Jersey Surfer and Environmentalist Sizes up the State Senate

An obese man, dressed in a dark gray business suit, sits in his office with a foreign, shady land developer sipping cognac while plotting the latest scheme to build another set of beach-front condominiums and line his already bulbous pockets. This may be the stereotypical image of an American politician, but it fails to describe at least one would-be statesman: 51-year old, New Jersey Shore native Brian Unger. Unger's background reads like the biography of a long haired, surfer hippie -- a man whose bereen a wave junkie since twelve, studied Zen Buddhism for five years at the San Francisco Zen Center and lead protests to stop Army development of Sandy Hook. Today, Unger is the Green Party candidate on the November fourth ballot for the New Jersey State Senate, but Unger decided to try his hand at politics, the Loch Arbour local helped found the prominent environmental group, S.E.A., Surfers' Environmental Alliance, which has raised wave-riding awareness and protected prime surf breaks around New Jersey from detrimental development.

Describe your work with, S.E.A., Surfers' Environmental Alliance
The main activities that we've been involved in is clean ocean issues when they come up. New Jersey used to be famous for having problems with ocean pollution, now the pollution seems largely improved, though not entirely under control. S.E.A. has been most active the last few years in fighting to save our surf breaks from destruction by the Army Corps Engineers.

So, have you had a great deal of success with the S.E.A.?
We've managed to hold back the Army core from destroying a really great right point break called Sandy Hook, it's one of the top two breaks in New Jersey. The Army pretty much wanted to blow the main break to bits; eradicate the entire cove and the entire point area, and basically turn it into a kook beach. Pump in so many million tons of sand that when you step off the edge into the water you'd step into fifteen feet of water, kind of like a harbor instead of a surfing beach, and we succeeded in fighting a really tough public relations and lobbying battle to persuade the National Parks Service and the Army Engineers that it was not a good idea.

Aside from the environmental issues, what's motivating you to run for State Senate?
Our neck of the woods are run by mostly white males in their eighties and they've been in power since like 1950 or something. There's no diversity or young people, and they're have been a lot of corruption scandals with them in the past nine months. Right now there is a general feeling that it's a good time to get rid of them to get some younger folks in -- maybe some people from the surfing community -- and get better representation of different types of people. Not only that, but also the corruption scandals has been really embarrassing. I had a tough time just swallowing that, but other people weren't stepping forward to take them on, so I knew that I was fairly articulate, I could get press coverage, and I knew I could fight a good race to force these people to acknowledge or deal with what they've created. So, I just jumped in not knowing much, but I decided to really work hard.

After researching some of the articles about your campaign, it seems like your politics lean toward the right as far small government intervention?
I wouldn't call it to the right because I'm not a proponent of less government. The reason the articles read that way is because the Republicans have run Monmouth county government for like fifty years, and they have created a monstrous patronage system. It's become a huge problem. My politics are probably like a moderate democrat to a liberal democrat on most issues, but one thing I wanted to demonstrate to the voters was that I'm not just interested in good liberal issues like a clean ocean, or like protecting our surf breaks. I also wanted to reach out to average suburban people who are being taxed to death by the Republicans, and let them know that I wasn't going to support that. They just raised our county budget sixteen million dollars this year, and it's almost all on salaries and benefits for the political people that run the departments. It's outrageous. The other thing too is that here in New Jersey we have unbelievably bloated bureaucracy in the school system. We have a different school system for every single town in the state, and there's like 6l1 towns. So we have 611 separate school bureaucracies, and many states our size have just one school board and just one school board election for each county. So generally, all schools are local and run locally, but here in New Jersey each town has to have a super attendant, three to five consistent super attendants, a business administrator, an attorney, a board secretary, a board election every couple of years, and several director of curriculums, and what happens in New Jersey is a big, political cluster f--k.

One of the other points of your platform is equal rights for gay and long term heterosexual couples, since that's such a controversial topic right now, have you gotten any heat?
Yeah a little bit, and people in the surfing community wonder why I've spoke out about it, and I'll talk to anybody about it. In my district we have this city Asbury Park, the one Bruce Springsteen made famous with his album, and it has a huge gay and lesbian population, who revived the whole city when the city was going down the tubes. It was an ugly, rundown slum, and the gay and lesbian community came in from New York bought up real estate because it was so cheap, and they started turning the city around by buying and fixing up homes, and opening up bars and restaurants. The reason I bring this up is because people who are good, long-term couples who lead a good, responsible lifestyle frequently can't get their partner's health benefits. They pay roughly 35 percent more money if they want joint health care insurance, and that's discriminatory, and there's problems when one spouse dies. This also affects many straight couples as well. All these couples need is the right to share health insurance, to own property jointly, and for one of the spouses to be able to take care of the kids if their spouse dies. You got to insure that the people raising children together keep the children.

What are the other aspects of your campaign?
The number one thing I always list on my platform is there is no compromise on clean ocean issues. I've fought for a clean ocean these past twenty-eight years. We've had Republicans and Democrats in the State Senate who compromised. It's time to have someone in the State Senate to fight for the ocean off of New Jersey. I've also been fighting for better beach access, especially for the past ten years. [New Jersey] have had problems with fences, condo associations, and things like that with limiting surfers and fishermen access.

So, what's the amount of support your receiving now?
I've gotten a lot of support in the district. I'm a pretty well known person because I've been heading S.E.A., and before that I was with Surfrider Foundation. So, I have pretty good name recognition. So it gives me a good head start in politics. And not only that but I'm from Monmouth County.