It confounds political logic.  Why would any elected official in New Jersey want to help Donald Trump’s reelection?

I’m talking about Democratic and Republican officials alike.  First let’s look at the Republicans.  Phil Murphy is headed toward a landslide reelection next year, not only because of his popularity surge from handling COVID-19, but also because the progressive base of the state Democratic Party, including me, loves the guy for his pro-health, pro-worker, pro-civil rights leadership.  Remember, Chris Christie won 60 percent in his reelection notwithstanding New Jersey’s blue trend and labor turnout.  Those factors will pile percentage points onto Phil Murphy’s reelection margin.

Can you imagine if Donald Trump got reelected and Republican state legislators had to stand for reelection in Trump’s second term?   Notwithstanding the outcome of redistricting, we’d see at a Republican bloodbath.  The combination of savvy Democratic redistricting, which seems to be in state Democrats’ DNA, and a second Trump term could even give the Democrats veto-proof majorities in both the state Senate and Assembly.

Democratic officials’ desire to defeat Trump is self-evident, or so you would think.

This week, a Democratic legislator, Assemblyman Jamel Holley of Union County, was scheduled to join a fiercely conservative Republican legislator, Senator Joe Pennachio of Morris County, at a “Freedom March” against Governor Murphy’s strict protocols to stem the tide of widespread COVID-19 deaths.  The Governor’s strategy is working, as New Jersey’s daily mortality rate is steadily on the decline, compared to the surge in states that have opened up more fully.

The opponents of Governor Murphy on COVID-19 claim he is violating their civil rights.   To steal the nomenclature of civil rights from those who have been oppressed because of their race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration or refugee status, or having disabilities, is, in a word, grotesque.

I’ve been fighting for civil rights in New Jersey for 20 years.  Let me tell you what civil rights oppression really is:  When I visited Ocean, Atlantic or Cape May counties in my early years leading Garden State Equality – back when a statewide poll showed marriage equality to have the approval of only 29 percent of state voters – I would be stalked coming out of our town meetings by people screaming Antisemitic slurs.   Yes, Antisemitic slurs far more than anti-gay slurs, as I wore a kippah with the words “Garden State Equality” embroidered on it that I had custom made during a visit to Jerusalem.

Once I was spit at.  More than once I could not walk around the stalkers.  I was frozen in place, quarantined by the hatred around me.

Under the Christie Administration, poor women were robbed of basic health care needs previously funded by the state – needs that had nothing to do with reproductive choice, wherever you stand on the issue.  And when Senator Frank Lautenberg of blessed memory died in 2013, Governor Christie acted to suppress the African-American vote in that year’s November election.   He scheduled the special election to replace Senator Lautenberg to an obscure day in October.  Christie did not want high African-American turnout for Democratic nominee Cory Booker in November, when Christie himself would be on the ballot.   Political gamesmanship to abridge civil rights and voting rights exists not just in the Deep South.

Nonetheless, Assemblyman Holley, a good man with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working, chose to align himself with a rally that cast Governor Murphy’s successful public health measures to be a violation of civil rights.  I don’t question the Assemblyman’s motives.  I simply don’t understand the substance of his position, or why he, a champion of actual civil rights, is equating COVID-19 protocols to save lives with restricting freedom.   Frankly, I don’t understand why the Assemblyman doesn’t view preventing a second wave of COVID-19 to be a matter of racial justice.  In this first wave of COVID-19, one-fourth of all virus-related deaths occurred in the state’s African-American community.   That is shockingly more than the 15 percent of the state population African Americans comprise.

The Assemblyman is not alone.  In the other party, all 15 Senate Republicans called for an investigation into the Murphy Administration’s handling of COVID-19.  To be sure, none of us should stand for the early, unattended and unanswered spread of the virus in nursing homes, be it in New Jersey or the other states where it occurred.   Senate Health Committee Chairman Joe Vitale, who may know as much about health care as any other state legislator in America, is 100 percent correct in wanting to look into the problem.  But having nothing to do with Senator Vitale, the messaging from the Senate Democrats, aligning with Senate Republicans, is that Governor Murphy is under investigation.   Look, I know Governor Murphy.  To the extent his Administration could have acted differently in the early days, he will acknowledge it.  He is no Donald Trump knucklehead.

But here’s the problem when Democratic state legislators attend rallies that bash Governor Murphy, or foment news coverage that makes it appear the Governor is somehow responsible for COVID-19 in New Jersey, which is preposterous.  They play right into Donald Trump’s hands.

Trump has already pivoted to blaming the nation’s Governors for the pandemic’s impact on the country.  Yeah, right – as if Phil Murphy or any other Governor told Trump to dissolve or at least disarm, depending on your perspective, the previous White House Office on Pandemics.  Or that Murphy or any other Governor told Trump to declare war on the imperfect but indisputably vital World Health Organization.

No one would ever blame Governors, rather than the President, from a threat to America by any foreign power abroad.  No one, that is, but Trump himself.  As of now, he’s been saying lovely things about our Governor.  Trump has called Murphy a great guy, even though Murphy is, in Trump’s words, very liberal.

But Trump is as fickle as the wind.  If it serves his purpose, he’ll turn on Governor Murphy just as he, Trump, has turned on nearly everyone else he once praised.  And here’s what would not be far behind:   Trump’s claiming that even Democrats in liberal states like New Jersey say their Governors are to blame.  The Democrats are protesting their own.  They’re investigating.  It’s bad, sad, special or whatever other third-grade word comes to mind.   You can imagine it all coming out of Trump’s mouth.

None of it would have any effect in true-blue New Jersey in the Presidential election.  But it would certainly become part of Trump’s national blame-the-Governors narrative.  What a ridiculous strategy that is – as ridiculous as anyone who thought Trump could become President in 2016.

www.stevengoldstein.com