Stomping Grounds: Covid report, Menendez, TikTok, and OPRA – New Jersey Globe

New Jerseyans aren’t always civil, but it’s still possible for a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican to have a rational and pleasant conversation about politics in the state.  Dan Bryan is a former senior advisor to Gov. Phil Murphy and is now the owner of his own public affairs firm, and chief strategist for Tammy Murphy’s Senate campaign, and Alex Wilkes is an attorney and former executive director of America Rising PAC who advises Republican candidates in New Jersey and across the nation, including the New Jersey GOP.  Dan and Alex are both experienced strategists who are currently in the room where high-level decisions are made.  They will get together weekly with New Jersey Globe editor David Wildstein to discuss politics and issues.

An independent report on New Jersey’s handling of the pandemic said that neither the state nor the federal government had an executable plan in place to handle the crisis and said New Jersey remains unready for another emergency.  There are 33 recommendations in the report.  Does this need to become a top-tier priority for the final year and a half of the Murphy administration?  And how closely should the governor’s office work with the legislature and local officials on this project?  

Alex Wilkes: This COVID report is essentially the document dump the Murphy Administration didn’t want anyone to see before the November elections in yet another calculated move to deprive voters of all the facts when making important decisions (Remember Ørsted, anyone?).

The proof of Murphy’s failures is in the number of people who met an untimely death as a result of the administration’s ineptitude – particularly as compared to similarly situated states, like Florida. Don’t take my word for it: look at the damning report from Joe Biden’s Department of Justice that described the despicable and constitutionally deficient conditions our veterans faced in Murphy’s state-run homes.

Murphy learned nothing, and this report will not change that. How do we know? He named a building after the very woman who ignored whistleblowers in her own agency decrying the lack of PPE and protocols that would have kept people alive. They said explicitly: “people will die.” Murphy, in his own arrogance, will never admit that he was wrong then, so how can we expect him to take the appropriate steps going forward?

Dan Bryan: The report essentially showed what we knew all along: the Governor and his Administration did the best they could under extremely difficult circumstances.

We cannot forget the elephant in the room here: every state, including New Jersey, was essentially left to fend for themselves in the face of an unprecedented abdication of duty by Donald Trump’s administration. President Trump was far more concerned with the politics of the pandemic than with the federal government’s response. So what we got was a patchwork of inconsistent advice, resources doled out at a whim, and chaotic public messaging.

Could New Jersey have been better prepared? Of course, the Governor has said so many times himself. But let’s be fair: no one was prepared for this. When the pandemic hit, Governor Murphy and his administration worked tirelessly to save lives and provide sorely-needed leadership. The rest is all politics.

NBC News has reported that Bob Menendez might try to seek re-election as an independent. Even if he’s acquitted, could he really win enough votes to cause Democrats to lose this Senate seat?

Dan: There is an extremely low probability that Senator Menendez makes it to the ballot in November, and an even lower probability that he would affect the general election in any real way.

Put it this way: in 2018, Senator Menendez, having just come off a corruption trial and with upside-down approval ratings, defeated a good self-funding Republican candidate by 12 points. I think we can safely call that the floor, or close to it. So do we think Senator Menendez, with approval ratings in the single digits and under multiple damning indictments, can register double digits in the polls, pulling solely and directly from the Democratic candidate?

It all seems like magical thinking to me. With Donald Trump leading the Republican ballot in a critical Presidential election, no Republican candidate, regardless of how good they are, will come within double digits of the Democratic candidate. Given that, Senator Menendez can certainly make some noise and make his presence felt, but he won’t have any real impact on the outcome of the election. New Jersey voters will send another Democrat to DC to take his place.

Alex: Weirder things have happened. Bob Menendez has nothing left to lose, and I think it’s dangerous to bet on his irrelevance 8 months out. Do I think he can engineer a successful sob story that fashions hiding cash and gold bars under the mattress as some quaint, misunderstood cultural difference? No. He already tried that in the Democratic primary and clearly failed.

Can he make a case that Biden’s Department of Justice unfairly targets its political enemies? Another candidate is doing so very successfully. He’d have to bring the goods to back it up, of course, but the thing people might like even less than Bob Menendez right now is Washington.

I think in the very least it makes it interesting – maybe even significant – particularly if he can use the skeletons he has left after saving his son to really turn New Jersey politics upside down.

We haven’t seen a lot of policy differences between Tammy Murphy and Tammy Kim, but they’re on different sides on banning TikTok from American app stores.  In the House, the bill had broad bipartisan support, but here were are, debating it in New Jersey. Is this an issue in the Senate race, or just a one-and-done news story?

Alex: Just looking in the prism of the New Jersey senate race (as opposed to the broader debate), I think this actually is a meaningful point of contention in a contest that presents few policy differences between the candidates.

Tammy Murphy’s angle is one of the “concerned mom,” and there are plenty of suburban, college-educated moms in the Democratic caucus who are concerned about the undue influence social media giants like TikTok have on their kids. They see their kids scrolling like zombies. They see the bullying. They see the safety hazards. They see their teenage girls coming to them with extreme body image concerns and pushing them to buy hundreds of dollars of skin care products from carefully curated product placement among influencers. A lot of them are fed up and feel powerless.

Do I think this wins a primary? Probably not, but it does give Tammy Murphy a leg to stand on.

Dan: Alex is right — parents are seriously concerned not only about how much time their children are spending on social media and how it affects them, but also about their data falling in the wrong hands. I don’t know a single parent *not* concerned about these issues.

It’s important to remember that this bill doesn’t ban TikTok – it bans its current ownership, ByteDance, and gives them six months to find a buyer. If nothing happens, yes, they would be banned from App stores in the United States.

Andy Kim gave Tammy Murphy two gifts on this issue. One, he skipped yet another critical vote, bringing his absenteeism to over 40% in 2024. And two, he stated that he would have opposed the bill, isolating him from the entirety of New Jersey’s Congressional delegation and putting him alongside President Trump and Matt Gaetz. Even Andy Kim’s favorite Senator, John Fetterman, strongly endorsed the bill!

If you follow New Jersey politics on social media, you couldn’t miss the story of the week: a bill to disarm the Open Public Records Act.  Did Speaker Craig Coughlin do the right thing by putting the brakes on a controversial, fast-tracked bill?  And is this an issue that average, not politically active voters, will care about in June and November 2025?

Dan: I was glad to see the bill held for further revisions and discussions. The Legislature was responsive to voices from the public and advocates, as they should have been.

Alex: First, like the Elections Transparency Act, this thing is only dead until it isn’t.

Democrats have ruthlessly been consolidating their power over the last few years, and they are just waiting for the right time to resurrect it. My bet is on some warm weekend where legislators and reporters want to be down the shore and hanging out in open state parks – not stuck in Trenton.

Second, unless there are consequences for voting for it, this will not become a marquee issue for voters in upcoming elections. We know that won’t happen, so the Globe and everyone else can go ahead and pre-write their obituary for the upcoming death of OPRA.