Insider NJ’s 2024 Insider 100: Policymakers Publication (PDF)
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…
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Insider NJ's 2024 Insider 100: Policymakers
OMG! The top 15 is an absolute HORROR SHOW, and it doesn’t get any better after that! No wonder New Jersey is in the mess that it’s in!
There should be no complaints from any Democrat on how their party and the majority of politicians who represent New Jersey run our state .
After all we have some of the most liberal laws a state could have , we abortion on demand in all three trimesters who could ask for more then that , we punish our small business people and have one of the worse business atmospheres-in the country pretty good , add in such goodies like the highest taxes , crime in our cities, failing city schools , and high inflation, yep looking back we should be proud to be called a solid Blue State and since we are proud of it there is no sense making a change.