Bill Stepien, who had been White House political director before joining the Trump campaign in December, was announced Tuesday as deputy campaign manager of the president’s re-election effort, according to this NJ.com piece by Jonathan Salant.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr. (R-21) is turning Zoom-cropped heads in Trenton as the suddenly brilliant political maestro of the moment.
Either that or Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3) made a phone call and Kean couldn’t help but affirm the suggestion of the South Jersey leader, who’s no political dope.
With just 15 members in a caucus whittled down to near-kindling wood in the Christie years, Kean – while running for Congress under President Donald J. Trump in the 7th District – will have a party platform with which to bash Democrats, who outnumber Republicans by over a million strong in this state, and whose governor has a plus 70% approval rating during the COVID-19 virus.
That’s because Sweeney acquiesced to the GOP’s demand for the senate to create a bipartisan committee to investigate the Murphy Administration’s rresponse to the COVID-19 virus.
In his COVID-19 briefings, and as recently as today, Murphy kept referencing the 911 Commission chaired by former Governor Tom Kean, Sr.
But Junior is evidently the Cardinal Richelieu presence behind Sweeney’s version.
Caucus members are irritated, a source told InsiderNJ, as they watch Kean and company officiallly rescuitated by Sweeney, the duties of their specific committees routed through a bipartisan legislative committee driven by the apparently still-smouldering Senate Prez.
He and Murphy never got along.
It looks, the source opined, like Sweeney’s own crossing of the Rubicon, to keep the energy directed toward weakening Murphy rather than embodying the Democrats’ Murphy-allied senate president, making the choice to assert a coalition of Southern Democrats and otherwise fairly moribund Republicans instead of uniting fractured Dems in the lead-up to 2021.
It’s another case of Democrats dividing themsleves, but this time under the auspices of vengeful politics more than street smart moves-making informed by the likelihood of Murphy occupying the top of the Democratic ticket next year.
And Kean looks like the state’s master Machiavellian as a consequence.
Governor Phil Murphy today responded to the pre-Memorial Day news that the state Senate is proceeding with an investigation into the Murphy Administration’s response to COVID-19.
“We had our first case on March 4th. I was under the knief that day. I’ll bet if you look back, you can see I’ve said we need a post-mortem, a la the 9/11 Commission. Here’s where I’m going to be as committed: we’re still working 24-7 to save lives. With all due respect, that’s gotta be job number one right now. “
Native of Romania Elizabeth Fulop has died of COVID-19 complications at the age of 95.
The grandmother of Jersey City was a strong woman who lived independently in Bloomfield until she was 94, according to Governor Phil Murphy, who honored her today in his press briefing.
Paterson First Ward challenger Nakima Redmon is filing for a recount in her respective ward.
She lost unofficially to First Ward incumbent Councilman Mike Jackson.
Councilman Mike Jackson 844 WINNER
Nakima Redmon 599
Mosleh Uddin 490
But like Third Ward Councilman Bill McKoy, who also lost, she has questions.
That was the question state Senator (and co-chair of Trump’s NJ reelection campaign) Joe Pennacchio (R-26) posed in Point Pleasant over the weekend, according to this NJTV News report filed from the boardwalk by corespondent Brenda Flanagan.
Governor Murphy tweeted the following a short while ago:
TO THE CLASS OF 2020: Beginning July 6th, schools WILL have the opportunity to hold outdoor graduation ceremonies that comply with social distancing – ensuring the health and safety of all in attendance.
TO THE CLASS OF 2020: Beginning July 6th, schools WILL have the opportunity to hold outdoor graduation ceremonies that comply with social distancing – ensuring the health and safety of all in attendance. 🎓 pic.twitter.com/MqwVtPjZh4
— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) May 26, 2020
Redistricting could change everything, of course; so too could a move by state Senator Mike Testa (R-1) to U.S. Attorney as this InsiderNJ piece posits.
But who might step forward for the Democrats in the event of an LD1 opening?
A source said it’s unlikely to be former state Senator Bob Andrzeczak, beaten last year by Testa. He’s doing real estate and spending more time with his family. He really enjoyed that public service aspect of the legislature but did not enjoy the politics.
Other names? Joe Derella is a strong elected in Cumberland. There’s a young attorney, John Amenhauser, from Upper Township who could be a rising star. Carol Musso and Darlene Barber are also well-liked and seen as talents.
“But,” the source added, “I think if Testa is the candidate none of them are real contenders.”
Read Insider NJ’s Morning Intelligence Briefing: 5/26/2020
In the movie Jaws, New Jersey tough guy actor Roy Scheider fights the local Massachusetts political establishment, which wants to open the beaches despite the fact that there’s a great white shark swimming around devouring actual people (i.e. not politicians). Eventually, Scheider, whose name is Brody in the movie, succumbs to the politicians and acquiesces to open beaches (actually, it’s not his call), as long as he can take a pair of binoculars down there and have manned guard towers and helicopters in the vicinity.
Now, in actual New Jersey (the state which furnished the world with the dreadful 1916 event in Matawan that spawned Jaws), Mike Dukakis Massachusetts liberal Phil Murphy – having shut down the state – opened the beaches in the Garden State, with one eye still firmly fixed on that circling fin called the COVID-19 virus, and the other on a bunch of supposed New Jersey tough guy business owners and assorted beach bums who don’t give a damn about sharks.
“Governor Murphy and other government ‘experts’ were the ‘knuckleheads’,” said Seth Grossman of Atlantic City. “They didn’t do contact tracing when there were few enough cases for it to work. They let the virus into our nursing and veteran’s homes. Their bungling spiked the deaths and infections that gave us a second month of lockdown.”
The governor made the announcement ahead of Memorial Day in a diverting piece of sand castles craftsmanship designed in part to ease building tensions around unemployment compensation. He, too, has his binoculars and shark towers, in this case social distancing orders and limits on how many people can occupy each reopened beach.
Against the backdrop of increasing references to the Speilberg classic, the ever-theatrical Murphy has shown his alertness to the Jaws analogy. “We’re going to need a bigger boat,” the governor said back in March as the state began to enter the teeth of the virus, a direct quote of Scheider’s Jaws character.
Moreover, and sadly, Lee Fierro, the actress who played the mother of the kid on the yellow raft who gets killed by the shark in Jaws, who slaps Chief Brody as punishment for failing to close the beach and sending her child to his death, died last month at the age of 91, of COVID-19.
