Somers Point’s Glasser, county’s Suleiman back different slates, similar goal
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
Atlantic County Democratic Party Chairman Michael Suleiman is very clear about his hopes for the future and what steps he thinks need to be taken to get there.
He said the most important thing at this juncture in the nation’s history is unity.
“I think one of the things that needs to happen is a need for us to come together. We as a country are dealing with multiple crises at once — a racial crisis, an environmental crisis, an economic crisis and, obviously, the public health crisis,” Suleiman said.
He said those crises have contributed to “rising tensions and division and, in some respects, tribalism.”
Suleiman noted presidential candidate Joe Biden has made it a point that he is going to be president for everyone, not just those who voted for him.
That’s in contrast to President Donald Trump, who has criticized Democratic governors for their response to the coronavirus and suggested things would be better if he could just get rid of all of the pesky blue states.
Suleiman said Biden can unite a divided nation because “he will reach out his arms to those on the other side to ease tensions because those four crises will take all of us to overcome and we can’t do it at each other’s throats.”
Somers Point Mayor Jack Glasser also called for unity.
“This is one of our toughest elections. Our country is so divisive now, so split. Someone has to sit down and bring us all together,” he said.
Glasser said the extremism has to be tempered.
“We have to start being understanding of each other’s points of view,” he said. “The radicals for either side, whether it be right-wing radicals or left-wing radicals, we have to come to the center and meet somewhere and start talking about what bothers them.”
Suleiman said that while he is a “proud chairman of the Democratic Party, once the election’s over, we want people to succeed because if these elected officials succeed, our country succeeds and we can lay down arms and unite as a country under Joe and Kamala (Harris).”
Glasser is “hoping the best for the Republican ticket all the way through, especially with Congressman (Jeff) Van Drew,” but no matter who wins “somebody has to stop the turmoil in this country and work very hard on this disease that’s affecting us all.”
Suleiman said the most pressing concern is the coronavirus pandemic.
“The COVID crisis has to be dealt with immediately and Joe and Kamal will take it seriously, unlike the current president, and certainly save some lives,” he said.
Glasser is afraid of the pandemic’s effects on the local economy.
“We are going into a second round with the pandemic and I’m afraid what it’s going to do not only to our business community but our way of life,” Glasser said, adding that the nation needs leadership on the pandemic and the economy because they are so intertwined, but said the virus is the first priority.
“Right now it’s got to be hand in hand with emphasis on the coronavirus,” he said. “There has to be something to stop it. You have to focus on both to build the economy up — one works in hand with the other. But you really have to focus on a vaccine and a cure and what we do next on the coronavirus, and then we go on to the economy.”
Suleiman said the economic crisis can be solved by passing a stimulus bill, noting that would require some Republican support.
“My hope is that Democrats take the Senate, and I think we have a really good chance of doing that, but even if we do we still need to work together to pass a good stimulus bill to help families that includes more loans and support for small businesses, that includes more direct payments to Americans, that includes more PPE and money for testing, that also includes aid for states and localities,” Suleiman said.
Noting that New Jersey bonded $3.5 billion in this past budget to make up a shortfall due to the pandemic, he said the federal government should come in and “help balance the books for the state because it’s not their fault — all 57 states and territories — it’s not their fault that we have a global pandemic. It’s not their fault that their coffers dried up.”
Calling the presidential election “a battle for the soul of our nation,” he said if Trump wins a second term “I think what you’re going through right now will be the normal. I think we will always be divided, there will always be tensions, there will always be racist and xenophobic dog whistles and I think, frankly, Joe is right that the fabric of our nation will be changed forever.”
Suleiman believes solving a problem requires getting at the root cause and that Trump “has made us go backward in terms of the unity and trying to form a more perfect union.”
Noting former President George W. Bush won the Hispanic vote in 2004, he said it’s been a long fall to where the Republican Party is now.
“It’s really telling going from that to this president, where you are really having so many dog whistles against Hispanics and Black Americans and Muslim Americans and all of that. You have to get to the root causes and one of those root causes is this president,” Suleiman said.
A former Northfield police officer, Glasser said the unrest needs to stop.
“It seems like any time we have a situation, it seems like people are so angry that they’re going to the streets. We have to find a way to really, first of all stop that because you’ve got police officers there holding the line to protect our citizens, but we also have to see why they are being so angry,” Glasser said. “There has to be some type of progress into looking into why are these people so angry.”
Suleiman said the country’s economic crisis is rooted in the shrinking of the middle class. He said part of the reason Trump won in 2016 is that he “tapped into that populous message of being sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Suleiman said wages for middle-class Americans have been flat for about 40 years.
“You wonder why people are frustrated and angry and that contributes to it,” he said. “In one respect, we have to hit the reset button on this and close the income gap, not socialism where you just give people free money but, frankly, you’re getting to a point where the middle class is dying.”
All of these things are bubbling up at the same time, Suleiman said, and will take a great leader to address successfully.
“I’ll say that Joe and Kamala have to walk, talk, chew gum, run a marathon and juggle chainsaws at the same time, but I think that they are going to be able to do that,” he said.
