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Why NJ Gov. Phil Murphy thinks state Democrats had a really good Election Day
By
Louis C. Hochman
Published Nov 9, 2023
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By
Louis C. Hochman
Published Nov 9, 2023
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New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy thinks he knows why his state’s Democrats did so much better than many political observers predicted in Tuesday’s election.
“Voters are smart and they're a lot smarter than the other guys were giving them credit for,” Murphy said Wednesday night on WNYC’s “Ask Governor Murphy" call-in show.
In 2021, Republicans running for the state Legislature had their most successful election in decades. That year, Democrats retained majorities in both the state Assembly and Senate — as they have since 1999 — but Republicans picked up a combined seven seats. And Murphy himself eked out a 51%-48% win over Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a far narrower victory than polls predicted.
This year, many analysts and strategists for both parties expected to see Republican momentum — some even expecting Republicans take to control of at least one house of the Legislature. They cited a growing movement of conservative “parents rights" advocates who argue parents have been cut out of decisions about sex education and treatment of LGBTQ+ students in schools, and polls that say Murphy’s ambitious agenda for wind power is losing popular support.
But ultimately, Democrats maintained their 25-15 majority in the state Senate, and picked up six seats in the Assembly for a 51-29 lead.
On the WNYC show, Murphy celebrated wins in battleground districts – such as District 11 on the Jersey Shore, where Democratic Sen. Vin Gopal held onto his seat despite Republican Steve Dnistrian working to paint Gopal as too progressive for a purple district. In the district’s race, Assembly Democrats Margie M. Donlon and Luanne M. Peterpaul reclaimed seats their party had lost to Republicans in 2021.
Dnistrian, like many Republicans seeking office this year, had called for a moratorium on wind power — arguing an uptick in whale deaths since December might be blamed on wind farm development, even though no turbines have yet been built and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there's no evidence of a link between whale deaths and wind development. Gopal sounded a more moderate tone than some Democrats on wind — saying his peers in the party weren’t showing enough respect for residents’ concerns about tourism, cost and the sightlines off the Jersey Shore.
When Danish wind developer Orsted pulled out of two projects off the coast earlier this month, many state Republicans cheered the decision — as did former President Donald Trump, who called the project a “monstrosity” that “required massive government subsidies, and ultimately, just didn’t work.”
Murphy said that message just didn’t resonate with voters. The governor has promised an economic boost from wind development and operation, and pledged to both move ahead with other projects and fight Orsted for payment of a $300 million guarantee it agreed to pay New Jersey if the wind projects didn’t materialize.
“I think it's another example where voters are smarter than the other guys. … Never underestimate how smart voters are,” he said. “[On Election Day] they said, ‘I'm not sure losing thousands of union jobs is a good idea.’"
Murphy also defended a bill, passed this summer with Democratic support, to let Orsted keep about $1 billion in federal tax credits instead of passing them along to New Jersey ratepayers. Republican Sen. Ed Durr — the trucker who ousted then-state Senate President Steven Sweeney in 2021 — had criticized that as a “huge handout” for a project he said didn’t make economic sense. Durr lost his own re-election bid to Democrat John Burzichelli on Tuesday.
Wednesday night, Murphy dismissed the criticism as “myth-making — which gets to the politics that we somehow gave them $1 billion. We didn't give them one dime.”
Murphy said he also didn’t believe that voters thought Democrats were disregarding parents when making decisions about school policy.
“How do you get to be the No. 1 public education system in America and not care about parents?” he said.
The governor said he believed voters responded to tax relief programs like the ANCHOR property tax refund — which put up to $1,750 in 700,000 New Jersey renters and homeowners’ bank accounts just weeks before the election. Republicans have criticized such rebates as gimmicks that don’t address structural issues and New Jersey’s high taxes, and accused the governor of playing politics with the timing of this year’s distribution.
Murphy also said he thought voters rewarded Democrats for backing reproductive rights. Last year, Murphy signed legislation codifying a right to abortion in New Jersey, and implementing protections for people traveling from out of state for abortions.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco, a Republican from Morris County, told the Star-Ledger last month that Republicans wouldn’t try to outlaw abortion in New Jersey, but “you may get some of the extreme stuff taken out, like late term-abortions — abortion right up until the point of delivery. You might get something like that.” Bucco won another term this week over a challenge from Christine Clarke.
“Folks clearly still care a whole lot about reproductive freedom and abortion rights,” Murphy said.
Democrats also enjoyed an advantage in early and mail-in voting. Associated Press researcher Ryan Dubicki calculates more than 560,000 New Jerseyans voted ahead of Election Day. More than three times as many Democrats turned in mail-in ballots as Republicans.
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Politics
Louis C. Hochman
After about two decades in (mostly) New Jersey-focused commercial print, digital and digital-but-radio-adjacent news, Lou stumbled into member-supported news in early 2021, as the editor and CEO of Montclair Local. There, he (hopes he) expanded enterprise, brought more sophistication to digital storytelling and moved the nonprofit newsroom closer to long-term financial sustainability. He helped lead the Local to its fourth consecutive General Excellence award from the New Jersey Press Association — the NJPA's highest honor with judges noting the paper's work to strip away layers of government opacity, to hold power to account, to make news accessible for more members of the community, to share the stories and concerns of more facets of the community and to tell compelling stories across multiple media. He's excited to continue the same ethic — news as a public service — at NYPR as the New Jersey and suburbs editor, drawing on the extraordinary talents of reporters including Karen Yi and Nancy Solomon. Lou lives in Philly (that commute!) with his partner and their two cats, about whom and about which he speaks incessantly.
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