Biographical Information
Campaign phone
9734522213
Campaign Address
PO Box 76, Madison, NJ 07940
What are the most pressing challenges facing New Jersey in 2025, and how do you propose to address them?
In New Jersey, in 2025, we face pressing challenges to both our rights, and our local economies. To the former issue, we are seeing an uptick in anti-government hate groups, and science deniers, taking over school boards and library commissions. To combat that we need to get more Democrats who stand up for American & human rights elected, everywhere. To the latter concern, we are seeing small-town economies ruined by misuse and abuse of the land by speculators and developers. For example, in New Jersey, but particularly in my District, we need to help boost local businesses and create jobs with heritage tourism, agritourism, support for main street, and renewal of empty buildings; not paving over all the open, wild, and green spaces with mega-warehouses. We can and should masterplan for paradise, not industrial parks.
What reforms do you support to improve New Jersey’s democracy?
There are several. As a candidate for endorsement by the Forward Party I believe they are leading the charge on this. As per their approach I believe we can restore democracy with electoral reforms like term limits, open primaries, and rank-choice voting. These measures will help ensure that new voices in both parties who represent common grounds will rise and become representatives.
How do you plan to strengthen and support New Jersey’s economy?
I covered this in my initial response. But to add more to it, we need to boost local, hyper-local, everything. We often forget, for example, that our most tremendous human resources are in our own backyards, our own neighbors. For example, we need more project labor agreements to make sure that local building tradesfolk who live in our communities get prevailing wage jobs on huge projects in our backyards. These agreements support prevailing wages, safety protocols, and local hiring practices (often with union labor) and would be a sea-change for our small-town communities in terms of prosperity, and opportunity.
What steps, if any, will you take to ensure equitable funding and support for public education?
We need to fix the S2 Funding Formula. While it has helped the inner cities tremendously, it has come at the cost of our more rural communities. For example, I remember vividly attending a school board meeting not too long ago in Greenwich Twp, outside of Phillipsburg, Warren County. They were openly lamenting at how they were missing 100,000's of dollars from the yearly budget due to S2, and were no longer going to be able to offer art and music programs. This will only be more of a problem if we lose great programs like Title 1 if the current federal administration ends the Department of Education. We have to address better budgeting and plugging essential gaps from the State level. We have to make the billionaires pay their fair share to help. If they are truly patriotic they will understand.
What immigration policies do you support?
Everyone has the right to become an American through the legal processes. I also believe that those systems need to become streamlined and simplified. For example, it is not right at all that someone has to wait years for their green card if they have been working, paying taxes, and contributing to their local community. I know of many such people stuck in the process. We should start something like an interim "Work to Stay" program in NJ, until the feds can get their act together, that allows documentation of such folks. In the meantime, we are hearing of people being taken, unconstitutionally, by ICE. Misidentifying all undocumented people as dangerous criminals is terrifying and wrong.