Spotlight Interview: George Norcross

George Norcross -- part Democratic power broker, part South Jersey businessman and cheerleader -- has recently added a third attribute: self-proclaimed school reformer.

He has publicly backed a controversial tax-credit voucher bill called the Opportunity Scholarship Act (OSA). He has talked about opening a network of charter schools in Camden. And he has grown ever more outspoken in criticizing the public sector unions that have lately made him Public Enemy No. 2 behind Gov. Chris Christie -- especially the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA).

On Friday, Norcross sat down with NJ Spotlight to talk about where these education issues have come from and where they’re headed.

Fresh in his mind is the ongoing battles with the public unions, the latest chapter coming in their endorsements -- or lack thereof -- in the upcoming legislative elections.

But he also discussed charter schools and his own plans for Camden, as well as how and why he suddenly came to endorse the OSA. The following are excerpts from that conversation, held in the tenth floor conference room of Cooper Health Care, where he is board chairman.

Public unions and pension reform:

Norcross is not shy about his feud with the public unions. Nor are they, for that matter. The unions -- including the NJEA’s PAC – last week refused to endorse the bulk of South Jersey’s Democratic incumbents in November legislative elections, angered by the pension and healthcare changes signed by Christie and endorsed by the Democratic leadership, including Norcross and his longtime ally, Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester).

A month earlier, the NJEA slammed Norcross in a statewide ad campaign as being part of a conspiracy with Christie to gut union rights. Norcross was still a little angry about that Friday, but said the NJEA also knows the numbers.

They keep count. They do polling, too, and they know they made mistakes in this and overplayed their hand. They went in believing that they could stop [the pension changes], particularly in the Assembly, and there was never a chance of them stopping anything. They overplayed their hand, and when the music stopped, there were no chairs.

A day before the NJEA PAC’s vote on Saturday, Norcross was accurate in at least some of his predictions:

I predict a bunch of "no endorsements," as opposed to anti-endorsements, and that will be the smoke signal they want peace. It is time to focus on who they believe the real enemy is, the administration.

Whenever you try to affect public policy, history has taught us it has to be incremental and has to take time. Some of Christie’s proposals are aggressive, and I think it will be important for the NJEA to say, let's get ahead of what they, the public, is irritated about. If smart, they will put their own proposals together that are reasonable. Pass them and get it over with.

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