By Marc Brodsky
With the 2006 elections just around the corner, Raritan Valley Community College students are beginning to think about politics — many for the first time. In a recent discussion of politics in Professor Bick Treut’s mass communications class, students said that the issues important to them included taxes, the environment, rising college tuition, job outsourcing, negative campaigning and Medicare reform.
Mike Schembari, a communications major, commented on rising tuition costs. “I was planning on transferring to Syracuse after RVCC, but now I’m looking at my third or fourth choice,” he said.
When asked about rising tuition costs, Thomas Kean, republican candidate for the Senate, said, “I have supported the STARS I and II programs at the state level to help students with a good GPA and would support similar programs at the national level, in addition to increasing Pell Grants.”
Pell Grants are awarded to undergraduates based on financial need. Kean cited out-of-control budgets and corruption as two of the reasons tuition costs have risen.
Senator Bob Menendez, the Democratic incumbent and Kean’s opponent, could not be reached for comment.
In Hunterdon County, Rep. Rush Holt, who is running for re-election, responded to the question of rising tuition costs by saying, “I have called for a doubling of the Pell Grants.” Holt also recommended incentivizing students, especially those looking to get into the field of education, through debt forgiveness, improved grants and making student loans more affordable by capping interest rates on them. “There’s no way we’re going to make the world a less competitive place, therefore we need to make sure we have the best educated workforce in the world,” he said.
Challenger Joseph Sinagra said he would also fight to increase Pell Grants. “I don’t believe a student should be saddled with fifty or sixty thousand dollars in debt when they graduate college,” he said. Sinagra added that he would fight to cut taxes to insure students have jobs to go to when they graduate from college.
Political Science Professor Glenn Ricketts recently encouraged students to get out and vote. “My parents are of the mind that voting is not only a right but a civic duty and they have never missed an election,” he told one of his classes.
Unfortunately, it can be difficult to find out what a candidate is really about in the age of the sound byte.
Television and radio commercials for candidates don’t talk about their platforms as often as they dish out dirt. Take, for instance, the race for House of Representatives in Somerset County. State Assemblywoman Linda Stender is vying for incumbent Mike Ferguson’s seat. The two are battling for the public’s support with an ad campaign in which both sides attack each other relentlessly. Stender’s ads ambiguously ask if Ferguson wants to throw women in jail for having abortions and Ferguson’s ads use a catchy jingle with the lyrics “Stender is a spender” to imply that she wants to raise taxes and increase spending.
There is more to an election than low-blows, sucker punches and wedge issues. Representatives from the Ferguson and Stender Campaigns were not available for comment.
Evan Walter, a film major commenting on the highly partisan nature of today’s elections, said, “You have to do research on the candidates themselves, the people, because that’s more important than if they’re democrat or republican.”
Joseph Sinagra echoed that sentiment, saying, “when you start voting straight party lines, that’s when you end up with the corruption we have today.” Sinagra said that if voters really want change, they need to stop electing the same people over and over again.
The candidates for U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives in Hunterdon and Somerset counties are a diverse group of people whose backgrounds are as different as their political beliefs.
At right is an introduction to the candidates and where to learn more about their intentions.
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