What they didn’t agree on
The women had other points of agreement. But most of the time, they disagreed on issues ranging from vaccine mandates to gun control. Another topic they fought over was the Murphy’s administration record on women.
“Governor Phil Murphy is the only governor, in my experience, who has women at the table to make decisions, important decisions, on a day-to-day basis,” said Oliver, who spent 14 years in the Assembly and was the first and only African American to serve as a speaker. “Half of our firm is made up of women, women occupying very important and prestigious positions, women capable of orienting their department in several directions. This did not exist in other governors’ administrations. You had to, like, call daddy to ask him.
But Allen repeated Ciattarelli’s comments in ads and during last week’s debate that Murphy’s 2017 campaign was ‘toxic’ and that the governor had ignored allegations of rape and other issues in the prison alone. for women in the state for more than a year.
“If there’s a problem and the woman has a problem, it can’t be found,” Allen said of Murphy.
Allen spent 22 years in the Legislature – all but two as a senator – before retiring in 2018. She said Tuesday night that she remains the moderate Republican she has been throughout her career. . She easily won her election despite serving with two members of the Democratic Assembly in a Burlington County district that leaned blue. Allen, 73, a former journalist, is now president of a media production company and lives in Edgewater Park.
Oliver, who described himself as “socially progressive and fiscally responsible” on Tuesday night, is also the commissioner of the State Department of Community Affairs. In addition to her 14 years in the assembly, which she left to become the state’s deputy lieutenant governor, she is a former school board member and county commissioner and a former university instructor. Oliver, 69, lives in East Orange.
Voting considerations
It is unclear how much influence voters’ views on candidates for lieutenant governor influence who to support in elections. State law requires that candidate lieutenant governors participate in one debate and that candidates for governor take two more when they accept public funding for their campaigns.
The final governor’s debate is scheduled for October 12 at 8 p.m. and will be broadcast live on NJ PBS stations and WNYC radio, as well as live on njspotlightnews.com, YouTube and the WNYC and Rowan University websites. In addition to NJ Spotlight News, the sponsors are WNYC, New York Public Radio, The Gothamist, and the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.
The New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission chose the sponsors for the debate. So far, Murphy has received over $ 8.8 million while Ciattarelli has received nearly $ 6.3 million in public dollars for his general election campaigns.
Only eligible candidates benefiting from public funding are required to participate in the debates. There are three more governor’s notes on this year’s ballot: Madelyn Hoffman for governor with Heather Warburton for the Green Party, Gregg Mele with Eveline Brownstein for the Libertarian Party and Joanne Kuniansky with Vivian Sahner for the Socialist Workers’ Party.
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