The Jersey Crusader
Bret Schundler, against the odds.

November 5, 2001 12:40 p.m.

t's half an hour before the penultimate debate in the race for governor of New Jersey, and IUPAT — that's the union of "painters, tapers, glaziers, and allied trades" — is out in force. On the green in front of the auditorium where the debate will be held, at least two-thirds of Democrat Jim McGreevey's supporters are wearing IUPAT T-shirts. All of them are in a boisterous mood. They've had a few beers, and their guy is up ten points in the polls. They're supposed to stay on one side of the green, but they cross over and push the outnumbered Republicans to the edge. The Democrats are not without a sense of humor: "Union goons! Union goons!" they chant by way of self-description. And then: "Schundler sucks! Schundler sucks!" The Republicans try to chant, "Go, Bret, go!" But they're drowned out.

Being outnumbered and drowned out is something Bret Schundler is getting used to. As the mayor of Jersey City, one of the state's many urban blight spots, Schundler was a hero to conservatives. He was the man who was doing what Jack Kemp had always talked about: bringing free-market reform, and hope, to the dark-skinned poor. Under his leadership, the city saw ten times as much job growth as the rest of the state's cities combined. Crime went down, and educational achievement went up. But Schundler's bid for governor faces long odds. He has been too reformist for some Republican officials. He's running in a state that is heavily unionized, dependent on state government, and liberal on social issues. Since September 11, he's had an additional problem: His campaign message has been drowned out by the news.

"For the last two months, our opponent hasn't been McGreevey. We've been running against hijackers and anthrax," says a frustrated Schundler aide. It's hard to get the attention of New Jersey voters at the best of times. Most of the media are based outside the state, in New York and Philadelphia, and television advertising is expensive. Swing voters are notoriously late to decide on candidates. That tendency is going to be more pronounced than ever this fall. (It doesn't help that the Yankees are in the World Series.)

For an underdog to turn around a campaign under these circumstances requires that he stick day and night to a simple, popular message. Schundler is incapable of this discipline. He overflows with ideas about public policy, all of which he is sure you would support if he could patiently explain them to you. He makes gaffes not because he is a table-pounding ideologue (he isn't), but because he doesn't always consider the effect his words will have. In September, for example, he said that it was "wonderful" that the recession would force New Jersey's government to make choices.

Schundler's advisers have given him a simple mission for his October 25 debate: Say that he plans to cut taxes and that McGreevey will raise them. At the very start of the debate, McGreevey shows his vulnerability on the subject. Having spent months saying it would be "irresponsible" to join Schundler in pledging not to raise taxes if elected, McGreevey says he won't raise taxes. Later in the debate, he calls former governor Jim Florio's tax increase of 1990 — an unpopular move that cost Florio his reelection, but one that McGreevey has defended for more than a decade — a "mistake." Schundler has an opportunity to call McGreevey on his flip-flop and question his sincerity.

He muffs it. Even though Schundler's campaign has issued a press release predicting that McGreevey would make a no-tax-hike pledge, Schundler appears not to notice when it happens. He gets bogged down talking about guns.

Schundler further astonishes his advisers by using the debate to unveil an idea he has not discussed with them: The government, he says, should rush cowpox vaccine into production in case terrorists spread smallpox. (Cowpox vaccine, he says, can be produced faster than smallpox vaccine and so should be made available while the latter is developed.) This may be a good idea, but Schundler is not going to win the election on it. Yet he opens his closing statement by returning to cowpox. He brings it up again at a meeting with the editorial board of the Press of Atlantic City the next day.

A consultant to Schundler sums up what makes him so refreshing, and maddening, to work for: "This is a guy who does not take coaching. He knows what he wants to say and how he wants to say it." His aims are noble and sincere. Schundler tells the editorial board, "I am so tired of hearing that poor children can't learn. We are shortchanging these kids. There is such a lack of idealism in this country, and it's because we've been told that we can't do things."

There's a shortage of idealism in the New Jersey Republican party, too, one Schundler has tried to correct. When President Bush picked Gov. Christine Todd Whitman to run the EPA, Donald DiFrancesco became acting governor. Schundler forced DiFrancesco out of the primary for governor by raising questions about his ethics. The party establishment retaliated by changing the primary rules so that ex-congressman Bob Franks could get in. Schundler beat him, too. But the primary left the party divided — DiFrancesco still hasn't endorsed Schundler as of late October — and short of funds. Raising funds post-9/11 has been difficult.

The Democrats, having had no such bruising primary, have plenty of money. The man on whom they are spending it, Jim McGreevey, is an antimatter version of Schundler. He never departs from script — and his scripts, it has been reported, even tell him which emotion to register at which time. McGreevey is the mayor of Woodbridge ("like being mayor of Mayberry," scoffs Schundler). A creature of the Democratic machine, he has no ideas of his own about either public policy or campaign tactics. His major tactic has been to depict Schundler as "extreme" on guns, abortion, and school vouchers.

What McGreevey's campaign lacks in imagination, it has made up in dishonesty. One of McGreevey's main charges against Schundler is that he favors letting people carry concealed weapons. This policy is not self-evidently crazy, as McGreevey treats it, but the fact is that Schundler has never endorsed it. On education, McGreevey resorts to caricature. Schundler wants to give parents tax credits for educational expenses, whether the expenses are for private-school tuitions or school supplies. In McGreevey's rhetoric, this policy amounts to "Mr. Schundler's plan to draw money away from public schools." Also: an "untested reckless scheme" and an "untested system that nobody be lieves can work."

The good news for Schundler is that these attacks aren't closing the sale for McGreevey. Alluding to the fact that McGreevey first ran for governor in 1997, a Schundler adviser says, "He's been running for five years and he can't crack 50 [percent in the polls]." Schundler's call to eliminate tolls on the Garden State Parkway is popular. The tax issue, too, appears to be working for Schundler: Why else would McGreevey be backtracking? Two of Schundler's supporters — President Bush and Rudolph Giuliani — are popular in New Jersey now and could lend him a hand. Those late-deciding voters could wait until the morning of Tuesday, November 6, to pick Schundler.

If Schundler wins, he will be a conservative hero again: the man who proved it was possible for a non-squish Republican to win in the Northeast. If he loses, there's always next time. A New Jersey pol's first statewide race is more often a chance to become better known than to win. Jim Florio and Christine Todd Whitman both lost at first. But Schundler has beaten expectations before. He wasn't expected to win the race for mayor, or the primary this spring. Vincent Cannato, a former top aide to Schundler, acknowledges that his old boss has an uphill climb. But he cautions not to "count Bret out on anything."