Tammy Murphy is the Senate frontrunner. Now, NJ needs these questions answered | Kelly

4-minute read

A much needed political freshness ripples through the recent announcement of the new U.S. Senate candidacy of Tammy Murphy, the wife of New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

Tammy Murphy has never held office before. She’s a rookie. She’s not just another political hack who was forced to labor in the backrooms of party politics, laughing at all the bad jokes, eating all the slices of cold pizza and putting up with the bloated egos would-be power brokers. Hence, the freshness.

She’s 58, a former Goldman Sachs banker who happens to be chair of the women’s professional soccer team, NJ/Ny Gotham FC. If elected, she says she wants to focus on issues involving women and children.

But another, very different and, frankly, disturbing feeling about this quixotic candidacy needs to be addressed, too. This is a sense of cynical entitlement that also frames Tammy Murphy’s entrance into elective politics.

She’s rich, the wife of a very wealthy governor who made his own entrance into elective politics largely because he happened to have a hefty checkbook, bolstered by his own success on Wall Street.

With her husband as governor, Tammy Murphy hung around the Statehouse in Trenton for several years and was even given an office there. Now that she wants a big prize — a U.S. Senate seat, no less — a major reason Democrats are taking her seriously is that she has a massive bank account and that her husband is the governor.

This circle game of rich people buying elective office ought to be deeply worrisome for any democracy that wants to remain open to newcomers. But New Jersey’s Democrats barely whimper in public about this seemingly upsetting trend. No one asks how a rookie with no money but plenty of good ideas can get ahead in politics. The first question for any up-and-coming political figure is this:  How much money can you raise?

In New Jersey politics, money talks. No one really seems to mind.  

What about Bob?

This brings us to the incumbent and indicted U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, the veteran Democrat that Tammy Murphy wants to replace. You can hardly blame Menendez, a veteran of numerous political wars, for now voicing his own concerns about Tammy Murphy.

Menendez’s term ends next year. He’s also facing (again) a series of federal corruption charges that he conspired to use his senatorial influence to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cash and gifts for doling out favors. One of the federal charges accuses Menendez of acting as a “foreign agent” on behalf of Egypt and even passing along sensitive information Egyptian officials.

That’s not a good political brand for Menendez. To say that he is politically vulnerable right now is an understatement.

Certainly, Menendez has much explaining to do if he wants to remain in office. His federal trial is scheduled to begin next May 6, a month before the Democratic primary. The debates before that primary — if debates take place — will surely be must-see TV in New Jersey, not to mention for the national Democratic party which is deeply worried about retaining its majority in Senate.

Here in New Jersey, voters are already running from Menendez as if he has been afflicted with a deadly, contagious virus. In September, soon after federal prosecutors announced that Menendez had been indicted, a poll conducted by a Democratic political action committee found that his approval rating had slipped to just 8% with nearly three of every four respondents saying they disapproved of him. 

That’s not good news if you are planning to run for re-election in the coming year — with a primary less than seven months away. But what angers Menendez now is how Gov. Phil Murphy reacted to the news that New Jersey’s senior senator was facing serious charges.

Investigation: This cast of characters has been linked to the Sen. Menendez investigation

The ink of the federal indictment was barely dry before Gov. Phil Murphy called on Menendez to resign. That’s unusual. Party loyalists tend to stick together. And for a Democratic governor to step into the spotlight and call on a longtime Democratic senator to quit is major news.

Soon after Murphy made his move, a stream of Democratic party officials — including many New Jersey county bosses — said Menendez should step down.

And then a creepy rumor surfaced — that Tammy Murphy was thinking of running for Menendez’s senate seat.

Was Gov. Murphy influenced?

Was Murphy’s quick call for Menendez to resign influenced by his wife’s desire to run for office? 

The governor did not say. But now that Tammy Murphy has officially announced her senate candidacy, it’s worth returning to that issue and asking if her husband was trying to use his influence weeks ago to essentially clear the field and urge the state county Democratic bosses to turn their backs on Menendez. 

Certainly that’s the question Menendez raised soon after Tammy Murphy officially jumped into the senate race.

“When Phil Murphy rushed to judgement and called on me to resign, it was clear he had a personal, vested interest in doing so at the expense of core democratic principles — the presumption of innocence and due process,” Menendez said in a statement. With his words dripping with contempt, Memendez added that the Murphys “believe they have to answer to nobody.”

Menendez is the equivalent of a wounded duck right now. He can’t fly. And flapping his political wings seems futile and pathetic. But Menendez has a point about Phil and Tammy Murphy.  

Yes, the allegations against Menendez are troublesome — deeply so. So is Menendez’s seemingly clueless habit of accepting freebies from people who ask favors of him. This was the problem that brought down another talented U.S. senator, Robert Torricelli.  You would think Menendez, a smart guy, would learn from history.

But when it comes to being charged with a crime, Menendez, like anyone, is innocent until proven guilty. In fairness, that much needs to be said.

Most of Menendez’s fellow Democrats in the U.S. Senate have called on him to resign. Menendez gave up his chairmanship of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As he stubbornly clings his Senate seat amid the disturbing allegation that he conspired with Egyptian officials, his Senate colleagues have asked him to stay away classified briefings that American intelligence officials routinely offer to Senators.

But Gov. Phil Murphy’s involvement in this political soap opera is an entirely different matter. Simply put: if the governor takes the unusual step of calling on a U.S. Senator to resign, the governor’s hands ought to be clean.

Gov. Phil Murphy may turn out to be right in turning his back on Menendez. But if Murphy’s motivation was to boost his wife’s candidacy, his hands are dirty.

New Jersey needs to know Tammy Murphy

Meanwhile, Tammy Murphy says she wants to devote her efforts to helping women and children if she wins a Senate seat. That’s laudable. Having a woman’s voice from New Jersey in the Senate and speaking on behalf of kids and women would certainly be a plus.

But New Jersey barely knows Tammy Murphy. It’s not as if she served in a variety of other elected offices.  In fact, for many years, she was a registered Republican.  And, while her husband clearly positioned himself as a major Democratic fund raiser as early as 2006, the New York Times found election records indicating that Tammy continued to vote in Republican primaries as late as 2014.

This embarrassing revelation has already prompted the pugilistic Menendez to label Tammy Murphy as a “card-carrying Republican for years.”

The message from Menendez was clear: Welcome to the circus, Tammy. The lions will soon emerge from their cages. So will the tigers and monkeys — and the clowns.

Yes, Tammy Murphy’s candidacy seems fresh. It’s hardly unprecedented to have a new, inexperienced face in New Jersey politics. Remember Bill Bradley? He left his New York Knicks basketball career for another storied career in the U.S. Senate.

In some ways, even Phil Murphy was yet another untested candidate when he ran for governor. He had been the American ambassador to Germany and had performed well as the Democratic National Committee’s finance chairman. But policy? In Trenton? Murphy’s resume was thin. 

The same can be said of Tammy Murphy. 

She may turn out to be another Bill Bradley, a newcomer with little political experience who became a respected voice in the U.S. Senate. But her candidacy right now is tainted. 

She needs to face that. So does her husband.

Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com, part of the USA TODAY Network, as well as the author of three critically acclaimed nonfiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in the Northeast, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kellym@northjersey.com