By Matt Rooney
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Say what you want about Chris Christie, Save Jerseyans, but this wasn’t his style:
#Askgovmurphy call in show is canceled. @GovMurphy refused to go on air if we stuck with plan to have Politico reporter @Linh_Tat on the show to ask questions. We wanted to focus on school funding. We refused. He canceled. @MattFriedmanNJ
— Nancy Solomon (@NancySolomon2) May 24, 2018
The “Ask Governor Murphy” program was supposed to go on the air at 8 p.m. during WNYC’s Thursday night line-up in addition to over on WHYY and WBGO.
WYNC’s statement explained in a statement to the press that the cancellation, coming in the middle of a $37.4 billion budget battle between Murphy and his own party’s legislators largely over school funding, was “due to Gov. Murphy’s decision to withdraw.”
That decision was apparently catalyzed by WNYC’s understandable desire to let a well-known education reporter ask Murphy… wait for it… an education question:
Tough break for NJ residents because @Linh_Tat is whiz on school-funding issues and would have helped sort out exactly where the governor stands on what is sure to be a key concern in upcoming NJ budget talks. Remember it was school funding that helped cause last year's shutdown.
— John Reitmeyer (@johnreitmeyer) May 24, 2018
The Governor’s press secretary went into damage control mode:
This had nothing to do with @Linh_Tat who we respect tremendously. This was about a difference of vision, one we communicated clearly: Ask the Gov is about taking an hr of unmediated calls, etc from public, not press ?s. https://t.co/PxTq6hrDi4
— Daniel Bryan (@danieljohnbryan) May 24, 2018
Pathetic, Save Jerseyans.
Our Governor is in over his head. If that wasn’t clear already? It is now.
Goldman Sachs is one again proving to be a less-than-ideal incubator for real world leadership!
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