Campaign politics overshadowed the budget season this year, as Tammy Murphy supplanted Phil Murphy in the statewide public eye. In the end, Phil Murphy’s budget quietly survived, while Tammy Murphy’s U.S. Senate candidacy infamously died.

This list usually prioritizes the Trenton-based brainiacs who try to find a way to try to spin out of control spending into an argument for how the public benefits. This year, however, the corruption meltdown of U.S. Senator Bob Menendez created a federal office opening, and the ensuing debate immersed New Jersey’s political intelligentsia in campaigns and elections law.

You’ll recall, of course, that U.S. Rep. Andy Kim (D-3) – long the beneficiary of ballot bracketing as an establishment Democrat – decided (in his own best interest, but that’s politics, folks) in the most morally indignant fashion, that “the party line” punishes the democratic aspirations of most New Jerseyans. So even as Governor Murphy primed the establishment to accept and coronate his wife as the next U.S. Senator from New Jersey to supplant the fetid political corpse of Menendez, Kim launched his insurrection.

The Murphys tacitly relied on the strength of the governor’s position as the chief overseer of the budget, and the appetites of key county leaders, hopeful for a budget beneficial to their self-interests. The Murphys’ simple, unspoken calculation required county party to support Tammy Murphy’s senate candidacy by bracketing her as the organization choice on the June ballot, in exchange for goodies (that’s an old Joe DiVincenzo term) in the budget…

Download Insider NJ’s 2024 Insider 100: Policymakers Publication or view it below: