^2 /•■ Herald - Lantern - Dispatch 2 October '85

Shapiro Lists Issues He'd Solve Faster

( From Page 1 » posal calls for the taxpayer to deduct 15 percent from that local bill, and the state would make up the difference. Tenants would have shared in the tax-relief program. SHAPIRO SAID New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the nation, and all 21 boards of freeholders in the state have endorsed one method of changing that: having the state take over court costs. The state's auto insurance rates also are the highest in the nation. Shapiro said. • California, where everything is expensive. is about half." said Shapiro. • Political leaders keep looking for scapegoats It's a little bit of everyone, and everyone has to give a little " Shapiro said he would introduce reforms "that will cut rates 25 to 30 percent." THE STATE ALSO is lowest in one thing. Shapiro said: higher education opportunities. "We export nearly 50 percent of our children to out-of-state colleges." he said. "We have to regulate state schools less tightly, give them more autonomy. They also need more dollars. I hesitate to propose big spending, but this is one area I will ..." Shapiro seems to get most excited about the environment, especially toxic dump , sites. "New Jersey has nearly 100 of the worst in the nation." he said. "And we have yet to clean up a single one. It's jlisgraceful. "This is all the more urgent for Cape May County," he said, "which relies on ground water for its water supply. There may be effects in subtle ways not yet appaent. "If I can't clean up half (of 97 > on our priority list by the end of my first term." he said. "I.will not run for reelection." SHAPIRO ALSO sounded angry about what he termed "siphoning off casino money that should go to new senior citizen services." * Conceding that Democrat Gov. Brendan Byrne was as guilty of that as Kean. Shapiro said he supports legislation to make such actions unconstitutional. "We can provide more for senior citizens." he said, calling "improved transportation" a top priority because it is "critical for senior citizens, for whom . isolation is a key impairment. And we need decent settings for social groups." he said. He also cited the need for better health and dental care In Essex County, where Shapiro is in his sixth year as county executive. free dental care was provided for every senior citizen at special clinics that used dental school faculty and students. "That w^uld be difficult statewide." he said, "but we could do other things. "I'm not going to pay dentists." he added. SHAPIRO POINTED OUT that, in the General Assembly, he was a sponsor of a utility discount for senior citizens and of a pharmaceutical assistance bill that provided $2 prescriptions for those who met income guidelines Pointing to South Jersey as "one of the few places with persistently high unemployment." he said his answer would be "to better diversify our economy." He pledged "a significant economic thrust" for Cape May. Cumberland and Salem counties to "go after a clean, hightech manufacturer." Shapiro said he became "politically aware" in his late teens. It was the Vietnam era. "a tremendously iconoclastic period" during which he decided he was "interested in politics in the big sense. Not elected office, but in what makes things happen, the press, courts, lobbyists. \ citizen movements, consumer advocacy. "In those days, to be elected was a sellout." he said. "I wanted to be a reporter. I loved writing. 1 believed I could \ influence political opinions, help to shed \the light of day on things, and at the same titne continue to satisfy the wanderlust I felt." IT LOOKED LIKE a star reporter was being formed. Shapiro went to Harvard, got selected to be on the staff of its daily newspaper, the Crimson, and also worked as a stringer for the New York Post and Time Magazine, covering both Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) at Cambridge. "I decided that was my career." he said, "to be a foreign correspondent in a distant location." Then, in the summer before his senior year, he received a top student journalist assignment: Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal.

"I went there and hit some harsh realities," he said. Three, to be exact: • "RAT PACK JOURNALISM with what seemed like more reporters than stories, all rushing for phones." • "Exposure to elected politicians (Congress) up close. I got the overwhelming sense that the institution and many of the people in it left a lot to be desired. I was impressed by a few, but overwhelmed by the mediocrity." • But the clincher was his encounters with some of the top journalists in the profession: "people in their 40s and 50s with Pulitzers and Neimans now feeling kinda fed up. They said to me, If you want to influence things, you're making the same mistake I did 20 years ago." " SHAPIRO RETURNED to Harvard with a new goal. "I abandoned the adolescent notion that elective office would be a sellout," he said. "I decided to get into it directly, not try to work around the margin." The opportunity came six months after graduation from Harvard. Shapiro was free-lancing in the Middle-East when Byrne was elected governor. "I knew a few people in the campaign," he said, "including Alan Sagner, secretary of the Department of Transportation. I was the kind of smart kid he wanted to bring into office with him. It was a way of getting directly involved in the political system." Shapiro was assistant to Sagner for six months, then resigned to take on the incumbent state legislator in the Democratic Primary. In the 28th District where the Democratic nomination meant election, Shapiro beat the machine by 181 votes. "I was naive and ignorant and didn't know I couldn't win," he joked. HE WENT TO THE Legislature in 1975, the youngest person (he was 23) ever elected to the General Assembly. He was reelected in 1977, and resigned the following year to seek the newly-created (by a citizen-initiated charter change) position of county executive. Once again the tough race was the Democratic primary where Shapiro defeated the machine and went on to win the general election with 62 percent of the vote. He won reelection in 1982 with 69 percent of the vote, and the largest plurality of any candidate in the county's history. Essex is the state's largest county, with 850.000 persons, and Shapiro compares his job to being mayor of the state's largest city. It pays $70,000 a year. As executive, it was Shapiro's job to restructure "a massive, antiquated government," according to campaign literature. He reorganized 68 agencies under eight departments and. according to the literature, "realigned the focus of government from the bureaucratic to a community-based partnership." THE SAME NEWS RELEASE said he reduced county government by 1,800 employes while improving the delivery of services. The tax rate was cut by "almost 25 percent" ($55 million). Last spring Shapiro entered the fiveman fray for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Although county Democrats supported Senate Majority Leader John Russo of Ocean County, Shapiro won the county and the state. "We had a zero endorsement policy," he said. "We didn't look for endorsements. We struck a nerve in Democrats who were hungry for something different from the cautious, traditional politics that have dominated the party." Shapiro is the middle of three children of Canadian-bom parents. His mother, Henrietta, died in 1982. His father, Myron J. Shapiro, is an internationally known ear. nose and throat surgeon. Sister Nancy, 35, is a doctor in New York State; sister Margaret is a Washington Post reporter. SHAPIRO GRADUATED in 1969 from Columbia High School, a merger serving South Orange and Maplewood, but deferred his entrance to Harvard for one year to hitch around the world. He and a high school chum got Merchant Marine documents and were off to Rotterdam where they "decided to forego Europe as too accessible and headed for the third world." They went overland to Turkey and on into Iran and Palestine. The itinerary, which included being "kidnapped" for three days while crossing the Afghanistan desert, would have to star Harrison Ford if it became a movie. Working their way on land or ships, they were in India, Ceylon, Thailand, Laos. Shapiro turned 18 in the Himalayas and had 10 days to register for the draft. The

nearest embassy was-in Nepal, where they didn't know what to do with him. "They said. 'What?'," explained Shapiro, " 'People usually come here to avoid the draft.' " The embassy wired New Delhi for instructions and by the time it was over, Shapiro had registered three weeks late. He made them give him a letter explaining that was their fault, not his. "THAT TRIP shaped my thinking," said Shapiro. "I was exposed to foreign cultures. It widened my horizons. I had a personal sense I could take on challenges other people would think were impossible, and land on my feet." Something about Shapiro — perhaps it is his youth, hair, wit and relaxed attitude with the news media — reminds one of the Kennedys and brings an absurd question for a young man who is a decided underdog for governor of New Jersey: "Interested in the presidency?" "Nobody but reporters ever ask," said Shapiro, "but, no, I promised my wife no, no matter how lucky I get, flat out no, I am not going to do that to her and my little boy." Shapiro is married to Bryna Linett (she

kept her maiden name) of New York City. They met ("Nov. 23, 1979," he volunteered) in a Greenwich Village restaurant. "She caught my eye and after 27 years as a single male, I knew how to get acquainted," he said. Linett was a school teacher in a private school in Manhattan. They married April 10, 1981, and she worked as administrator of an alcohol and drug abuse treatment center until the birth of their son, Samuel Henry, March 12. "SAM" WAS BORN "very premature," Shapiro said, his weight going as low as one-pound, two-ounces, and he "almost didn't make it. It was touch and go. But now he's great." Linett converted baseball lover Shapiro into a Yankees fan. He relaxes with competitive sports: tennis, soccer, volleyball. The wanderlust that almost sent him into journalism apparently lingers. He prefers reading Action and nonfiction with foreign locales. And his newspaper reading besides local papers and the New York Times, includes the Wall Street Journal that, indirectly, sent him into politics.

Kean Cites Good Times, New Pride

(From Page 1) length of office. Kean, 50, was born in New York City, got his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his M.A. at Columbia. His literature reports his "principal business activity" has been as president and chairman of the Realty Transfer Company of Elizabeth. But he also taught history and English in high school for three years and political science at Rutgers University. Like his opponent. he also was a reporter — for New Jersey Nightly News. KEAN WAS ELECTED to the General Assembly in 1967 and reelected four times, serving as speaker in 1972 and 1973. He won the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1981, outlasting a field of eight and went on to defeat Rep. James J. Florio by 1,797 votes. The totals: Florio, 1,144,202; Kean, 1,145,999. Kean had carried this county by 6,214 votes, 18,488-12,274. His campaign literature says that in the past three years:

• 300,000 new jobs have been created and unemployment, normally above the national average, is "substantially below the national average." • Per capita income is up and higher than in neighborhood states. • Construction is booming. • Tax "reforms" include phaseouts of the inheriatance and corporate net worth taxes and removal of the federal surtax on the state's unemployment insurance income. • An inherited budget deficit is estimated is now an estimated $600 million surplus. » Environmentally, unsafe landfills have been closed, hundreds of small contaminated sites have been cleaned, and "by the end of 1985, work will have begun on fully two-thirds of New Jersey's Superfund sites." Kean is married to the former Deborah Bye of Wilmington, Del. They have twin sons, 17, and a daughter, 11, and reside Livingston.

Kean Unavailable; Shapiro Starved

(From Page 1) below is based on campaign literature. Had he been interviewed for a more personal portrait, the governor also would have been asked about his record as it affects Cape May County, and specifically about the following local issues: • One of the state's highest unemployment rates during the eight-month "offseason." • Lack of new industry. • Polluted ocean and bay waters. fl35f300water intrusion. • Failure to start the study, let alone the clean-up, of the Williams toxic dump site in Swainton, discovered in 1979. • Results of the state Attorney General's investigation of MUA-related and political corruption, taken over from the county Prosecutor's office 13 months ago. • Effect of the minimum $18,500 teachers' salary law on local property taxes. AFTER AN HOUR-AND-A-HALF campaigning in the Hispanic section of Vineland, a "starved" PETER SHAPIRO was interviewed Aug. 28 in the Presidential Diner while he ate a "tangy beef barbecue" and French fries washed down by iced tea and followed by bread pudding, i He'd started early in the morning in North Jersey, without breakfast; spent lunchtime, but without lunch, at the DuPont plant in Deep Water , and was, like all ) candidates, an hour behind schedule. Although Shapiro made it to Cape May County a couple times during his successful primary battle in the spring, and i claims to have spent "the first summer I > was walking" in Cape May, this was the best opportunity to get an hour of his time t before this article had to be written. ABOUT 15,000 of Vineland's 55,000 peoi pie are Hispanic and Shapiro's slow walk down Cherry Street was successful not on1 ly because he talked strategy with local i Democrats-and met local Hispanic

leaders, but because he got good play in the local daily newspaper and a couple minutes on one of Philadelphia's television stations. He wore a gray pinstripe suit that tried vainly to age him (some have claimed he looks "too young"), a television blue shirt, and a small-patterned red tie. As he strolled with his coat on in the 80-plus^ temperature, he stopped to talk to every person he encountered, whether walking, riding bikes, or in cars. In halting Spanish, he would say, "I am the Democratic candidate for governor." Then, in English, "Did I say it good? I need your help. "My wife says I know five words in every language," he said later. AT A RESTAURANT named Arco Iris (it means rainbow), he sat at a long table with a dozen people, fielded questions from neighborhood leaders and munched on cheese and crackers. "What kind of cheese is this?" he asked. "Swiss-Puerto Rican," came the joking reply. He passed up the jug of Chateau Luzerne and reached behind him into a cooler for a bottle of Coco Rico, bottled in Puerto Rico. "Too sweet," he confided later. At the Presidential, Shapiro shocked the manager by introducing himself as "the Democratic Party's candidate for governor." THE MAN HAD an unpronounceable name which Shapiro promptly pronounced, studied for a moment, and then said, "Egyptain?" The surprised manager said yes. "Cairo?" followed up Shapiro. Correct. A brief conversation on foreign affairs followed, ranging from Middle East economics to Shiites. The manager returned later with two pieces of paper. He got an autograph for each of his daughters.