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Joseph Rullo, a Republican candidate for governor, is pairing up with his GOP and Democratic rivals excluded from the official gubernatorial primary debates to host their own next week at Stockton University. (Robert Sciarrino | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

TRENTON -- Who says New Jersey Democrats and Republicans can't work together?

Excluded by law from next week's primary debates for failing to raise sufficient cash, GOP gubernatorial candidates Joseph Rullo and Steven Rogers had an idea: Why not pair up with Democratic candidates Bill Brennan and Mark Zinna to hold their own?

"This is what the people of New Jersey are yearning for," said Rogers, a township commissioner in Nutly. "Democrats and Republicans on the same stage. Or, in this case, the same front lawn."

As the first official primary debates -- one for the Democrats and one for the Republicans -- unfold at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Stockton University in Galloway, the four "outcast" candidates say they'll hold their own in the hour before just outside the auditorium housing the official debate.

The four candidates will live-stream the debate on their Facebook campaign pages.

Zinna, reached by NJ Advance Media on Friday, said he'd accepted the invitation and promised their bi-party debate would be better.

"This debate is actually more significant than the ELEC sponsored debate because it features candidates with serious differences, rather than just a bunch of Democrats who've written enough checks arguing about how they're each better at the same thing," said Zinna, president of the Tenafly council.

Brennan, reached by NJ Advance Media on Friday, said he'd also agreed to participate, but blasted the state's election laws.

"I'm disheartened that the establishment has set up a threshold where regular people can't participate or be heard," said.

Both Brennan and Zinna failed to raise the $430,000 required by the commission to qualify for public financing and admittance to the ELEC-sponsored debates.

On Thursday, two Democratic governor candidates, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Phil Murphy and state Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) -- who both qualified for the ELEC debate -- signed their names to a letter of protest penned by Brennan and Zinna claiming ELEC "uses an

arbitrary rule to restrict the democratic values we hold dear" and called for their inclusion.

Rogers and Rullo also invited another fellow Republican governor candidate, Hirsh Singh, an Atlantic County aerospace engineer, to join them.

Singh claims to have raised well more than double the $430,000 required by ELEC, but failed to submit an application to ELEC to be admitted to the debate by an April 3 deadline.

On Friday, Singh politely declined to participate in the alternative debate, saying he was instead pursuing a legal challenge to ELEC's decision at the state Supreme Court on an emergent basis.

Under ELEC rules, candidates for governor who met the funding threshold by April 3 qualified for the state's matching funds program, in which gubernatorial contenders receive $2 in public funding for every dollar they raise privately.

In exchange for the public funding, they are then bound to take part in two ELEC-sponsored debates.

In Tuesday's state-sanctioned debates, two Republicans -- Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R-Somerset) -- will face off, and the Democratic clash will feature Murphy, Lesniak, former U.S. treasury official Jim Johnson, and Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex).

"New Jersey voters should have the opportunity to hear all the candidates," Rullo said. "Why should candidates be excluded from a debate for not taking taxpayer money?"

Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.