Brian Laird on WNYC, it was debate night in New Jersey last night, the three leading Republicans

competing in the gubernatorial primary squared off on WNYC and NJ Spotlight News on TV.

Housing, property taxes, education, Newark Airport, how maga to be, and whether that comes

with enough heart or empathy, were all topics that were in play, some other ones too.

We'll play some excerpts now. Invite a few phone calls with your reactions to these clips or to the full debate if you watched or listened, especially if you're a New Jersey voter at 212-433. WNYC, 212, 433-9-692 call or text. And we have both of the moderators from last night, David Cruz from NJ Spotlight News,

and WNYC's Michael Hill, who somehow got up early for his morning edition shift anyway

after working the debate last night.

So, David, it's always good to have you join us.

And Michael, staying for an extension of your workday even more than the

morning shift to come on with us. Good morning, both. Good morning, Brian. Okay, we'll focus mostly on

affordable housing and begin with this excerpt from the most MAGA candidate, former talk show host,

Bill Spadia.

He refers here to the Mount Laurel Court decision, which is mandated a certain amount of affordable housing in the state for decades, but there's a big shortage anyway.

Affordable housing under the Mount Laurel decisions is a complete and unmitigated disaster.

And the way we're going to end it, I'm going to stop phase four.

So what do you do to get to affordable housing?

We've already written five executive orders that will implement on day one to reclassify what an affordable housing unit is.

And then we're going to go back to something that happened under Chris Christie.

We're going to do it in a much better way and more efficient way. We're going to take those units out of the suburbs and shove them

into the cities. And once you do that, the only way to create actual affordable housing is you've got

to create new jobs. You've got to bring in, we need tax credits and tax reductions for small

businesses to start up and entrepreneur credit, get them access to capital. Take units out of the suburbs and shove them into the

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