by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

October 23, 2008

Sparring in the tight quarters of a broadcast studio at radio station WMTR in Cedar Knolls, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Dist. 11) came under fire Oct. 12 from two men challenging him for his seventh term.

One is Democrat Tom Wyka, an information technology expert who received 37 percent of the vote against the incumbent in 2006.

The other is Chandler Tedholm, a Rockaway resident running as an independent under the banner of “For the People for a Change.”

District 11 includes all of Morris County, and parts of Somerset, Essex, Sussex, and Passaic counties.

In an hour-long live broadcast punctuated with frequent call-in questions, moderator Julie Briggs asked the candidates why each felt most qualified to serve in Congress.

Frelinghuysen said he was most able to deal with current economic conditions, which he labeled “the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. It is imperative that we do things to stabilize the American economy.”

He called for a “diversity of supply” to meet the nation’s energy needs and urged “keeping taxes low, because too many taxes kill jobs.”

“The electorate,” Wyka said, “is tired of those old games that got us into the mess we are in right now. Washington can change if you change the people you send there…. You need a representative that can stand up for the middle class.”

Tedholm said, “The country has been betrayed by its political leaders.” He called higher education “the bait for a giant loan-sharking racket” and declared that the government has become “by and for the wealthy.”

Wyka called the crisis “a tremendous opportunity for creating jobs and converting this economy to a green economy.”

Even as he defended his vote on the revised national “rescue package” intended to repair financial and credit markets, Frelinghuysen said he was “very unhappy with this overall federal intervention. We need relief for middle-class taxpayers.”

Chandler said he was disturbed by “the complete evisceration of the American job market.”

A caller named Eric from Harding Township told the candidates his feeling about the economy was “not anger but complete and utter outrage,” and said, “Democracy has been corrupted in this country by special interests.”

Describing himself as “extremely accessible to every citizen,” Frelinghuysen said he receives 80,000 letters a year “on every conceivable subject. They may not agree with me or like my response, but I pride myself on constituent service.”

Tedholm said it was “extremely unfortunate that more House of Representatives’ seats change hands when representatives die in office than when they are upset by upstart independents. The sad case is that in most cases, money wins elections.”

“The public understands that we’ve got the best democracy that money can buy,” Wyka quipped in agreement.

Calling from Kinnelon, a man named Larry asked what the government is doing to prevent another terrorist attack.

“It certainly hasn’t fallen off the radar screen for me,” said Frelinghuysen, pointing out the he has made sure New Jersey gets “our fair share of money from the Department of Homeland Security.”

Attacking the congressman for having said, “We are fighting them over there [in Iraq] so that we don’t have to fight them over here,” Wyka said, “There is no logical connection between 140,000 troops in Iraq right now and someone who takes a suitcase full of explosives onto one of our trains.”

Without elaborating, Wyka suggested spending “$10 million a month on various security initiatives. If we don’t start focusing on the things that will really make us secure, we don’t understand the threat.”

In response to Larry’s question, Tedholm said, “The fact of the matter is that as many people are killed in automobile accidents every 26 days as died on 9/11.”

Asked about tax reductions, Frelinghuysen said, “It is important to make these tax cuts permanent.”

Tedholm took issue. “The fact of the matter is the overall tax burden has remained relatively the same for a number of years. As much ink and hot air has been spent talking about it; very little has actually changed.”

“Tax cuts should not be thrown willy-nilly out onto the sidewalk,” said Wyka. “They need to be focused to create jobs. It seems that on the Republican side we give tax cuts to the wealthiest. We need to be giving them to the middle class.”

Matt, a caller from Lincoln Park, asked the candidates how to curb American reliance on foreign oil.

Tedholm urged measures to curb energy use, Wyka suggested that more corporations encourage telecommuting, and Frelinghuysen said he was “probably one of the few Republicans in Congress” who supports requiring higher fuel economy standards for American cars.

In response to a question from caller Ed of Morristown, who asked about “the terrible problem of illegal aliens pouring into our country,” Wyka said he was “not in favor of putting 12 million people on a bus and shipping them all back. A lot of them are hard working, and there are small-business owners who say these are the only people they can get” to do many types of manual labor.

“We need to take a hard look at what they are doing for our economy,” said the Democrat.

Frelinghuysen said, “The top priority is making sure the situation doesn’t get any worse. If we have 12,000 people here without documents illegally, let us not compound it by making our borders porous.”

“I am in favor of sealing the southern border,” Tedholm said. “The technology was perfected in 1914: It takes barbed wire, machine guns, and artillery support.” 

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