OCEAN COUNTY – The 4th District congressional race has two candidates to choose from for the November 3 mid-term election.
The Republican incumbent Chris Smith, who has a residence in Manchester, has served in office since 1980 and is challenged by Democrat Rachel Peace of Wall Township.
Jersey Shore Online.com sought to interview both candidates and question them on their background, thoughts on key issues affecting their constituents and broader issues such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, voting, the war in Iran and the economy. Smith was unable to answer our questions due to his busy schedule.
Peace had a lot to say. When asked if she would hold a town hall meeting for 4th District constituents, she responded, “absolutely. I have already been going out of my way to be accessible by all voters and all constituents regardless of party because when you are elected your job is to represent everyone not just people who are part of your base.”
She added, “I wouldn’t hide from my constituents. I want to be available and accessible to them; that is part of the job. Part of the problem we have in America and politics in general is there is no visibility or transparency and while I may go there as a junior member of (Congress) and not have as much power on committees something I will have the power to do is inform everyone about what is going on and happening behind the scenes. People have the sense that things go on behind closed doors and they don’t find out about it until it has already become laws and then we have to deal with the repercussions. I would be their representative. That is the whole point, to be the representative of the people not just the interests of one party.”
Speaking in regard to rising costs and affordability, Peace responded, “Most politicians would say we have a cost-of-living crisis but I will go a lot deeper than that because this isn’t just talking points for me, I am living through the same crisis as my neighbors are. I often joke that I am probably the most impoverished person to run for congress. I think you really need to get into the nuance of what has contributed to the cost-of-living crisis. It isn’t just one thing.”
“Grocery costs have gone up immensely for a couple of reasons, one because we have the war in Iran that has blocked the Strait of Hormuz which means all of our gas prices have gone up and that pertains to transportation of groceries and extra costs get passed along to consumers. We need to end the war in Iran.”
“Number two: for a very long time now we have had a situation where have had maybe 12 multi-national conglomerate corporations that own all of the brands on our grocery store shelves and they can really control the market in a way where they are the demand and can control the supply and artificially inflate the cost of everything.” She said the public is seeing more monopolies now and “non-stop mergers under this current administration which is making everything worse instead of protecting the consumer,” she added.
Peace noted, “this administration seems hellbent on the consolidation of power and wealth. One of the concerns I have is that they strategically phased it so people won’t start feeling the impact of it until January which is after the mid-term elections. People start to feel the pain and the financial burden and they attribute that to who is currently in power rather than those who made the determinations beforehand.”
She noted that clean energy upgrades have fallen behind. “Under the current administration they challenged the grants then they halted them then when they were shot down in the courts they redirected them toward gas, oil and coal when it was meant to have gone to upgrading our grid and infrastructure and making us more geopolitically independent so we don’t have to rely on foreign powers to get our energy. That hurts people here in New Jersey because now instead of having clean energy – solar, wind even wave energy that can supplement for this increase in the price of gas – we are fully dependent.”
Peace said that she got into politics because of the broken health care system, made worse by cuts to Medicaid that Republicans created that go into effect in 2027. “I’m white, middle class, college educated business owner; I am on Medicaid. Many people have a misunderstanding of who has access to these programs. There is intentional propaganda that there is just lazy people in their grandma’s basement playing video games who are mooching off of the system.”
“Folks don’t understand that this is a program that actually benefits the disabled, the elderly and people like me, single moms with little kids,” she said.
She noted that cutting those types of programs “will impact everyone. Those costs will be absorbed by people’s employer-sponsored and private health care. How will hospitals make up for the revenue that they are no longer getting from Medicaid and subsidies? They are going to raise premiums and co-pays and your deductible over these decisions which were made to give tax cuts to billionaires.”
Peace also expressed that there is a need for artificial intelligence (AI) regulations and a need to diversify the path of prosperity “that are pushed on our kids. Not everyone needs to go to college. We need to have more investment in trades, apprenticeships, interns and to make entrepreneurship a viable track for young people.”
Congress should provide checks and balance to the White House, she said. “We have seen the absolute abandonment of responsibility by the current congress. We are supposed to have three co-equal branches of government. We have seen that there have been far too many appointments by the current president. We have seen a biased Supreme Court. Folks are frustrated.”
Her view on term limits was “anywhere between 80 to 90% of Americans now feel there should be term limits for congress and potentially as well for the Supreme Court. Moving forward as you enter congress and you have never held office before the term limits must apply to you because we need to shift the direction of power and the standard moving forward.”
“I think when it comes to folks have been in office for a very long time it is more of a nuanced conversation because you have certain people such as my opponent Chris Smith who has been in office for 45 years, who is not actually active in his district, is not reliable or communicative with people, is not transparent, is not accountable and can’t even be reached frankly,” she added.
“People can’t get access to him but you also have people like Congressman (Frank) Pallone from the neighboring district who is here constantly advocating for both local issues and communicating clearly on what is going on in the federal level,” the candidate said. “You do need some people with more seniority who understand all of these rules in the House to mentor the next generation. I think people need to use their power vote out the folks that are not doing a good job and have been there for a very long time and change the standard moving forward.”
