By Gerry Scharfenberger
“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” This quote, attributed to Alexander Hamilton, is what many candidates bank on when they make promises that they know full well there is no way they will be able to keep,
Anyone who follows political campaigns knows there is one common thread among them all – promises are made at every turn. Some are reasonable; however, many are so far-fetched it is remarkable that the candidate can keep a straight face. All have the same intention, which is to tell the voters what they want to hear, regardless of how unrealistic they may be. When voters accept a candidate’s promises at face value, they are the ones who end up getting burned when the now elected official cannot deliver.
One recent example is Governor Mikie Sherrill’s absurd promise to “freeze utility rates on day one.” The fact is, there is no legal mechanism to freeze the prices of any private company. What the promise should have been is to support policies to expand supplies which in turn, will actually lower prices, not “freeze” them at their historic highs. Ironically, it was the Governor’s own party who put the state in this predicament. With a fantasy-driven energy policy that placed emphasis on unreliable and unproven alternative energies while manically looking to eliminate fossil fuel-based energy producers from the state, supplies dwindled which in turn, drove up prices for the consumer.
Who can forget Governor Murphy’s campaign promise to fully fund schools? This is particularly infuriating to most homeowners across the state, who got clobbered with enormous school tax increases due to state cuts in funding or caps on how much state aid they can receive, or just the result of a convoluted school funding formula that few, if any can figure out. That promise was kept by the beleaguered taxpayer, who is forced to “fully fund” education through devastating tax increases year after year.
One failed New Jersey Assembly candidate actually promised to address flooding by, “standing outside the DEP building and screaming.” Aside from the comic imagery, this silly promise underscores the lack of any real ideas as to how to tackle a very complex problem. Instead of promising to address root causes such as overdevelopment, water body siltation, storm drain maintenance, etc., this individual’s contempt for the intelligence of the voters believed that mindless grandstanding was all they deserved from their elected officials.
In addition to undeliverable promises, there are the promises to fix what the candidate or the candidate’s party created in the first place. One example is the latest political buzzword of “affordability.” Here in New Jersey, the out-of-control spending, over regulation, ill-advised legislation and reliance on every tax, fee and surcharge imaginable has made our state the poster child for unaffordability. Yet many of the same elected officials who dug New Jersey taxpayers into the hole of unaffordability are now promising to make New Jersey affordable as the cornerstone of their re-election campaigns. Give me a break. Once the election is over, the sudden concern about “affordability” ends also. Case in point – the recent introduction of A 1701 a month after the election, which would provide full access to taxpayer funded health benefits for illegal aliens. This would cost the taxpayers millions of dollars and make New Jersey even less affordable.
In short, it is critical to remember one important thing when evaluating candidates for public office – it’s not as important to listen to what they say as it is to watch what they do. Campaign slogans, buzzwords and lofty promises may sound good at a rally, or look good on campaign literature, but if not supported by actions, they are as useless as the person who utters them.
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Gerry Scharfenberger, PhD. is a New Jersey Assemblyman representing the State’s 13th Legislative District.
