- [Narrator] Major funding for "Chat Box with David Cruz" is provided by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of New Jersey residents and businesses for more than 100 years.
Promotional support is provided by Insider NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.
Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players an interactive forum for ideas, discussion, and insight.
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[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] - Hey everybody, welcome to "Chat Box".
I'm David Cruz.
We're packing up for the summer around here, which means document shredding and email deleting.
But within that process, we came across some chats that we found interesting and entertaining, and we thought you might enjoy them too.
We start with some politics because, well, New Jersey.
You heard the governor, it's cool to be from Jersey again, no?
- Well, listen, I think he's smoking some of that cannabis that he desperately wants to be approved.
Things are not as great as the governor would portray them to be, but we expect this from a state of the state, particularly from this kind of governor, where he's gonna do the victory dance.
- You know, when you're dealing with $50.6 billion, as last year's budget was, the 9 million New Jerseyans deserve to have this administration be more transparent and accountable.
- New Jerseyans are feeling the squeeze, and they also have other issues like crime.
You see a lot of these car break-ins and car thefts, and that's like a regular thing on the news every time now.
And you also see things like school curriculum and a lot of parents engaging in school board elections and in school board meetings 'cause they're not happy with what's being taught or how it's being taught.
I think all these issues are issues that lean towards Republicans.
I'll take all three of those in a head to head matchup with the Democrats, so, you know, we're looking forward to the fight.
- All right.
- Is that what was expected in the red wave that never happened, Chris?
All those issues.
- 2021 was a pretty good red wave in New Jersey, so we're looking to finish it off.
2025, here we come.
- 2021, they're gonna live off the 2021 experience as long as they can, but this is 2023, Chris, so.
- I understand, I'm looking for a good year this year, and '25 to come after that.
- Let's look ahead, not backwards.
- Last time we talked, you said you were leaning towards running for governor.
What's going into your thinking as far as that?
- I'm leaning more, I think.
- You're leaning more?
- I'm leaning more.
If I was to run for governor here in 2025, you know, I would do it regardless of what the traditional structure thinks or approves or doesn't approve.
You try to get everybody involved, but I wouldn't just be playing for that inside game, because I really don't think that's the ultimate way to be consequential in this business.
- Is it too early to declare for governor, as Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop has done?
- [Stephen] Listen, everyone's gonna do what they think is what's best for them, so I'm not gonna question what Steve has done.
In fact, he's declared for the reason, I guess he feels this is his time to go forward.
I think most importantly for us is the 2023 election, because it's the election that's in front of you which is the most important.
- Yeah.
There's a 501c4, I think just one that was formed to support any efforts that you might have.
You're running out of things to run for, Senator.
What's your timetable for making an announcement for governor?
- The timetable will be when it's right, David.
And you're correct, there was a 501c4 that was written about, just like other people that are considering running, and we'll go from there.
- And we see a fair number of women who are stepping aside, whether on their own or because they're being forced out, by, you know, for whatever reason.
We also see that there are, certainly on my side of the aisle, and certainly on the other side, is a number of women who are stepping up as well.
- Patricia Campos, you're on a mission to recruit more women to run.
What obstacles are you finding?
- The fact is is that more women since Hillary Clinton lost have stepped up and decided to run for office, even here in New Jersey, so we're in a good trend.
The Center for American Women in Politics recently issued a report in which it actually said that we were on a downtrend, even here in New Jersey.
- Let's start at the top here with the governor making it official that he's all in on watching that corporate business tax expire.
As promised, he said.
Michelle, why is that good?
- Well, first of all, it's the right thing to do.
Promise made, promise kept.
It was a temporary surcharge at a time that the business community respectfully said, we understand, Governor, you need some time to get your arms around the budget, we'll give you some leeway to do that.
It was supposed to expire two years ago.
Of course, we were at the cusp of COVID.
Business community again stepped back and said, we understand, Governor, we're kind of staring down a black hole, don't know what's gonna come of COVID.
Well, here we are today with a $10 billion surplus, okay?
A very strong economy and no reason to keep what was supposed to be a temporary tax in place, especially one that makes New Jersey an extreme outlier.
You know, we're the highest corporate business tax in the nation, and even after this sunsets, we'll still be in the top four.
- Sheila, what's your side of that argument?
- Well, when you look at it in the context of ongoing soaring profits, it's really hard to grapple with this decision for several reasons, not the least of which is the shocking admission in the budget and brief that the sunset will be a $1 billion giveaway to these wealthy corporations next fiscal season.
And so this revenue source is much larger than originally estimated back in 2018 because profits are very, very strong.
- [David] You're ensured that these people are of high quality?
By whom?
- My conversations with the governor's office and the individual names that they've indicated to me.
- This is not how government or democracy should work.
We shouldn't just be giving a one-off type of situation, it doesn't make any sense, and we're circumventing the process that works.
We need a process that's...
These are public roles important for demo...
This in particular for elec is important for democracy.
We need a government that is accountable to the people, and as you noted, there's two branches of the government for a reason.
There's checks and balances for a reason.
This circumvents all of that.
- How many strictly adult use, not medical first dispensaries are operating around the state on this 4/20?
- So, as of today, we have more businesses up and running that are able to serve our medical patients, 'cause our medical patients come first.
- Understood, but that's not what the question was.
I'm talking about those who are not specifically kind of pre-approved to be in the industry because they're able to serve the medical needs of the state.
- Well, the good thing is that we have awarded 100 licenses to new cannabis industry, new cannabis businesses, and they are getting close to the finish line.
- I know you said that the last time we spoke, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, but the question was, how many are operating right now who are not in the medical business first?
- We don't have any adult use-only businesses operating right now.
- Listen, I am a born and raised Jersey girl.
I love dunking on New York as much as the next guy.
We have better pizza and we have better bagels.
But right now, we don't have a better transit system, and we don't have a better way to fund it.
New York's congestion pricing plan has nothing to do with New Jersey's transit issues.
New Jersey lawmakers are proposing service cuts and fare hikes before they even consider funding New Jersey Transit at its pre pandemic level.
- How is this not a return to Trump style immigration policy?
- Well, I'm afraid that the president's vision, which I actually authored when he asked me to at the beginning of his first part of his term, has gone by the wayside.
And the administration has been reactive to the challenges at the border.
But the border issues are not simply about enforcement, although enforcement is part of it.
The border issues is what drives people to come to the border.
What pull factors do we have in our economy that lure people to come to the border?
What's happening in some of of our neighboring countries?
David, right now, the three biggest groups of people at the border, they're not Mexicans, they're not Central Americans.
They're Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Cubans.
What do those three groups have in common?
Dictatorships.
- Is Christie the guy to kind of temper Donald Trump's rhetoric, push him back on his heels a little bit?
Unshameable, right?
- Yeah.
I mean, the last thing I wanna do is comment on the...
I don't even understand the Republican side, often, of the aisle.
These are human beings, some of them I know.
I know Chris Christie, I consider him a friend.
I know Tim Scott, I consider him a friend.
Some of the other players on the Republican side.
I sent Chris a note just saying I'm praying for you and your family.
There are very few people in the state that know how incredibly hard it is to run for president of the United States.
How grueling, how challenging, the hits you're taking.
So again, I hope whatever emerges on that side is a voice that matches Joe Biden's desire to heal the soul of this nation.
Enough of us trying to destroy each other.
- Yeah, let me put the health warning on the side of the cigarette pack.
Chris Christie's not my guy.
Joe Biden is my guy.
Period.
Having said that, I think people underestimate Chris, and he is particularly good at prosecuting a political argument, and he is completely 1,000% right about President Trump and this indictment.
I'm referring now to the top secret and the documents.
All these other Republicans are attacking institutions that are the umpires, that call balls and strikes, and they have for 250 years, largely successfully in our country.
He's one of very few.
Asa Hutchinson, a dear friend, former president, governor of Arkansas is another example.
There are two few voices in that party speaking truth to power and calling it like it is, and Chris is one of them.
- Let's talk about the aftermath of this.
Let's start with the CCTV video.
It looks terrible.
We should say, just for the record, that the cyclist was going into the intersection against the light, he had the red light.
But when you go through that and you see...
I mean, you didn't stop, didn't pump the brakes at all.
I mean, I have to say, councilwoman, it's hard to believe that you didn't see him, but your testimony is that... You're saying here that you didn't see him, but when you look at that, and tell me what you thought when you first saw that video.
- Oh, it's hard to watch.
It still is very hard to watch.
It's two, three seconds, and it really makes you question, you know, what else do you not process correctly or dismiss?
What else do you miss?
I was and still am afraid driving.
I'm obviously not driving at this time.
But driving was very, very triggering for me for a long time.
Don't like to be in the car, don't really find myself kind of looking outside.
Don't like the bumps.
I think I watched the video once and then was not able to do it again.
It's not easy.
- We spent a lot of time on "Chat Box" this season talking about police community relations, and much of that focus centered on Patterson, where the state finally intervened and took control of the department after the death of Najee Seabrooks, the crisis worker who was killed by police after a standoff precipitated by his own mental health crisis.
- First of all, Najee Seabrooks should not be dead.
Najee still should be alive today.
At 31 years of age, Najee was full of energy.
He was dedicating his life after being shot, a gunshot victim, to bettering the community.
He mentored young kids, and he worked tirelessly to save lives in our community.
- We've heard so many times again and again around this country that for some reason, when Black men have a mental health crisis, police continue to use lethal force.
Maybe we need to, as a country, as a state, reexamine the use of law enforcement at all in those types of situations.
This would be one of them.
They had a gun there, and guess what they did?
They used a gun.
- [David] Is the mayor and is the police director, are they allies?
- I honestly don't know, but I do believe that they're lacking in what's going on in the community.
I think their lack of understanding of how the community policing relates to the community is showing when you hear the constant regurgitation of these slogans.
The experience of the community is much different.
It's fear, it's terror, it's concern.
Those are the slogans that the community in Patterson would be familiar with when you talk about the Patterson police.
Something has to be done.
- This was something we'd considered for a long time.
And you know, there's been a series of high profile misconduct, including many criminal charges and convictions, both by my office and by the federal authorities.
And there was a complete, in my opinion, breakdown, a decimation, as I called it, of the trust between the community and law enforcement in that city, the third largest city in the state.
And law enforcement cannot perform its duties without trust.
- It's a step in the right direction.
And we do wanna give credit to the attorney general for at least stepping in and acknowledging the decades old issues that everyone knew, you know, to be happening in Patterson.
Where it falls back short a little bit is in whether or not he has consulted the community about the three major directives that he plans to enact.
- What are you hearing from the younger members of your congregation?
- Well, every single one, again, is mourning, lamenting this death.
It is a re-traumatization of every single one of them and every single one of the community at large.
And young people, frankly, are angry and totally dissatisfied with the fact that the political system has in no way really engaged and got at this issue.
We see many young people who are just very thirsty and very hungry for completely new alternatives than the policing system that we currently have.
- It can sometimes be hard to find the garden in the garden state, but we've made a point of finding people this season from across New Jersey who are warriors when it comes to protecting and celebrating the state's environmental treasures.
- Before we even go into what specifically happened in Jersey, I think we just need to have a conversation about climate change.
One of the biggest problems that we have is now, it's become a politically charged term that's been weaponized.
And it's unfortunate, because like in most situations, the most adversely impacted, who are being distracted by the truth, are those who stand to gain the most.
So, we have the rich people making the poor and underserved communities think that this is, like, this magical, special thing, but the only thing climate change is, it's an exacerbation of what's already happening.
- Some of the whales that have been washing up ashore, there's evidence that links their deaths to vessel strikes.
And so what I can say is that these past couple of years, we've seen an increase in commercial shipping, which is what could potentially be, you know, hitting these whales and causing these whales to die.
But the biggest threat to whales and marine mammals in general and marine wildlife is climate change.
- And what made me go back and revisit the Passaic is when I left New Jersey and started studying aquatic ecology and I became familiar with all these different bodies of water, you know, lakes and bogs and streams and rivers, and just became so enamored of them, you know, just the wonder and the majesty of water.
And it occurred to me while I was doing that that it's so odd that I would have such a dysfunctional relationship with my hometown river.
And what was that about?
And the more I thought about it, the more I started researching the Passaic, and the more I learned about the Passaic, the more I realized how ignorant I was of its story, which was fascinating and tragic in some ways.
- There's a lot of pollution along the line, and with the animals, it was so heartbreaking to see, because there's herds of deer, there's fox that are all mangy, there's wild turkey running around in there.
There's the regular animals too.
Possums and woodchucks and squirrels and birds.
And it's like, especially with the deer and the wild turkey in Belleville, Newark, Montclair, Jersey City, where else are they gonna go?
This is the last stop for them.
This is the only place they have.
So now that they're tearing it up and they're gonna pave it, where are they gonna go?
Out in the street, you know?
In your backyard, wherever.
Not a good place.
And it's just, we never consider that sort of thing.
People here are like, oh, you know, we're gonna have a greenway, it's gonna be great.
You know, they never even think about, like, what consequences that has for flooding, for the animals that are already there.
- You were clear last week, no privatization, no commercialization, no equivocation, right?
- That's correct.
The privatization of public land that is the province of no one because it belongs to everyone is not a thing.
Period, full stop.
- Yeah.
So, there were some who said that the original plan for the park back in the 1970s included some commercial aspects.
Is that not true?
And why is it different today?
- Well, I think we need to be clear about what we mean when any one of us says commercialization or privatization.
The fence that now restricts over 40% of the landmass that makes up Liberty State Park will not be replaced with ticket booths for private commercial events.
No arenas or large concert-like stadiums.
So, when I say no commercialization and privatization, that's what I mean.
- We also try to keep it light sometimes by inviting guests who create art and music, and who just love preserving cool, old things.
For me, who was a baseball fan, just kind of getting to know the player again was incredible.
Is that part of the goal of this film, is to, hey, look at this guy's baseball card!
- Yes, I think that because grandpa was in commercials and he was a manager and he kind of became a pop culture icon in the 45, 50 years after he stopped playing baseball, I think there's kind of a recency bias, and that's what's in people's minds, that he was this funny guy who said funny things.
And they don't immediately think of what a tremendous baseball player he was.
So, my goal with the documentary is to remind people that he was absolutely, you know, arguably, I think, the greatest catcher of all time, but that as good as he was on the baseball field, he was an even better human being.
- You have never gone out of style.
I mean, you have always had an audience for your music.
Why is that?
I mean, you see artists even from the genres in which you became famous, but they come and they go, but you consistently, I mean, it's been 60 years, man.
- Yeah, well, you know, I'm blessed, first of all.
I couldn't have did it without the big boss.
He must have been in my corner all this time, you know, and waiting for me to see the light.
And actually, a lot of things that I did when I was younger came into view now because I was right on target, especially with the lyrics to the songs and telling a story, as opposed to just saying, "Rice and beans on my shoe," or, "Dance, party, shake your buddy," I was telling a story with my music.
And then again, Latin soul was just right for Joe Bataan because it allowed me to sing in English with a Latin beat.
And of course, that wasn't really being done at that time.
Not with a story.
- You work out of a rail yard in Boonton, which is a defacto museum of the rail industry.
My grandson, who is three, is a train fanatic, and we did a walkthrough, which he absolutely loved.
Describe the place in Boonton and what you all do there.
- So I always describe, if a museum is like a zoo, we're an animal refuge.
We do the work there, we keep the equipment there, we preserve it there.
You know, every restoration that we do adds another, you know, generation's worth of time to its existence.
And then where we can, we exhibit it to the public.
You know, we have all of this equipment that was originally meant for a state transportation museum that for a laundry list of reasons, never came to fruition.
But we're still doing the work, and as of the last couple years, we're really re-energizing the effort to find a permanent place for all of these things.
But every day they sit outside, they get a little smaller, these things rust, they deteriorate, and we're in a constant battle to preserve this stuff and keep it looking new and keep it fresh and extend its life, so we can tell all these stories using the real thing.
- Roth loved Newark.
He certainly left Newark when he went to college, but he never really left, he would always come back.
And when he died, he left his 7,000 personal library books to the Newark Public Library.
And we've created a special audio tour of the Philip Roth Room at the Newark Public Library that Morgan Spector, who was the star of "The Gilded Age", he did the audio tour, and he's also gonna be reading "Defender of the Faith" at the festival on Saturday.
- It's been a year of loss in the world of jazz this year.
I mean, just most recently, Wayne Shorter and Ahmad Jamal, others.
That always gets me thinking about legacies and who are the next Wayne Shorters and Ahmad Jamals?
Is the music in good hands from your point of view?
- I think the music is in great hands, I think partially because of the work of folks like Wayne Shorter and Ahmad Jamal, who really not only were the greatest musicians that we've known, some of the greatest musicians we've known, but they stood in the gap of when it came to all the musicians that we lost so early, Lee Morgan, Clifford Brown, and they told those oral histories, they kept the music alive through their sacrifice, education, and mentoring, and just sitting down with folks and never hoarding the information.
And I think because of that, we've got a great crop of young musicians now.
And I see the, you know, sort of the mainstream moment that jazz is having now too.
So, I think we're in a great place.
[upbeat jazz music] [upbeat jazz music continues] [upbeat jazz music continues] [upbeat jazz music continues] [upbeat jazz music continues] [audience applauding] - All right, and that's "Chat Box" for the season.
It's been a pleasure to bring these conversations to you, and we really appreciate your support.
You can follow me all summer long on Twitter at davidcruznj.
I'll be posting cool vacation pictures.
So for our producer, Jen Eckert, associate producer, Brendan Smith, director, Elvin Badger, and the entire crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, I'm David Cruz.
Thanks for watching.
Enjoy your summer.
- [Narrator] Major funding for "Chat Box with David Cruz" is provided by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of New Jersey residents and businesses for more than 100 years.
Promotional support is provided by Insider NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.
Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players an interactive forum for ideas, discussion, and insight.
Online at insidernj.com.
[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues]