Can Americans still have a sensible and friendly political discussion across the partisan divide? The answer is yes, and we prove it every week. Julie Roginsky, a Democrat, and Mike DuHaime, a Republican, are consultants who have worked on opposite teams for their entire careers yet have remained friends. Here, they discuss the week’s events with editorial page editor Tom Moran.
Q. A state appeals court ruled Wednesday that Attorney General Matt Platkin exceeded his authority when he ordered a state takeover of the Paterson police department in 2023, as crime was soaring, corruption was flourishing, and police brutality went mostly unchecked. Under state control, conditions have improved across the board, but Mayor Andre Sayegh said Platkin’s overreach shows that he’s “a rogue attorney general” who was “persecuting” his city for political gain. The case now heads to the state Supreme Court. Thoughts?
Mike: Mayor Sayegh is not the first Democrat to make this allegation about the Attorney General. We are seeing high-ranking members of Platkin’s own party unafraid to criticize the attorney general. Unlike many states, New Jersey’s attorneys general are appointed not elected, in hopes that there is some independence from politics. While many recent AG’s have moved on to positions of prominence in public life (Grewal to the SEC, Hoffman to the Supreme Court, Chiesa to the US Senate, Porrino to all-star lawyer), none has run for higher office since 1989 when Cary Edwards ran for governor. Unlike most states, the NJ AG position has been uniquely non-political, simply focused on doing the job. With suspicion that the job is being used as a launching pad, we see pushback from his own party even more than the other party. Maybe Platkin’s attempt to weaken the county lines and hurt Tammy Murphy’s Senate run has something to do with it, too.
Julie: I agree with everything Mike said except the last part. Matt didn’t weaken the county line; he virtue-signaled from the “cheap seats,” for which a federal judge slammed him. If he really wanted to weaken the county line, he would have had the courage to intervene in Andy Kim’s case. As a general matter, an attorney general has to follow the law, not engage in politics – unless he wants to be the Democratic Bill Barr. Matt has spent less than a decade in the upper echelons of both politics and law, so he may not be aware that you win elections by addition, not subtraction, and that statutes must be followed, even when they conflict with your political agenda. The problem is that like lots of Millennials, he might confuse social media with real life. Just because you have a few dozen people on Twitter applauding your decision to go after The Man – whether it is Mayor Sayegh or others whom he has selectively persecuted – does not mean that judges (and voters) will feel the same way.
Q. Sen. Jon Bramnick, a GOP candidate for governor, is again pushing a bill that would restrict the right of insurers to deny coverage for procedures recommended by a doctor, in the wake of the recent murder of the CEO of United Healthcare, and the horrifying case of Brad Schnure, a GOP staffer in Trenton who was denied coverage for lung cancer tests that he says might have saved his life, and joined Bramnick at a presser this week. Do you expect to see state legislation to change these rules? Would that risk driving up costs for everyone?
Mike: It’s fair to ask about costs whenever government takes action, but government’s first role is to protect life and liberty. To hear that Brad’s prognosis would have been so much better if not for this insurance denial, one can’t help but question how those decisions get made. No one wants their doctor’s medical decisions overturned by an insurance company bureaucrat sitting in a cubicle somewhere, or worse, through artificial intelligence systems. Bramnick has long fought insurance companies, and this is no different.
Julie: I am throwing massive across-the-aisle support to Senator Bramnick for this. Each of us has horrific insurance stories. I was stuck with an astronomical bill after an emergency c-section because it turned out the anesthesiologist was out-of-network. (After 35 hours of labor and as I was being rushed into the operating room, should I have inquired of every doctor who appeared whether he or she was in-network?) But the greatest tragedy is what Brad Schnure is facing and what people like him face every day because insurance companies are in the business of saving money, not saving lives.
Q. Jack Ciattarelli, a former legislator and another GOP candidate for governor, endorsed Donald Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel to head the FBI. Patel is an election denier and Trump loyalist who promises to use the FBI to “go after” the press and investigate Trump’s political enemies. How is Ciattarelli going to satisfy the MAGA base to win the nomination, while remaining viable in the general election?
Mike: Ciattarelli enters the race in a formidable position, having won the nomination four years ago. And Jack is not the only candidate who must wrestle with past statements negative toward Trump with a change of heart over time. On Patel, most Trump voters and GOP primary voters will agree with Jack. They elected Trump to shake up the system and will trust his judgment. Patel will certainly try to do that. Most voters don’t know Patel or his past statements. Simply, if he’s good enough for Trump, he’s good enough for them. If Trump turns on Patel, they will, too.
Julie: Ciattarelli played it pretty well four years ago and almost won, despite moving closer to Trump. The calculus is tough for any Republican running in New Jersey: they have to get through a primary in a party that increasingly brooks no dissent from MAGA and then run in a state where Democrats have almost a million-vote plurality. If I were advising any of them, I would tell them to stick to state issues and stop commenting on what happens in Washington. That will save them a lot of heartache and show voters that they are laser-focused on issues like taxes and affordability.
Q. Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register, saying the paper’s decision to publish a poll showing Trump losing the election amounted to “brazen election interference.” This came after ABC News paid Trump $15 million to settle a defamation suit after George Stephanopoulos said Trump had been found “liable for rape” in a New York civil trial. The jury had actually found him liable for sexual abuse, for forcibly penetrating Jean Carroll digitally. Question: How serious is the threat to press freedom in the next Trump term?
Mike: The press is no victim in all of this. The credibility of the press was tanking on the right long before Trump came along. FOX News was created more than 25 years ago, and became a massive commercial success, because many center-right and conservative voters thought the mainstream media was biased. Conservative talk radio shot up a decade earlier for the same reason. And when ABC news is settling the lawsuit for an 8-figure amount, it doesn’t sound like they were a victim. I don’t think suing a pollster for an incorrect poll will pass muster, but sympathy for the press is at an all-time low. We need to maintain freedom of the press, but as the Star-Ledger and others shut down, we all must realize that’s going to look different than it did in the 20th century.
Julie: Legacy media is dying but it will really be pushed off the cliff by Trump, who will sue it into oblivion. He will go after advertisers who run ads in outlets that he does not like, until he either bankrupts those outlets or forces them to bend the knee. To the extent that the mainstream media exists, it is totally dominated by pro-Trump content. The number one cable news network is Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. The number one newspaper by circulation is Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. The number one talk radio show is Hannity and most, if not all, of the top 30 talk radio shows skew right-wing. The number one podcast is the Joe Rogan Experience. Elon Musk owns Twitter. Donald Trump owns Truth Social. Most importantly, pro-Trump content dominates TikTok, which one-third of all American adults use. More than 40% of those users say they get their news from the social media site. The real pushback to this is from content creators, not from legacy media, so I invite readers here to follow me on Substack, which is really the future of independent investigative and opinion journalism.
Q. And now, affirmative action for the wealthy: A lawsuit against 17 elite universities, including MIT, Cornell, and U Penn, charges that rich kids are getting unfair preference, in violation of pledges to make admission “need blind.” What do you make of that? How should it fit into our national debate about affirmative action?
Mike: Democratic strategist Van Jones said, “If progressives have a politics that says all white people are racist, all men are toxic, and all billionaires are evil, it’s kind of hard to keep them on your side.” There’s been a backlash in US politics to shaming those who have privilege (through no fault of their own), as if they forfeit some rights or are inherently less worthy. No one is inherently better or worse than you because they are richer or poorer, or a different color, or a different religion. We all should be judged on the content of our character and the actions we take. Some people get more opportunities in life. Many squander those opportunities. The great and worthy ones take advantage of them and make the world a better place. Rejecting anyone on the basis of demographics or circumstance rather than results and character is itself now being rejected.
Julie: Let’s be clear that many of us are recipients of affirmative action. Some of us have parents who worked backbreaking jobs so we could go to college, whereas others could not afford to go, despite having better scores and grades. Others have a dad who donated millions to Harvard so his kid could go there despite being less qualified. Others have parents who paid for their kids to play a sport like squash or fencing or crew, which got them into an elite school through the back door. Still others could afford private tutors so they could do well on their SATs. Some have parents who went to a good school, so they are legacy admissions. Some get their kids into elite private schools that are pipelines to elite colleges. Let’s not pretend that now that affirmative action as we knew it is dead, there is suddenly some massive meritocracy when it comes to college admissions.
Q. Finally, a report from Acting Comptroller Kevin Walsh finds that State Police are giving a pass to motorists who show “courtesy cards” or say they have relatives who are police officers, which it found 27 percent of drivers do when stopped. No surprise, I guess, but perhaps eliminate courtesy cards?
Mike: Is this news? We ask police officers to use judgment all the time in many difficult circumstances. I am certain there are times when those with courtesy cards get tickets, and those without them get off with a warning. Being a police officer requires great judgment as to when someone should be given the benefit of the doubt. Was a driver putting other motorists or pedestrians in danger or not? I trust the officers to make those judgments, and I am certain we have bigger issues than wanting to give out more tickets. I hope no one is advocating for more tickets.
Julie: Did you just wake up to the fact that there is a two-tiered system in New Jersey: one for people who are connected and one for people who are not?
A note to readers: Mike and Julie are deeply engaged in politics and commercial advocacy in New Jersey, so both have connections to many players discussed in this column. DuHaime, the founder of MAD Global, has worked for Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and President George W. Bush. Roginsky, a principal of Comprehensive Communications Group, has served as senior advisor to campaigns of Cory Booker, Frank Lautenberg, and Phil Murphy. We will disclose specific connections only when readers might otherwise be misled.
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
