INTERVIEW: The Majority Rules

By Reuvain Borchardt

Avi Schnall, Director of Agudath Israel’s New Jersey office, spoke with Hamodia the day after he won election to the state Assembly, becoming the first-ever Orthodox state legislator from Lakewood.

How did you come to run for public office?

This has been an ongoing conversation with askanim and rabbanim, to put someone in to be able to represent the tzibbur, especially in the growing community, and to be able to produce for our community. I was approached by rabbanim about doing it, and we went back and forth and back and forth. After receiving the encouragement of Gedolei Yisrael, we decided to run.

You first decided to run a few months earlier, then you dropped out and then again you decided to run after all. What happened there?

I wasn’t ready for it then. But I thought about it more, and I saw how big an opportunity it was, and that if I don’t do it now, it’s not going to happen for the next two years. Our tzibbur has lots of needs and our district has lots of needs. If I would wait another two years or four years, what happens in between? It would be too much of a lost opportunity.

So it was either you or no one?

No one else was doing it, and there was very strong encouragement from the rabbanim, so I felt comfortable doing it.

The district is very red. And Orthodox Jews are heavily Republican. Why did you choose to run as a Democrat?

That’s the majority party.

The way politics works is there’s one rule: the majority party rules. That’s where the sausage is made: it’s made in the majority caucus room. If you’re not in the room, you’re not at the table. It’s very simple.

For the last many decades, this district did not have representation in that room. And this district, having the fourth-largest city in the state, to not be attended to, is hurting our communities. It’s not just that we’re not getting — we’re losing. Because we grow and our infrastructure isn’t being addressed, and our school systems aren’t being addressed. This affects every single family. So continuing to have this sort of non-existent representation is hurtful.

You switched your party registration to Democrat for this election.

Like most people in the community, when I registered here 15 years ago, I registered as a Republican. I never thought much about it. But now the opportunity is that we live in New Jersey, and the majority party of New Jersey is the Democratic Party.

Your campaign was heavily based on bringing tuition relief to yeshiva parents. Given that it’s a Democratic state with a powerful teachers union that opposes public funding of private schools, how realistic do you think that goal is?

Our campaign was based on several issues.

The UENJ (United Education for New Jersey), which is a separate entity, had a separate campaign focused on tuition relief. But the Avi Schnall campaign had multiple agendas.

First and foremost was having a seat at the table and being represented. That’s number one. There are so many examples we can give of how Lakewood, Howell, and the rest of the district is simply being ignored. We’re invisible. It’s like no one sees us. We have a $300 million school-board deficit. Why has Trenton not fixed that? We have terrible infrastructure deficiencies on state highways that for decades have never been addressed. Just basic, simple representation — that’s number one.

Yes, another very big component was that we are a very large private-school community, and the most crushing burden on parents is paying tuition bills, and to be able to bring some relief. Now, how quickly? There’s a process. And this is part of the process: having someone in the majority party who’s willing to bang on the table and push the agenda and push the need and galvanize and coalesce the broad supporters of school choice throughout the state to actually get something done. And this is something that we do believe is doable. This is something that New Jersey was very close to doing several years ago. And we need to reignite the fire.

One concern that some community members have raised, and which you posted about on social media in the past, is that if the state starts spending serious money on yeshivas, it may then want to control the yeshiva curriculum. Do you still have those fears that you seemed to have a few years ago?

The program that we and the UENJ have been working on for the past year is a scholarship program; there’s no direct state-to-school funding. It’s a tax credit that goes to a nonprofit organization that then gives scholarships to individual parents. So it’s not like the state is taking money out of its budget and paying for private schools.

And state laws in New Jersey are very different than New York’s.

There’s always a concern that government may want to intrude in our yeshivas. It’s happening in New York without any voucher or scholarship program. It could happen in any state. That’s one of the reasons we’re sort of veering away from the voucher program and are working on a scholarship program. It’s a very different setup.

So you don’t feel that if the scholarship program passes it’ll invite scrutiny of yeshivas.

The scrutiny will come or not come, but not based on whether there are scholarships. In New York there are no scholarships but there’s still scrutiny.

New Jersey state legislator is a part-time job. Will you remain at Agudah while you are in the Assembly?

Yes, I’m still in the Agudah.

But my role within the organization will be changing. We’re having internal discussions about that. I will not be as active in the day to day New Jersey operations — definitely not in the government affairs. But I’m an employee of Agudas Yisrael, which is a mega national organization, with multiple divisions and tremendous opportunities to do for the broader tzibbur throughout the country.

What will happen in Agudah’s New Jersey office?

Shlomo Schorr, who has until now been associate director of the New Jersey Agudah office, will be the new director of legislative affairs.

Beyond that, we don’t yet know exactly what will happen. But I will not be involved in the legislative activities of the office.

As a member of the Democratic caucus, to some extent you will have to go along to get along. What will happen when a Democratic bill comes up that Torah Jews deem immoral?

The Democratic leadership is very well aware — we’ve had conversations and there’s a good understanding — that being the person I am, I will not be able to vote in line on certain social agendas that the Democratic Party has.

However, it’s very important to remember that last year there were over 390 bills passed in the state legislature, and no more than three had anything to do with social issues. There’s far more legislation that we do work together on as a caucus, that being there and working together on with caucus colleagues will give us that strength and relationship that when maybe those one or two social issues come up in a year, they understand I won’t be able to be there with them on those.

When the social issues do come up, do you plan on not showing up at the vote or actually voting with the Republicans against it?

It would depend on what the issue is, and we’ll discuss it with the community members and community leaders, and decide the appropriate measures.

What specific legislative priority do you have aside from tuition relief?  

In addition to education, infrastructure is the major item that Lakewood deals with on a day-to-day basis.

What specific infrastructure projects are you looking at?

Route 9, Route 70, Route 88. Those are state highways.

You mean repairing them or actually widening them?

Let’s see what we can get done.

Widening them would mean a massive eminent domain project.

There are many improvements that can be done to alleviate some of the problems of Route 9 without eminent domain: traffic lights, turning lanes, barriers, sidewalks. There are so many things that can be done to help. But the local government can’t do it because they’re not allowed to touch a state highway, and the state just has not been paying attention.

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rborchardt@hamodia.com