Hours before First Lady Tammy Murphy announced her decision to quit the Senate race, she met with a handful of the most powerful county bosses in Newark on a Sunday morning.
And that raises a question: Did the bosses press her to quit? Or did she do this on her own initiative, knowing she was likely to lose?
Because the bosses have good reason to want this water torture to end. They are on the ropes now, with the dark workings of their machines exposed like never before. We all saw that they have too much power, and no regard for the will of the common voters. They tried to stuff Tammy Murphy down the throat of party activists, and the activists coughed her up like a cat coughing up a hairball.
So, for the bosses, this cut-and-run no doubt comes as a relief. Maybe now, they can get back to business as usual.
But I don’t think they’ll get away with that. That’s partly because this was such a tawdry effort to tip the scales in her favor. It reached a peak last week in Camden County’s convention, when five bullies blocked the doorway to keep out Patricia Campos-Medina, a rival candidate in the primary. She only wanted a few minutes to address delegates before they voted. They told her to go home.
It was captured on video, and as Gold Bar Bob Menendez can testify, the visuals can be deadly in politics.
But there’s another big reason for this revolt, and his name is Donald Trump. As Rep. Andy Kim sees it, Trump’s election in 2016 brought a new wave of volunteers and activists into the party. They helped flip three Congressional seats from Republican to Democrat in the 2018 election, giving us Mikie Sherrill, Tom Malinowski, and Kim himself. And they didn’t leave when that work was done. In this race, Kim says, they have been the air beneath his wings.
The bosses in the big Democratic counties apparently didn’t get that memo. They went old school, endorsed Murphy, with a variety of repressive rules that ensured Murphy received the coveted “line” that gives machine picks an overwhelming advantage in primaries. In their counties, they said in effect that the activists can go to hell.
And it backfired. Because Kim is so obviously a better pick. He has experience in the State Department, the National Security Council, and three terms in Congress. He’s a proven winner, even in a district that backed Trump twice. And he’s got a compelling life story that was bringing crowds to their feet. In Morris County last week, he got a standing ovation even before he took the stage, and another after his speech.
Tammy Murphy got polite applause, every time. She has no experience. She admitted early in the campaign that she “never thought” much about the filibuster, which is pathetic when you consider how intense that debate has been in the Senate for the last three years. To give you an idea of just how charming she is, note that she’s refused to endorse Kim, even as she quit the race.
My hope, though, is that this is a transformative moment in Jersey politics. We are the only state that has the infamous “line” and it’s time to kill it. If we don’t, the bosses will go back to their old ways for sure. They’ll just be more careful for awhile, until the heat passes.
Even if the line survives, the party needs at least to change the rules to make the competition fair. In Morris County, like several others, the vote was a secret ballot, the chair didn’t press delegates one way or the other, and all candidates were allowed to speak directly to delegates before their vote.
Two people I trust who were involved in Sunday’s events told me the bosses didn’t press Murphy, that she made this call on her own. They say she understands not only that she’d lose, but that she could put other candidates at risk who were lower on the line beneath her name. We’ll find out more in coming days. I was told that the national party was deeply concerned about this mess, so maybe that was a factor as well.
This grotesque moment could actually serve to clean up New Jersey politics, if it leads to a push for reform. That’s my hope, and I’m sticking with it.
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 986-6951. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.comOpinion on Facebook.
