Murray Sabrin, professor of finance at Ramapo, said he is considering a campaign for the Republican nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D) in this year's New Jersey U.S. Senate race.
"I thought maybe this would be the perfect opportunity for me to run and present a platform that would help restore prosperity in the country… I would be the guardian of the Bill of Rights…" Sabrin said. "We have the right to be free."
Booker, Newark's former mayor, must defend his seat this coming November after winning a special election for the U.S. Senate against Republican candidate Steve Lonegan by 11 points last October. Sabrin is thinking about possibly challenging Booker for this Senate seat.
Sabrin, a Ramapo faculty member since 1985, has been a familiar face in New Jersey politics since 1997. He was the first third party candidate, a Libertarian party candidate in the 1997 New Jersey governor's race, to appear in official debates with the other two major party candidates. He has also run in two Republican primary campaigns for the U.S. Senate, the first in 2000 and the second in 2008, ultimately losing to other GOP candidates.
Prior to coming to Ramapo, Sabrin worked in commercial real estate as well as money management and economic research. Sabrin received a doctorate in economic geography from Rutgers University, a master's degree in social studies from Lehman College and a bachelor's degree in history, geography and social studies from Hunter College.
In addition to Sabrin's career as an academic and New Jersey politico, he is the co-founder and current president of Inversquare LLC, the manufacturer and distributor of Conger LH, the world's first Lubrihibitor (www.congerlh.com), based in Ridgewood.
Sabrin, a native of Germany who immigrated to the United States at age two and became a U.S. citizen at age 12, is an adamant defender of American civil and political rights, which stems from his upbringing as a child of parents who experienced the Holocaust.
"I think my parents' experience surviving the Holocaust… and learning about that growing up instilled in me the notion that the smaller the government, the better," said Sabrin. "The more limited the government, the better because then you can't have atrocities like the Holocaust or gross violations of civil liberties."
If elected this November, Sabrin plans to implement several changes, including free market economic reforms.
"I think one thing we need to do is to restore free enterprise in this country and abolish crony capitalism," said Sabrin. "Crony capitalism is what got us in the housing bubble and the housing bust. The Federal Reserve worries more about Wall Street rather than Main Street. The stock market has become dependent on all this quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, which inflates asset values and leads to dislocation of the economy… I would be the guardian of the nation's money by corralling the Federal Reserve and making sure they don't engage in quantitative easing."
Sabrin's other platform ideas include lowering taxes.
If elected, he said he plans to make "taxes as low as possible so that people can use their income and wealth for their own goals, and business can reinvest funds to expand."
Sabrin also espoused taking a strong stance regarding recent revelations about the National Security Agency's spying activities on American citizens.
"I will make sure our civil liberties are protected from the NSA and other government agencies," said Sabrin.
He also stated a desire to reform American international policy.
"I would make sure that we are not the world's policeman," he said. "In other words, I would do the opposite of what President Obama and Senator Booker support."
—
acastil1@ramapo.edu
