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Schundler, McGreevey face off for third debate at 'town' forum
Originally appeared in the Associated Press on 10/18/01 9:16 PM
Republican Bret Schundler and Democrat Jim McGreevey
took a live audience to school Thursday, showing their
sharp and often acidic differences on education in the third
debate of their time-pressed race for governor.
McGreevey hammered away with his familiar charge that
Schundler's plan to subsidize private-school tuition with
vouchers, scholarships and tax breaks will strip $600
million away from the funds needed for public education.
"You take $600 million out of the system, you are going to
destroy the quality of public education," McGreevey said.
"What Mr. Schundler wants to do is walk away from public
education."
Schundler said he would not cut education funding, he
would simply save money by filling vacant chairs in
parochial and private schools to reduce overcrowding and
overspending in public school classrooms.
"He calls it cutting funding when you save money,"
Schundler said.
Citing a charter school he helped set up in Jersey City, he
added, "I created a school. Jim never did."
Yet the forum before a live audience in Glassboro was the
most polite to date as the hosts placed a higher emphasis
on spontaneous, random questions from the audience.
This limited the candidates' chances to fire away with
rehearsed pitches and prepared statements.
And the audience raised some unexpected questions, like
one about needle-exchange programs for drug addicts or
the unregulated sale of needles as a way to stem the
spread of AIDS.
Both disagreed with unfettered needle exchanges through
public clinics and both opposed sales without a
prescription.
Schundler said he did not believe studies in which
advocates claim such supplies reduce the spread of HIV.
But McGreevey said he would try a hospital-run pilot
program for needle exchange so it could be more closely
monitored than at a social agency or drug store.
For the record, both candidates also supported giving
firearms to airline pilots even as they acknowledged New
Jersey's next governor would have little to say on the topic.
Thursday's program, broadcast on Comcast Cable's CN8,
precedes two more debates scheduled next Thursday and
the following Sunday to be telecast on ABC and NBC
network affiliated stations in New York and Philadelphia.
Polls have given McGreevey a consistent lead. A
Quinnipiac University poll Wednesday gave the Democrat
49 percent to 35 percent for Schundler, similar to the
findings of a Fairleigh Dickinson University-Public Mind poll
released a week earlier, both of them with margins of error
of up to 4 percentage points.
Schundler accepts he trails in the polls but believes it is
within 10 percentage points. He notes he was farther
behind three weeks before the June 26 Republican primary,
which he won.
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