I’ve co-hosted multiple debates, Save Jerseyans, for legislative, congressional and gubernatorial candidates. And I’ve never believed it’s a panelist’s job to debate the candidates! We’ve seen it too often before, most infamously during that September 2024 debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in Philadelphia when our then-former (and future) president fought a three-on-one battle against the Veep and two ABC “journalists.”
So when ex-radio host Bill Spadea accused me of reading from “an attack mail piece” at last week’s final GOP gubernatorial debate after I asked him about his past support for illegal alien amnesty and a pathway to citizenship? I let him make his point without interruption. Just like I allowed Jon Bramnick explain his support for Murphy’s militantly anti-Trump Attorney General Matt Platkin and Jack Ciattarelli’s 2021 approval expressed for non-citizen driver’s licenses without offering editorial commentary. In case you missed it, what I specifically asked each of the three participating candidates was whether their respective positions where consistent with their unanimous opposition to sanctuary statehood.
But now the debate is over, and both Bill and loyalists spent the next couple of days after the Newark forum doubling down on his position that my question was somehow outside the bounds of what’s reasonable (?). Digital jacobins on X attempted to echo what, I’m sorry to say, can’t be cast as anything other than what it was: a lie. Both Ciattarelli and Bramnick answered my questions directly even if you didn’t like their answers. Bill is the only one who emoted over the premise of his question. So if I’m going to be consisent, Save Jerseyans, then I don’t think I can let the primary pass without doing what we always endeavor to do here at SaveJersey.com:
Tell you the truth no matter whose panties the truth happens to twist.
For starters: my question didn’t come from an attack mailer. It came from Bill, directly, when he was standing only a few feet from me on a television set.
A little background: I used to appear on Bill’s television program “Chasing News” as a regular panelist. I’d drive one or two days a week northbound on I-295 from my then-law office in Haddon Heights to the Duck Island exit. There, in a studio built inside of an industrial park warehouse, Chasing News aired its quirky spin on news coverage via My9 (and Phill’y Fox29 for a brief period) before the pandemic choked off the last of its advertising dollars and the program was cancelled.
In spring 2018, I appeared opposite Bill and two other panelists to discuss what was then a push to grant Garden State driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. Bill ultimately suggested during the segment that he opposed Murphy’s plan but not necessarily on the merits… because (and in this regard at least not unfairly) there were insufficient checks in place to ensure illegals wouldn’t be accidentally registered to vote.
“Just so you’re aware of my position on this, I’m a little more liberal than my conservative friends on it,” Spadea told my co-panelists, an immigration attorney, before promptly adding “I do believe in amnesty and a pathway to citizenship for people that want to be here, working hard, not criminals.”
Bill reiterated his supported for a pathway compromise later in the segment, stating “I can see it, I see a positive there,” and lamented that the driver’s license push could prove too divisive and derail progress towards a solution for migrants living in the country without legal status.
Here’s the entire May 2018 segment without edits (at least by anyone other than Bill’s former Chasing News staff at the time it was posted online several years ago):
So again, after viewing this segment perhaps fore the first time, you can imagine my surprise when my friend of many years accused me of throwing him a curveball in front of thousands of debate viewers.
Bill tried to frame my question as species of hatchet job. The truth? I was giving him a good faith opportunity to explain himself, an opportunity of which he frankly should’ve availed himself if you believe the private and public polling which showed him entering the final stretch of this campaign running double-digits behind Ciattarelli, the Trump-endorsed candidate. Ciattarelli and Bramnick were given the same opportunity in almost identically formulated questions.
During both our ELEC debate with The New Jersey Globe (and the separate PBS one earlier in May), Bill insisted his pro-amnesty remarks were taken out of context and that, if the Chasing News segment aired by a pro-Ciattarelli Super PAC wasn’t cut, then we’d see that Bill was innocently referring to a specific question about visas.
“In that clip, I was asked a question as to whether or not a legal visa holder who had ran afoul of the system, and became undocumented, should they have a pathway, if they have no crime, they own a home, they are married with kids in school and paying their taxes, and I said absolutely,” Spadea complained after I posed my question.
“Nowhere, Matt, have I ever advocated a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens. “
Simply not true. See the video above.
Bill Spadea did advocate a pathway to citizenship (more than once in the same segment), and the Chasing News panel (see above) featured a lively debate over the wisdom of illegal alien driver’s licenses; Bill’s full-throated support for amnesty was a voluntary pronouncement as opposed to a response to a specific question about visas.
You may agree with him! You may not.
My concern? He said what he said which is the point. As ever, I’m not telling you who to support. Never will. But when one candidate or campaign suggests I’m giving you anything other than the cold hard facts, friends, then I feel duty bound to make sure you are armed with everything you need to evaluate the situation. In that spirit, you can watch my FULL battery immigration questions – as they were posed to the three candidates – right below, and as ever you are encouraged to judge the candidates and their responses for yourselves:
