The key is to look at how NJ residents react to property taxes. The point is that many budget had major increases in property taxes because there was little fat to cut. NJ has the highest average property taxes in the nation - and is considerably higher than the next state.
http://www.retirementliving.com/RLpropertytaxrate.html My town's budget, which passed, will cause over a 6% increase. This is a significant amount of money. This is especially true for many retired people on fixed incomes.
If you go back to last year, the key issue was property taxes. My local paper ran a week long series of long front page articles on property taxes. (yes - that means 7 over a full page articles. )
Remembering that there was a recession in the early 1990s, I googled "NJ school budget 1991 defeat" - and found that in 1991, with a far less deep recession, 44% of the budgets failed to pass.
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/02/nyregion/angry-taxpayers-reject-44-of-new-jersey-school-budgets.html?pagewanted=1 This is almost exactly what happened this year.
Not all politics is related to the politician.