A few weeks ago, I watched the New Jersey’s Republican Gubernatorial Debate between former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie and former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan. I was very impressed with Lonegan. He is hardcore free-market and the debate makes it clear that he understands economics extremely well. He advocates a flat tax and the end of the state’s corporate income tax. He proposes to cut spending by 20 percent and would eliminate five of the Garden State’s 16 departments (the Department of Community Affairs, for instance), and drastically trim the number of state employees (by 15,000 jobs).

This morning, the Wall Street Journal praises Lonegan for his flat-tax program and asks his opponent, Christie, why he is attacking the proposal:

Mr. Christie is a former U.S. attorney who did yeoman work putting away the state’s many political thieves. But he seems to be running scared in next month’s Republican primary, when he faces former Mayor of Bogota Steve Lonegan, who is proposing to scrap Jersey’s job-killing graduated income tax that has rates running from 1.4% to 8.97%. Mr. Lonegan wants to replace it with a 2.98% flat tax on the first dollar of income earned.
That’s a good idea that would give the Garden State the lowest tax rate in the Northeast after New Hampshire. Mr. Lonegan says this will ensure that when New Jersey incomes “move-up,” the residents “don’t move out.” Over the past decade, New Jersey has suffered the fourth highest rate of out-migration of all the states, with nearly half a million residents fleeing to the likes of Delaware, Florida and even New York.

Read the whole thing here.

And watch the debate here.