West Orange native, former priest to run for NJ governor

WEST ORANGE, NJ — A West Orange native has thrown his hat into the ring for New Jersey’s gubernatorial race roughly a year before the 2017 election.

Robert Hoatson, a former priest who now runs the Road to Recovery nonprofit organization, which assists sexual abuse victims, announced his intention to run in the Democratic primary during an event at the Wilshire Grand Hotel on Nov. 15. Hoatson acknowledged he face an uphill battle, as former Goldman Sachs executive Phil Murphy has already scored the backing of numerous state leaders and recently loaned his campaign $10 million of his own money. But the resident said he is running to stop the Democratic Party from becoming an arm for the elites.

“We seem to be electing fewer and fewer leaders and more demigods and managers and people who can buy elections,” Hoatson told the West Orange Chronicle in a Nov. 25 phone interview. “What is happening now is that government seems to be a way to either develop a career and/or accumulate a lot of money. And I don’t think that’s what civil service is meant for.”

In addition to Hoatson and Murphy, the Democratic primary race so far includes former U.S. Undersecretary of the Treasury for Enforcement Jim Johnson and Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a Bridgegate investigator. On the Republican side, Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli and entrepreneur Joseph Rudy Rullo have declared they will run.

Hoatson ran unsuccessfully for the West Orange Township Council in 2014, a race in which seven candidates ran for two open seats eventually re-filled by the incumbents; he came in fifth place.

Hoatson promised that as governor he would focus solely on helping those in need and to do so, he said he will first have to change the way Trenton operates. To start, he said he would hold application processes for all governor-appointed positions instead of hiring cronies catering to special interests. Additionally, Hoatson said he would push to impose term limits for all municipal, state and federal elected leaders so that the “career politician” ceases to exist.  

He added that he would meet regularly with regular citizens to learn about their needs and work hard to meet them. After all, he said, the people should be the priority of any governor.

“When push comes to shove, what we’re serving is not the government,” Hoatson said. “What we’re serving is people.”

One way Hoatson plans to benefit New Jerseyans, if elected, is to help the economy. U.S. Census data shows the state poverty rate was 10.8 percent last year. That data also shows that the household median income for New Jersey residents only increased by 0.3 percent in 2015, which is a smaller increase than in any other state. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the state’s unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in October, higher than the national rate of 4.9 percent.

To create jobs, Hoatson said he would focus on improving New Jersey’s infrastructure, which received a “D-” on its 2016 report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers. People can find work fixing the state’s bridges and roads, he said, and in turn the state will gain infrastructure that can attract businesses. He added that he would also establish a task force to look into why corporations are leaving the state when its location between the major cities of New York, Philadelphia and Boston should make it an ideal home for them.

Hoatson said he would also eliminate wasteful spending, cut political patronage jobs to save funds, and do away with the state’s tax-exempt status for charitable and religious organizations so everyone pays their fair share.

“Has anybody ever seen a poor minister in the state of New Jersey?” Hoatson said. “Here you have these inner-city churches where the minister is driving around in a Cadillac and has a $100,000 a year job. To me, a lot of the churches in the state have a lot of money. Now, I’m not saying we should tax them at the same amount as profit-bearing companies, but I think we all should have to pay taxes.”

While these measures are intended to save the state money, Hoatson also wants to make sure residents are getting paid more, so he would call for a $15 minimum wage, if elected.

Another area Hoatson would work to improve is education. As a priest and an Irish Christian Brother, he worked as a middle and high school teacher, and as principal at Hackensack’s Holy Trinity School as well as director of schools for Newark’s Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish. He also helped found the Catholic Urban Educators group in the 1980s.

If elected, Hoatson said he would offer funding to any educators willing to start charter schools in the inner cities, saying, “I want good teachers and creative teachers to take the bull by the horns and create the best learning environments for kids. Very often we just spend too much time creating these mega structures and they end up not as effective because the community and the teaching staffs were not involved with the planning. I think when you involve the people who are receiving the services, then you’re going to come up with a much better product.”

As for higher education, Hoatson said he would raise taxes on the wealthy and major corporations in order to offer free tuition to community colleges and reduced tuition to Rutgers University for in-state students. He also wants to urge Rutgers to leave the Big 10 so it can return its focus to academics, funneling the millions it now spends on sports toward scholarships and reduced tuition instead and opening locations in other areas of the state.

Of course, none of these ideas will come to pass if Hoatson is not elected. He said he has reached out to several party leaders but no one agreed to meet with him. So, to secure the nomination, he said he will run a grassroots campaign funded solely by donations from supporters and looks forward to traveling the state and talking with as many citizens as possible to generate support.

Hoatson has a loyal following in West Orange, where he has lived for most of his life. Anita Strauss said she has watched him grow up and has no hesitation supporting him for governor.

“He’s such a wonderful human being,” Strauss told the Chronicle in a Nov. 26 phone interview. “He has the kind of attributes that I would like to see in a governor — honesty, integrity, intelligence, a sense of justice and a feeling of compassion for all. He’s just a super human being. And he’s always giving.”

Bob Sforza, another West Orange supporter, agreed that much of the state’s infrastructure needs to be upgraded, and said he likes Hoatson’s education ideas, pointing out that poverty cannot be solved without good schooling.

“Despite the odds, I think he’d make a tremendous governor,” Sforza told the Chronicle in a Nov. 25 phone interview.

Even with this homegrown support, Hoatson still has a long road ahead of him. According to Matthew Hale, an associate professor for Seton Hall University’s Department of Political Science and Public Affairs, the support of county party leaders is crucial for anyone running for office in New Jersey. And Murphy has done a “masterful” job doing so, Hale said.

Money is also essential to any political campaign, Hale said, adding that he thinks a former priest may not have the enormous personal wealth of a former Goldman Sachs executive. The professor said Murphy, a multimillionaire, has been campaigning on a platform geared directly toward helping the lower and middle classes, like overshadowing Hoatson’s similar ideas, which does not bode well for his chances.

“It seems like it’s a folly to think that a candidate could compete under those terms,” Hale told the Chronicle in a Nov. 28 phone interview. “That being said, I think a lot of people didn’t expect Bernie Sanders to do as well as he did against Hillary Clinton, and certainly no one expected Donald Trump to win. But I think it’s incredibly difficult and in many ways different than either of those examples for this candidate to run in New Jersey, where structure matters a lot more than it does on the national stage.”

Neither the Murphy campaign nor the New Jersey State Democratic Committee responded to requests for comment before press time Nov. 29.

The odds may be against him, but Hoatson said he is up to the challenge. He pointed out he spent nearly 40 years within the Catholic Church trying to combat clergy abuse and, after experiencing blowback that resulted in him leaving the Church in 2011, continues to demand that pedophile priests be held accountable for their actions through his organization. With that experience, he said he is well-prepared to reform New Jersey’s government as well.

“I’ve already taken on the largest bureaucracy in the world,” Hoatson said, referring to the Catholic Church. “I’ve spent my life trying to clean things up, so to speak. And if New Jersey doesn’t need a cleaning up, I don’t know what does.”

  FEATURED, Robert Hoatson