By Philip Sean Curran
Republican Assemblywoman Serena DiMaso and her running mate Monmouth County Freeholder Gerry P. Scharfenberger face Democrats Allison Friedman and Barbara Singer on Nov. 5 in a contest for two Assembly seats representing parts of suburban Monmouth County.
From their views on Gov. Phil Murphy’s job performance to marijuana legalization, the four candidates in the 13th Legislative district weighed in on those and other issues facing the state during interviews with The Two River Times.
DRUGS AND GUNS AND TAXES
Positioning themselves against the Democratic governor, DiMaso and Scharfenberger oppose legalizing recreational marijuana and giving state driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
“In the throes of an opioid epidemic, how could you possibly want to legally sanction (recreational marijuana)?” Scharfenberger said. “This is not the time or the place to be doing this.”
DiMaso said Murphy has a “far left” vision for the state and felt that her two Democratic opponents had no “governmental knowledge.”
“I just think that they will just continue the Murphy agenda,” DiMaso said. “They seem to be supportive of his thoughts on taxation. We can’t keep taxing every single thing that moves.”
Scharfenberger criticized the so-called millionaire’s tax that Gov. Murphy and other Democrats have favored. He pointed to the impact that would have on small business owners, even though Friedman said she supports the tax.
Friedman also said she feels the governor is “for the working class” and wants to “lift them up as a viable way to get our economy out of what is really a sluggish state.”
She and Singer said they support the legalization of recreational marijuana.
“I think we have a lot of low-level…drug users that are now being criminalized, that don’t have to be, that can be removed from that criminal system and put on a better path,” Singer said.
Friedman and Singer por trayed DiMaso as ineffective and wrong on gun safety. Friedman faulted DiMaso for voting against a bill requiring safe gun storage.
“I want somebody who’s more effective in the Assembly, not somebody who can just put a lot of bills forth but not get them through committee and onto the floor and voted on,” Singer said.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Across New Jersey, towns are having to meet mandated affordable housing quotas set by state judges. But DiMaso said she does not see a housing crisis in the state.
Rather, she called for revamping affordable housing rules and said the current system allows people to live in affordable housing even if their income has grown to a point where they otherwise would not be eligible to reside there.
“The purpose of affordable housing was to give young people and people that are just starting out, no matter what their age, an ability to own a home,” she said. “It’s supposed to be a hand up, not a hand out. And what it’s turned out to be is people don’t leave.”
Scharfenberger, a board member of Habitat for Humanity, an organization that builds homes, said the way to do affordable housing is to rehabilitate blighted houses.
Singer said she believes in affordable housing, but questions the system that is used to develop a town’s quota.
“We seem to be giving a lot of market-rate housing to developers in exchange for that affordable housing,” she said.
“I don’t know that the formula that they have to come up with how many affordable units a township has to have is completely correct,” Friedman said. “But what’s happening now, I think, is bad, because townships are rushing to satisfy this need.”
INFRASTRUCTURE
Seven years since Super Storm Sandy ravaged the state, parts of Monmouth County still are rebuilding. Asked if the state’s infrastructure is stronger since the storm, DiMaso said utility JCP&L “still needs to do a lot more. And they are.” She said the power company had received approval from state regulators to do infrastructure upgrades.
“So I think that we’re on the right path to getting our infrastructure rebuilt,” she said.
Singer faulted JCP&L for not doing routine maintenance on its lines and utility poles. “So we really need to keep an eye on the utilities,” she said.
IMMIGRATION
In November, all 80 seats in the Assembly will be up for vote. At the moment, Democrats hold a 54-26 majority. But the 13th Legislative district is seen as a GOP citadel, spanning seaside communities like Monmouth Beach and Sea Bright to parts of the Bayshore like Highlands and Atlantic Highlands. An open seat in the district occurred when Assemblywoman Amy H. Handlin declined to run for re-election.
The Assembly contest comes midterm for Murphy. Scharfenberger, fired from his state job in 2018 for not attending a Murphy press conference, said he and the governor, policy-wise, are “probably as diametrically opposed as you can get.”
He cited his opposition to the “sanctuary state” policy that the Murphy administration has imposed. The state has limited the cooperation between law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. In September, the administration forced the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office to end a cooperation agreement with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“You see all around the country where people who shouldn’t be let out are released and they go on to commit greater crimes,” he said. “And this has nothing to do with people who are here necessarily illegally and sort of not getting into trouble. These are people who were arrested for serious crimes. And I just don’t see protecting that.”
Singer offered a different take on the issue.
“I definitely don’t think local law enforcement should be enforcing these laws,” she said. “They need to work within the community and develop bonds within the community.”
“I don’t think it saves anybody any money, in the long run, to work with ICE,” Friedman said. “I think it adds to more destruction of families than it does anywhere else, because you have good people, who may be undocumented…getting picked up who are not the problems.”
NJ TRANSIT
Commenting on NJ Transit, Friedman said she thinks the transportation agency “is clearly not run appropriately” and needs to be fixed.
“Whether that means starting over, starting with a blank slate,” she said, “but it is a mess. It’s not fair to the residents here.”
Scharfenberger said ridership on NJ Transit has declined, and that commuters in Monmouth County are increasingly turning to ferry service. He said he thought the agency needed changes in its leadership, with “some innovation coming at the top.”
“The train is going to have to step up or really be lost,” DiMaso said.
THE CANDIDATES
DiMaso, 56, started her political career on the Holmdel Township Committee in 2002 and was named in 2012 to fill a vacant seat on the Monmouth County freeholder board. She was elected to the Legislature in 2017.
“I don’t like being called a politician, because I feel like I’m a public servant,” said DiMaso, a full-time lawmaker.
Among her policy views, she said she favored voluntary consolidation of school districts in the state. She pointed to how Highlands and Atlantic Highlands merged districts and saved taxpayers millions of dollars.
Singer said she opposed the state compelling small towns in New Jersey to merge with other communities.
“The only time I would come down and say you must consolidate would be if the township was asking the state for more money to get them out of a hole,” Friedman said.
But both women lauded Murphy for providing $10 million to help communities and others to implement shared ser vice agreements and study school mergers.
“Different administrations have been talking about consolidation of services for 20 plus years,” Friedman said. “And nobody has managed to do it. This is the first real step.”
Scharfenberger, 60, an adjunct faculty member at Monmouth University, has followed a similar path as DiMaso. He entered politics as a member of the Middletown Township Committee in 2005. He was chosen by Republicans to replace DiMaso on the freeholder board in 2018 after she left to join the Legislature and then won a seat on the five-member freeholder board later that year.
“A lot of the frustration that you have from serving as, like, mayor or freeholder, comes from a lot of things that you’re told, ‘Well, it needs a legislative fix,’ ” he said. “Having come up through the ranks at the local level, we understand property taxes. We understand what affects them.”
But Singer said she and Friedman are not “career politicians” in contrast to their Republican opponents.
“We’re looking to get the work done for the people,” Singer said.
Friedman, 46, of Aberdeen, is the president of the Matawan-Aberdeen Board of Education and is employed in the state public defender’s office. She lost her previous race for Assembly, in 2013. If elected, she would have to give up her state job.
Singer, 51, of Holmdel, is also a lawyer. She lost three races for Holmdel Township Committee in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
