Well after being put on hold for the last five years, the 84th annual Walk to Washington is back.

The annual political tradition hosted by the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce invites hundreds of business, government and nonprofit leaders, giving them the chance to sit shoulder to shoulder on their way to the nation's capital via train.

It's a quirky only in Jersey networking event that comes amid turmoil in D.C. and an upcoming election to pick a new governor for New Jersey.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagis was along for the ride.

It's been five years since the walk to Washington departed Newark, picking up a who's who list of passengers on his way down to the nation's capital.

It's back at a time when ten candidates are running to be New Jersey's next governor.

Four Republicans, six Democrats.

Many of them took the opportunity to rub shoulders quite literally with New Jersey business and government leaders.

Our objective today is to tell the business community that we celebrate them.

And my objective as governor is make New Jersey a better place to do business, need to restructure our taxes.

We make it less regulatory intensive.

More businesses will stay and more businesses will come.

That will create more jobs.

Jack Ciattarelli was the only Republican candidate on the train, but we caught up with several Democrats.

We need to stop raising taxes.

Grow the economy and generate revenue that way.

You've taken a more moderate position on things like immigration.

Do you see New Jersey is becoming too progressive?

Do you want to bring it back to the middle?

It's always been a moderate state.

People have tried to make it seem that it's progressive.

And oh, by the way, I'm the person that did pay family leave.

I did minimum wage.

I did the right for woman to choose, you know, and pay equity for females.

We've always been a moderate state.

That's not progressive views.

That's moderate views.

Wanting to help people.

We don't get spending under control when I mean spending.

I don't mean the same thing the Republicans mean.

I mean that we have to reduce health care costs, right?

We have to reduce insurance costs.

We have to reduce what we pay to folks that I think are gouging us.

We have to get the wealthy to pay their fair share.

We've seen a real shift since the presidential election.

I would say more towards the middle from a lot of Democratic candidates.

I don't see that from you.

You're right.

They're wrong, I think.

I think they're reading the tea leaves wrong that, you know, around the country, democratic values still.

Want and I'm the only candidate here, has put out a plan to actually figure out how to make life more affordable.

Families get property taxes down by about 15%.

That a middle class income tax cut.

We've got help for seniors as well.

And then we got to get we're on this train here, the Chamber of Commerce.

We need more jobs.

We keep losing people and jobs in New Jersey.

We've lost and we're now the for the seventh year running, 70 year running or the number one outmigration state in the country.

Does not make a millionaire's tax the wrong thing for New Jersey.

It makes we got to do everything to make life more affordable, to get more jobs here and to get tax cuts for working class people and hardworking folks.

When the.

Property tax laws that make a millionaire's tax the wrong time.

For tax cuts for everybody, right for for the property taxes, we've got to give a tax cut for everybody.

And what I'm focused on is how do we grow the state?

No thoughts on a millionaire's tax.

I'm focused on what I'm going to do is look at every piece of what we do and how we affect families.

What are your thoughts as you see Congress debate whether or not to shut down the Department of Education?

And what would that mean for New Jersey?

You know what?

Look, there's a lot of troubling things that are happening right now at the federal level.

And I think for us, it's important to have a governor who obviously understands education or other spaces, the importance of it.

And when these things keep coming at us, we're going to have to adapt exactly what that means.

Not sure we're going to see.

What does that mean for the funding that we get?

What does that mean for the programs supporting our students with special needs and so many others?

So we've got to be ready for that, but also prepared to fill in those gaps.

You know, should we lose the dollars, especially.

If, in fact, it's going to go away, then we will have a bigger crisis than we ever imagined.

Many Republican state leaders were on the train saying they're hopeful for a Republican governor who'll take New Jersey in a different direction.

We need to change some policies the engine, the energy policies that we have right now.

The energy masterplan is killing us.

All Our electric bills are going up.

We need to make sure our schools are funded and we certainly need to make sure that our residents can afford to live here.

North Carolina, for example, their corporate business tax is two and a half percent, and we're somewhere around 11.7%.

It's too high.

We need to keep the job creators here.

We all know the fight is for the unaffiliated voters.

I think Republicans have a better message to them.

There's still lots more politicking to be done.

There will be an event tonight where Governor Phil Murphy will speak along with several of New Jersey's congressional delegation.

We'll have more coverage from that event tomorrow on the train headed down to Washington, D.C..

I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight news.