News Analysis: In New Jersey Race, Statistics Too Good to Bow to Truth

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

   TRENTON, May 27 — It is hardly unusual when politicians in the heat of a campaign sling numbers
   like mud. But with less than a month until the New Jersey primary for governor, the three candidates
are doing little else.

Bret D. Schundler raised taxes 79 percent! screams Bob Franks, his rival in the Republican primary.

Bob Franks voted with former Gov. Jim Florio 90 percent of the time! shouts Mr. Schundler, the mayor of
Jersey City.

James E. McGreevey raised taxes by 71 percent! cry Mr. Franks and Mr. Schundler in unison, about the
mayor of Woodbridge, who is unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

Each of these cartoonish-sounding claims is, on its own terms, accurate. But if statistics don't lie, they
certainly don't necessarily convey the whole truth.

"If I was voting in New Jersey, I would want to be really careful," said Joel Best, author of the new book
"Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians and Activists" (University
of California Press). "But most of us don't have the energy to dissect what we hear in a campaign ad."

To do just such a dissection, however, reveals something about each of the contenders and his record —
far more than a mere number stripped from its context, blown up beyond recognition and wielded like a
cudgel. It also sheds light on the tactics of each of the three, and on the peculiar ethics of hardball
campaigning.

Mr. McGreevey, who has never really stopped running for governor since narrowly losing to Gov.
Christie Whitman in 1997, was the first to begin lobbing statistics.

As this year's race drew near, his chief Republican rival appeared to be Donald T. DiFrancesco, the State
Senate president since 1992. So Mr. McGreevey engineered his campaign to hold Mr. DiFrancesco
accountable for what he called the Whitman administration's failings. And at the top of Mr. McGreevey's
list was the state's growing long-term debt burden.

Debt had more than doubled on Mrs. Whitman's watch, he said at every opportunity. And it had,
technically, to $15.7 billion a year ago from $5.7 billion in 1993.

But a closer look lessens the impact of those numbers. The 1993 debt figure Mr. McGreevey used
excluded $4.5 billion in liabilities that were not recognized until later. Those included things like sick pay
for state workers, as well as the state's liability for future pension payments, which was converted to debt
in 1997 in a controversial $2.8 billion bond issue that treasury officials insist will save billions in the
long run.

The upshot? To be fair, Mr. McGreevey should compare the current debt with $10.2 billion, which was
the actual and unrecognized debt in 1993, state officials say. By that measure, debt had risen by 54 percent
since then — still a large increase, and nearly one and a half times the rate at which the state budget grew.

Once it became clear that Mr. Schundler was going to mount a primary challenge, he came under attack —
first by Mr. DiFrancesco, the acting governor, and then by Mr. Franks, who replaced Mr. DiFrancesco in
the race last month — for having raised taxes by 79 percent in Jersey City.

In a radio debate on Wednesday, Mr. Schundler called this "absolutely, positively, indisputably a lie." It
was not a lie. But it was misleading.

To arrive at 79 percent, Mr. Franks had to compare the Jersey City tax rate last year — $2.02 per $100 of
assessed property value — with the 1994 tax rate, $1.13 per $100.

But Mr. Schundler took office in 1992. That year, taxes were $1.70 per $100. In fact, one of Mr.
Schundler's first acts as mayor was to arrange for the sale to Wall Street investors of uncollected tax
liens. That produced $25 million in cash and allowed a five-month tax holiday in 1994. Thus the low tax
rate that year.

Compared with 1992, property taxes in Jersey City actually rose 18.9 percent, or an average of 2.4
percent a year, which Mr. Schundler notes is less than the regional rate of inflation, an average of 2.7
percent during the same period.

Mr. Franks sticks to his guns. "If I moved to the city in 1994, my property taxes went up 79 percent," said
Charlie Smith, his campaign manager. He adds that Mr. Schundler's desire to adjust tax rates for inflation
is asking too much.

"I don't adjust what I spend at the grocery store for inflation," Mr. Smith said. "I spend more. That's less
money available to me because of inflation. You can't say property taxpayers are getting a break because
of inflation. If that were the case, then the price of bread is the same as it was 50 years ago."

He also notes that Mr. Schundler had no trouble attacking Mr. McGreevey for raising taxes by 71 percent
in Woodbridge — a calculation rooted in the same methodology as Mr. Franks's attack on Mr. Schundler.

But then, in the heat of a campaign, it is not about consistency, it is about making sure the sun does not set
on an unrequited attack. And turnabout is fair play, no matter how unfair it seems at the time.

For example, Mr. Schundler deftly turned the tables on Mr. Franks by attacking his voting record as a state
assemblyman. One of Mr. Franks's claims to fame among Republicans is that he helped the party win
control of the State House after Governor Florio's tax increases in 1990. But a researcher hired by Mr.
Schundler reported that Mr. Franks's voting record on bills that Mr. Florio, a Democrat, signed or vetoed
showed that they agreed 90 percent of the time.

Mr. Franks, in a radio debate on Wednesday, called that figure "grossly misleading."

Legislators vote on so many things, many of them inconsequential, many others only after bipartisan
accords, that it is not uncommon for people at opposite ends of the political spectrum to have eerily
similar voting records, said David P. Rebovich, a professor at Rider University who studies state
politics.

"The votes don't get to the table until the stuff is worked out," he said. "There are understandings between
the majority party and the governor's office. And not for nothing, but when you're a member of the minority
party, you frequently end up voting with the majority, because you don't want to be accused of not
supporting education, or programs for seniors, and so on — much like the Democrats voted for Whitman's
income tax cut. Because they knew they'd get killed in an election if they were against it."

Of course, for Mr. Franks to call the 90 percent figure misleading is itself fraught with irony. Mr.
Schundler's researcher, Christopher Lyon, actually came up with the figure while working for Mr. Franks
in the 2000 Senate primary. Mr. Lyon said he was commissioned to analyze the voting record of a rival
Republican, State Senator William L. Gormley. Mr. Gormley voted with Mr. Florio 93 percent of the
time, Mr. Lyon found; he said he did the same analysis on Mr. Franks and argued unsuccessfully that it
would be unfair, and also unwise, to use the number in the campaign because it could blow up in Mr.
Franks's face.

That, as it happened, took a year.

To bring this round robin of muddy math full circle, both Mr. Franks and Mr. Schundler have piggybacked
on state Republican claims that Mr. McGreevey, the Democrat who awaits in the November election,
sharply raised both property taxes and debt as mayor of Woodbridge after taking office in 1992.

The tax rate in Woodbridge was 62.7 cents per $100 of property value in 1991. It rose to $1.06 per $100
in 2001, an increase of 71 percent, and at more than twice the rate of inflation.

But Mr. McGreevey argues that the 1991 rate was abnormally low, because his predecessor, Joseph
DeMarino, cut taxes by 20 percent in what Mr. McGreevey called an election-year ploy. Mr. DeMarino
also emptied surplus accounts, overestimated revenues and failed to budget enough money for a costly
labor deal and pending tax appeals, Mr. McGreevey says.

Adjusting the 1991 budget for all those items produces a true tax rate of 87 cents per $100, according to
an audit the following year. Or, Mr. McGreevey says, one should go back to 1990, when the tax rate was
83 cents per $100.

Either way, the increase between then and now would be well below the rate of inflation.

In the same way, Mr. McGreevey blames Mr. DeMarino for most of the increase in Woodbridge's debt.
Mr. McGreevey borrowed $34 million in 1992 to plug a $24.5 million budget gap he said he inherited,
and to shift the town's fiscal year.

Excluding those borrowings, Mr. McGreevey accepts responsibility for only $5.6 million in additional
debt — an increase of just 5.3 percent in 10 years, less than one-fifth the rate of inflation.

Whether Mr. McGreevey will get away with that, of course, will be up to his opponents, and to the voters
in November.