Garcia Balicki, Hankerson and Capizola: Level the playing field
Democrat Yolanda Garcia Balicki is challenging Republican state Sen. Mike Testa in the First Legislative District race Nov. 2.
The district includes all of Cape May and Cumberland counties and a small part of Atlantic County.
The candidates differ on issues of mask mandates, energy policy and immigration.
Garcia Balicki spent much of her childhood in Woodbine and moved to Cumberland County at the age of 15. She said one reason she is running for the Senate is the Jan. 6 insurrection at the nation’s Capitol.
“I’m an attorney and believe in the Constitution and the rule of law,” she said. “It was very traumatic and unsettling.”
All segments of the population are not adequately represented At the district level, Garcia Balicki said, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed many inequities in the system.
“The current LD1 representatives have been serving their own needs, showing up for photo-ops and not serving or listening to their constituents,” Garcia Balicki said. “That will change when we are elected.”
As a member of the Rowan College of South Jersey Board of Trustees, she said she became aware of how students struggled without high-speed internet starting at the elementary school level due to a lack of access in some parts of the district.
“On top of that, I know members of my own family that lost jobs because they couldn’t work remotely,” Garcia Balicki said.
High-speed internet is a must to attract small businesses as well, she said.
Garcia Balicki said Testa, along with Assemblymen Erik Simonsen and Antwan McClellan, voted against a $500 tax rebate for families.
“Those are the things I care about, leveling the playing field for a lot of people,” Garcia Balicki said.
Testa claimed Gov. Phil Muphy announced plans for a $40 million “give-away program for illegal immigrants” who did not qualify for federal stimulus payments.
She said the Republican Party was showing hypocrisy because they are the same people who frequent Cape May’s great restaurants.
“Guess who’s working in those kitchens? Guess who’s working with construction crews? Guess who’s cleaning houses and working in hotels? Immigrants,” Garcia Balicki said.
She is a bilingual attorney who handles immigration law with the firm Helmer, Conley and Kasselman in Vineland.
“I uphold the Constitution and I work within the law for legal immigration. That’s what I help my clients to do, to legalize their status, and they are just as hard-working and productive as American citizens are,” she said.
Prior to joining Helmer, Conley and Kasselman, she worked for the New Jersey State Parole Board for 33 years. While working full time with the Parole Board, she realized her dream of attending law school and upon graduation served in many positions including by governor’s appointment as deputy executive director.
She volunteered to serve as the Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action officer and oversaw the committee responsible for providing reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities.
The current First District legislative team challenged Murphy’s mask mandate for children in schools. Garcia Balicki said teachers and staff need to be protected from COVID as well as parents and grandparents and those with compromised immunity.
“To be selfish and say, ‘My child, my choice,’ no, not when it comes to public health,” she said.
Garcia Balicki said she has been campaigning door to door and found most persons to be kind and wiling to accept her campaign literature. She said women have been particularly receptive to speaking with her, noting that a woman never has held the First District Senate seat.
Garcia Balicki said women bore the brunt of the COVID pandemic because if they had children attending school remotely and if they did not have a remote job, they had the choice of leaving their children alone or with someone else or having to quit their job and collect unemployment.
“Affordable child care is important, and I believe equal access to education is important,” she said.
Testa called Murphy’s energy master plan, which establishes a goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2050, a disaster. Garcia Balicki said global warming is real science.
“We’re now at a point where if we don’t do something, we’re going to have drastic changes year after year,” she said.
Garcia Balicki said Rowan College of South Jersey is developing curriculum for wind energy.
While a Stockton University poll at the beginning of the month showed Testa with a 13 percentage point lead in the Senate race, Garcia Balicki said not to discount the quiet voters who may hand them a victory on Election Day.
She said her team has run a fairly quiet campaign since March without resorting to negative attacks.
Garcia Balicki is first vice president of the NAACP in Gloucester County. She said her parents were working-class people who came from Puerto Rico to the mainland to give their family the opportunity for jobs and a good education for their children.
“I understand the struggles of trying to make it in life and trying to make a success of yourself,” Garcia Balicki said. “I have a heart to represent my community, not just the rich people of Cape May County but all people.”
Democratic Assembly candidates are the Rev. Julia L. Hankerson and John Capizola Jr.
Hankerson is a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker. She is a member of the Atlantic Cape Community College Human Services, Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Addictions Counseling, and Addiction Counseling Specialist Certificate Advisory Board.
Hankerson holds a doctorate of divinity Summa Cum Laude from J and J Patterson College of Philadelphia, as well as a master’s degree in social eork, Magna Cum Laude from Rutgers University.
Capizola is a health and physical education teacher at Anthony Rossi Elementary School for the Vineland Public Schools District and has been an educator for more than 20 years. In addition, he is owner/operator of Mulch Man LLC of Vineland, a landscaping business.
Capizola earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Delaware, where he majored in health and physical education and obtained his state teaching certificate in physical education (K-12). In 2008, he completed a master’s degree program in educational leadership at Wilmington University, graduating Summa Cum Laude with Distinction by earning a 4.0 grade point average.
Testa, McClellan, Simonsen work to ease the pain of the pandemic
Republican state Sen. Mike Testa, a Vineland attorney, is seeking re-election to a second term representing the First Legislative District.
The district includes all of Cape May and Cumberland counties and a small part of Atlantic County.
Testa, along with Assemblymen Antwan McClellan and Erik Simonsen, were sworn in in January 2020, just three months before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“It certainly took away some of the momentum that myself, Antwan McClellan and Erik Simonsen had built up,” Testa said.
Testa defeated Democrat Sen. Bob Andrzejczak in a special election in November 2019. Andrzejczak was the protégé of U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew and was appointed to his seat in the Senate after Van Drew won election to the House of Representatives. He who served the district as a Democrat until publicly switching to the GOP after voting against the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
Simonsen and McClellan defeated incumbents Bruce Land and Matthew Milam in the same election.
“It was the first time that a legislative district had been flipped fully to the Republican Party in 28 years in the state of New Jersey,” Testa said.
He said COVID switched the legislative agenda to constituent services, which he said the team has focused on for the past 19 months.
“Helping people get their unemployment benefits, dealing with the sundry of issues with the Motor Vehicle Commission and just generally helping out our constituents,” Testa said.
One of Testa’s criticisms of Gov. Phil Murphy was that the Department of Labor was not sent back to work in person while hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans were applying for unemployment and were unable to receive benefits in a timely manner. He said many state residents need the benefits to put food on their table.
The First District legislators spoke out against children being required to wear masks in school, a mandate from the governor.
“I have three children of my own, 11, 9 and 5. Keeping a mask on a 2-year-old is nye on to impossible and to have a whole classroom full of 2-year-olds has got to be very, very difficult,” he said. “I’ve stated my case on this before. I think it’s ridiculous, I think it’s going to harm them in being able to socialize, being able to verbalize and the teachers being able to understand them.”
Testa said is should be a personal choice whether to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or not. He said he believes New Jersey exceeded the state’s desired vaccination rate of 70 percent of the population.
“I just think we need to move forward out of the COVID-19 era,” he said. “We need to get New Jerseyans back to work, we cannot continue to harm our small businesses.”
Testa said Murphy’s plan put thousands of persons on unemployment who didn’t necessarily need to receive unemployment benefits if their business had been deemed essential.
In mid-October, a Stockton University poll showed Testa with a 13 percentage-point lead over Democratic challenger Yolanda Garcia Balicki, 49 percent to 36 percent. Testa said he didn’t feel any political race was easy and he was campaigning as if he were 10 to 15 points behind.
He has labeled Murphy’s energy plan, which sets a goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2050, the “energy disaster plan.”
“He’s trying to get all New Jerseyans using natural gas to convert to electric,” Testa said. “We saw the thousands upon thousands of dollars that it is going to cost each and every New Jerseyan to convert from natural gas to electric. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, it’s overly ambitious and is extremely costly.”
This would come at a time when the state has had the greatest outward migration of citizens of any state in the nation, he said.
Testa said climate change needs to be addressed but not at the expense of making New Jersey less affordable than its current state of unaffordability.
Other countries, such as India, China and Brazil, need to step up their efforts to fight climate change, he said, and not expect New Jersey to change the world on its own.
Testa said the First Legislative District has lost population and needs better-paying jobs. He said the state is suffering a “brain drain.”
“We educate great kids and our best and brightest leave the state of New Jersey and they take their talents elsewhere,” Testa said. “They don’t come back.”
He said he wants to see Route 55 completed not only to open up an economic highway that would bridge Cumberland and Cape May counties but to improve evacuation of Cape May County amid a weather disaster.
Testa is critical of what he describes as a $40 million give-away to undocumented immigrants and other workers from Murphy. The program financed by the federal CARES Act would help those who did not receive a stimulus check.
“While New Jersey is hurting, he is giving money away to illegal immigrants,” Testa said.
He said the pandemic exposed areas of the county that have no access to broadband internet, something that must be addressed. Some students were attempting to complete their schoolwork by using Wi-Fi in McDonald’s and Walmart parking lots, Testa said.
Cape May County often seems like it is at the short end of the stick when it comes to attention from the state, Testa said.
“Assemblyman Simonsen says all of the time that just because we are at the bottom of the state doesn’t mean we should be treated like we’re at the bottom of the barrel,” Testa said.
He noted Cape May County sends $550 million in tourism tax dollars to Trenton every year and receives a mere pittance in return.
For those who oppose legal recreational marijuana, he said they are fighting a battle that has already been won by the cannabis industry. Testa said he supports any industry that create good-paying jobs, put residents back to work and provide ratables to municipalities, as long as cultivation facilities are not leaking product to minors.
Testa said he does worry about death by auto, driving while intoxicated and work-related accidents as a result of cannabis use.
Simonsen is a former councilman and mayor of Lower Township and works as athletics and activities director at Lower Cape May Regional High School.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the former Trenton State College, now knows as The College of New Jersey, and a master’s degree in educational administration from the University of Scranton.
McClellan is personnel director/confidential assistant/public information officer for the Cape May County Sheriff’s Office. He served as an Ocean City councilman from 2012 to 2020 and on the Ocean City Board of Education from 2010 to 2012.
McClellan attended Virginia State University and Old Dominion University.