I live in a very Republican town and our budget passed with a slightly over 6% property tax increase. My town went heavily for Christie, but when it came down to voting - they voted for their kids. I went to a progressive dinner in my area of the town the Saturday before the vote. Because assignments for the various courses are random, we met people outside our normal circles. There was real fear and anger over what could be lost. People were concerned that the quality of education would decline. Some were angry that they could lose the sports programs and courtesy busing for kids living within 2 miles. Others angry that the excellent music program would be greatly impacted or that AP courses could be eliminated. Many spoke of moving here for the schools. Because the projected changes if the budget failed were so broad based, they could affect nearly every family in the community with school age kids.
Ironically, when faced with a real test that affected them, these Republicans voted for the government providing services. But the more ironic thing is that most of them are highly unlikely to see that. Here, a government was able to offer education that rivaled some of the private schools and they wanted to keep it that way.
I looked at where the budgets failed and where they passed and found no real pattern. Many affluent Republican towns passed theirs, but in one the wealthiest, Harding where there are few, if any homes, below $1 million dollars, the budget that would have added a small amount to their property tax was defeated. The pattern was just as mixed in other towns. I suspect that in some towns they were defeated by people genuinely concerned about affording their homes. Before the election, the Governor eliminated ALL property tax rebates. This effectively shifted a great portion of the cost of school to the people paying property taxes directly or indirectly. You can think of this from a NJ resident's point of view as effectively an increase in property taxes. Then with the huge cuts in state aid, most budgets had "another" increase in the property tax.
Remember that one of the biggest issues in the election was the high property tax. Just as people voted for Christie because he argued he would not raise property taxes and would find a way to lower them, they voted against higher property taxes again. It also might have reflected how organized people with kids in school were. I was not surprised my town's budget passed because when I went to vote, the turnout was higher than I ever saw and other than a similar aged poll worker (a Democratic friend), I seriously think I was the oldest person in the room. (I'm 59) There were at least 40 or 50 people, many with kids with them.
The governor's role was complex and I think needlessly pugnacious and political. These are tough financial times - for the states, towns and people. I think the Governor intentionally made it a battle with the teachers' union. There were no attempts to bring them into the budgeting process quietly, behind the scenes. It really is not unreasonable to ask that wage increases be eliminated or reduced this year, when most of the non-teachers did not see wage increases. It is also reasonable that like most (or all) corporations' employees, they pay a portion of their health care premiums. But, the way to get there is not with a preemptive frontal attack on teachers and the union. In addition, they need to look at the base the increases are from. From this chart, you can see both that NJ has the fourth highest average teacher salary or that they are 36th (out of 50 in the chart - I guess they have no data on the others?) in " salary comfort index" - because NJ is an expensive state to live in.
http://teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state Notice also that NJ is among the lowest in % increases over the last 10 years.
In comparison, here is a chart (
http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes_nj.htm#b00-0000 ) that shows that 2008 mean annual salary in NJ is $48,690 - slightly lower than the average teacher salary. Also note the section on education here where teacher's salaries are broken down by several categories. When you throw in that teachers have better health care benefits than the average person, their overall compensation package likely puts them at the bottom of the top half of income in the state. I have no intention of arguing if the wages are "fair". (scanning the list, teachers do seem among the lowest of professions needing a BA and continuing graduate work) My point is simply that, especially in less affluent communities, the voters are likely making substantially less than teachers and could have been swayed by Christie's argument that they did not deserve a raise when others didn't get them.
Also, the teacher's union's answer that the millionaire's surtax was rescinded might have been part of what brought Christie's numbers so low so soon after he entered office. What it didn't really do was make a case that the budgets have had the fat cut out of them last year and this year - the budgets failing will cut things that genuinely will hurt the schools and families.
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