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Tax politics in New Jersey is not always candid politics. So people running for office don't always say exactly what they will do if they get there. Maybe they don't know. Or maybe they believe of we the voters, as Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth."
Regardless, no one runs for Governor of New Jersey promising to impose new taxes or raise old ones.
Back in 1965, Richard Hughes didn't campaign saying, "Elect me and pay a sales tax." But a sales tax is what he imposed.
In 1969, William Cahill's slogan wasn't, "Make me Governor and get an income tax." But he tried to get an income tax, only to fail in the Legislature.
Brendan Byrne declared in 1973 there would be "no income tax in the foreseeable future." The foreseeable future turned out to be three years.
As the 1980s dawned, New Jersey imitated national politics. In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected president after pledging to reduce federal income taxes and in 1981 gubernatorial candidate Tom Kean promised to cut both the state sales and income taxes. But after taking office in the midst of a budget crisis and economic downturn, Kean instead raised both taxes.
Jim Florio ran for governor in 1989 saying he saw "no need" to raise taxes. The need became pretty apparent even before Kean walked out the door and Florio walked in.
What we have here is a list of five governors-Democrat and Republican-who either raised taxes or tried to after decidedly not giving the impression in their campaigns that they would. Why did they turn their back on what they said to get elected? I would argue it was not because they were sado-masochists intent on causing themselves political pain and their constituents financial pain.
No, they realized what it takes to run a government. And it's no coincidence that New Jersey didn't become a truly modern place, with an appropriately activist state government, until Governor Hughes and his successors stepped up to provide the money to get things done. One example: before Hughes won passage of the sales tax and built up the state college system, so many students left New Jersey for college that this was called the cuckoo state after the bird that lays its eggs in other birds' nests.
It should also be noted that their actions on taxes were not a guaranteed career-stopper for these governors. Though pundits dubbed Byrne "OTB," for "One-Term Byrne," when the income tax passed, he easily won re-election the next year after challenging his opponent to declare how to run the state without the tax money.
Kean, three years after signing increases in two state taxes, won again with 70 percent of the vote-a margin that might never be broken. And, yes, Florio wasn't re-elected. But for all of the so-called tax revolt, he lost by just one percent. The candidate who raised taxes by the most ever in New Jersey ran against someone promising the biggest tax cut ever in New Jersey and the voters were pretty close to evenly split.
Which takes us to recent history. In defeating Florio, Christie Whitman became the first candidate for New Jersey Governor in memory to keep a promise on taxes. She pledged to cut the state income tax by 30 percent and she did. Never mind that she fixed the only tax in the state that wasn't broken, and that the lost revenue contributed to heavy borrowing and other questionable fiscal practices, plus large property tax increases that almost cost her re-election. Indeed, after making and keeping that big promise, Whitman's reward against the relatively unknown Jim McGreevey in 1997 was just the same one percent margin by which she beat Florio after he raised taxes.
As for McGreevey, late in the 2001 campaign-with polls showing his election all but assured-he declared he would not raise taxes if elected. But McGreevey fell in line with his predecessors last year by making long overdue reforms to the Corporate Business Tax system that, while not sold as such, raised taxes.
Now the monkey is off his back, except he doesn't see it that way. He has recast his 2001 pledge to mean only "broad-based" taxes-those that just about everyone pays-allowing McGreevey to argue that he hasn't raised taxes. To keep his version of the pledge intact, the Governor is strongly against hiking state income taxes for the wealthiest two percent of New Jerseyans, even though the nearly $1 billion per year in new revenue would ease the austere budget these tough economic times forced him to propose. And even though he already has gone against his no-tax pledge.
Breaking that pledge didn't make McGreevey a scoundrel. It merely put him in the very good, bipartisan company of those who saw what needed to be done and did it.
New Jersey is a better state because of that.
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