As I've noted, I have never known a politician quite as fond of cliches as Phil Murphy. Here's one that that's highly appropriate regarding his campaign: "The elephant in the room."
That elephant of course is property taxes. Polls show that more than half the respondents cite these taxes as the biggest problem in New Jersey.
Yet despite a relentless inquiry during Wednesday night's debate with Republican Kim Guadagno, the Democratic nominee once again managed to make it through the evening without acknowledging the pachyderm in the parlor.
The most telling moment came when moderator Jessica Dean of CBS News brought up that 2 percent cap on arbitration settlements with police and fire unions that sunsets in December.
She then asked this rather loaded question: "Will you keep the cap and side with homeowners or get rid of the cap and side with the police and firefighter unions?"
"That's a false choice," Murphy responded. He said he would wait until "the facts" are in from a study of the cap.
But the only fact that matters is that if we don't retain that cap then there's no way to retain the 2 percent cap on property taxes that was implemented in the first year of the Christie-Guadagno administration.
Guadagno pounded that home when she said to Murphy, "You just want to dodge the answer," and then said to the audience at William Paterson College in Wayne "He has been endorsed by every union and he has made promises to those special interests."
That seems like a reasonable assertion in the face of Murphy's stonewalling. But stonewalling seems to be working for him. Polls show he's got a lead in the mid-teens in an election that will take place a mere two weeks from Tuesday.
As she did last week, Guadagno moved to the right in a last-ditch effort to defeat a candidate who seems determined to stay well to the left of the political spectrum.
Guadagno made that turn to the right evident last week by capitalizing on a comment Murphy made in the first debate in which he called for New Jersey to become a "sanctuary state."
The Guadagno team promptly cranked out an attack ad linking Murphy's statement to the case of Jose Carranza, an undocumented alien from Peru who masterminded the gang that shot four college students at a Newark schoolyard.
The Murphy forces cried foul, as did virtually all the editorial writers in the state.
But Guadagno doubled-down on the attack Wednesday night. She told of how she was appalled when, upon becoming Monmouth County Sheriff, she found that arrestees were being released from the county jail with no check of immigration status.
"I was shocked to find out we could release a violent criminal from our jails without a criminal background check to see if he was an illegal alien," she said
Guadagno told how she changed that policy to require such checks.
"If we had done just that, Jose Carranza would not have been in a schoolyard in 2008 shooting four college students," she concluded.
The lieutenant governor's turn to the right is probably the only strategy that could make this race competitive. The big question is whether she did well enough in this debate to attract the sort of super-PACS that could hit Murphy with a last-minute wave of negative ads.
Super-PACs are not connected to the candidate and therefore not constrained by any limits of taste. If some super-PAC wanted to portray a candidate as the second coming of Hitler, there's nothing stopping them. In fact, in 2016 a super-PAC did just that, putting out an attack ad on Donald Trump titled "Heil Trump."
No super-Pac will be portraying Murphy as the second coming of Hitler. But they could certainly make a good case he's the second coming of his fellow Goldman Sachs alumnus Jon Corzine.
Guadagno pounded on that theme in this debate, first listing all his promises - from fully funded public pensions to expanded to free community college and so on - before stating the proposed spending "adds up to 50 to 65 billion dollars"
When the moderator pressed Murphy on how he would fund all those programs, he responded "you know all of these numbers aren't true," prompting someone in the audience to shout out something unintelligible.
"Sorry, I couldn't hear you," Murphy said.
"He said, 'Answer the question,'" Guadagno offered helpfully.
He doesn't have to, at least for now.
But that might not be the case if Guadagno can rustle up come campaign cash in the last two weeks.
PLUS - ASK A STUPID QUESTION: I have no idea why we New Jerseyans let out-of-staters moderate our debates, but sometimes the result is embarrassing. That was certainly the case when one of the CBS talking heads asked a question that showed not the slightest knowledge of the issue in question.
That came when the two candidates were asked what they would do to offset the cost to New Jersey residents if New York City adopted congestion pricing for cars entering the city.
What the heck?
Anyone familiar with the congestion-pricing proposal knows that it would apply to crossings on the East River side of Manhattan, not the Jersey side. They would get tolls of perhaps $6 to $8. But we already pay tolls of about $15 to cross the Hudson. They would not be affected. Nonetheless, both candidates said they would offer some sort of a tax rebate to offset those congestion pricing tolls New York would collect.
That qualifies as a stupid answer. But that's what happens when you ask a stupid question.
ADD: Just what did Sheila Oliver say about Israel?
There was one exchange in Monday night's lieutenant-governor debate in which the Democratic nominee made a statement that neither I nor any of my friends in politics could figure out. Maybe you can.
It came at the 47-minute mark in the video of the debate. It concerned an issue that I wrote about previously.
Oliver was just one of three members of the 120-person Legislature to vote against a bill that directed the state pension funds not to invest with any companies that honor the boycott of Israel.
After moderator Michael Aron asked her why she voted for the bill, Oliver gave this response:
"Because I believe our investment funds should not be used for any country or for any corporation that is supporting or propping up discrimination in any form."
That had me scratching my head. The bill in questions does not prohibit the state pension fund from investing in companies or corporations that discriminate. It does the exact opposite. It prohibits the fund from investing in companies that participate in a boycott based on alleged discrimination.
But was Oliver accusing Israel of doing so? Aron ask that question but she ignored it and continued:
"I believe that if our state investment council and our legislature was going to proceed in that way, and the Legislature was going to proceed in that way, then we should have developed a more comprehensive bill without investing our pensions with anyone.
With anyone? That would mean no investments could be made by the investment council. Then there was this:
"if you look around the international community, there are a lot of places with a lot of human rights violations. I believe the bill should have been broader."
Huh? If those countries are committing human-rights violations, then why on Earth would we want a "broader" bill that would protect them from boycotts?
Or was she proposing something else entirely?
Maybe you can figure it out.