The Democratic frontrunner for the governor’s race is starting to come into focus as another political heavyweight decides against running. Senate President Steve Sweeney announced today that he would not seek his party’s nomination to run against the popular Republican, Gov. Chris Christie. He is the latest high profile Democrat declining to enter the race. Newark Mayor Cory Booker already made his announcement over a month ago and former Gov. Richard Codey made his decision last week. That leaves Sen. Barbara Buono (D-18) as the only declared Democratic candidate. NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider sat down with Buono for an in-depth interview from the New Jersey State House in Trenton.
The decisions by Sweeney, Codey and Booker give Buono, so far, frontrunner status for the Democratic Party’s nomination. A growing list of key Democrats is backing her candidacy. U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone was added to that list today with his endorsement of Buono at a press conference.
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Despite the attention to the big names not in the race, Buono says her focus has been on her own campaign and taking New Jersey in a different direction.
“I think I’m doing a disservice to the people that I’m seeking to represent as governor of the state of New Jersey by focusing on all the background noise and all the machinations,” said Buono.
Buono says she’s been pleased with the gradual progression of her campaign which officially began on Dec. 11 when she announced her candidacy in Middlesex County, her home county. And the momentum has been building ever since, she says, first with Somerset County and then Monmouth and Ocean counties.
“I’ve been focusing on gaining that support, but most important, what I find most rewarding is the support and the enthusiasm I’ve been encountering across the state of New Jersey as I talk to people cause you know I feel the struggle because I grew up like that,” she said. “I didn’t come from much and I was fortunate I was able to go to Montclair State, to pay my way through Montclair State and Rutgers Law School with working and loans. But you know, back then, higher education was affordable and there were jobs to pay off those loans when you got out.”
But should she get to the general election, she would be facing an incumbent with record-high approval ratings. But as she points out, it’s only January, and as far as she’s concerned, those poll numbers are artificially inflated.
“You know the governor said Sandy erased the blackboard but it didn’t erase the problems that we had going into the storm.” One of the pre-Sandy problems she cites is the high cost of higher education which she says puts it out of the reach for many in the state. “The days of the high paying, low skill jobs, they’re a thing of the past, and our kids need to have that opportunity to gain the skills, the education and the training.”
New Jersey, she says, has been losing high paying jobs in key sectors like the pharmaceutical industry. According to Buono, it’s not just low taxes that lure businesses to one state over another, citing as an example, the departure of the Swiss drug maker Roche from Nutley to New York City.
“The Lower East Side of Manhattan is not exactly a low tax shelter,” she said. “California, Massachusetts — that’s where a lot of them are going. And what those states have is a stronger partnership, a concentration of university partnerships, research partnerships with private industry.”
To keep and lure lucrative employers in the state, she says she’s worked on legislation that was supported by NJ PRO, a business policy group.
“It would have vested our Economic Development Authority (EDA) here in New Jersey with the power to create those partnerships to facilitate research partnerships between the new emerging markets that have good paying jobs and universities, and the governor vetoed it,” Buono explained. “We have it up again. Hopefully he thinks twice about it now and perhaps he’ll sign it.”
In addition to the Sweeney decision, the other major news coming out of Trenton today was Gov. Christie’s conditional veto of the minimum wage bill which would have raised the minimum wage to $8.25 from the current $7.25. Gov. Chris Christie says he wants to see a $1 hike in the minimum wage phased in over three years.
Buono calls the governor’s conditional veto “unconscionable,” saying “the cost of living is so high in this state, I mean, it’s very difficult to live on the minimum wage if you have a family.”
She admits that she has ruffled some feathers within her own party during the pension reform vote. At the time, she called the bill a result of “back-room deals” that undermined the collective bargaining process. But she makes no apologies for the position she took, saying that it was the right thing to do even if it cost her politically.
“When I was majority leader, I drew a line in the sand when it came to eliminating collective bargaining for employee health benefits, but years before that, I spearheaded common sense pension reforms,” she said. “You know what? I would do it again and I think that somebody that has political courage would make a good leader. I think that the fact that I knew that I was going to lose my majority leader position — that didn’t come as a surprise to me.