Phil Murphy?

Question: does anyone reading this actually like the idea of Phil Murphy as governor?

By "like," I don't mean "do you think he'd be better than Christie?" -- I mean, "Do you like him compared to the other Democratic candidates?"

I ask this because I realized the other day that I only knew a single person who actually did like Murphy. I also read that Murphy, despite massive effort, is way behind John Wisniewski in Twitter followers.



No relation here. Please explain your rationale for preferring Wisniewski to Murphy.

Twitter follower counts don't impress me.


Anyone who supports Murphy should remember our last experience with a former Goldman Sachs executive (Corzine) in the State House. While I have been a registered Democrat for more than 50 years there is no way in hell I will vote for another of these guys from Goldman who think that they can buy there way into office.



jimmurphy said:

No relation here. Please explain your rationale for preferring Wisniewski to Murphy.

Twitter follower counts don't impress me.

I'm for Jack Ciattarelli and Tom Byrne (if he runs), but if I had to choose between Wisniewski and Murphy I'd choose Wisniewski because I think his campaign is more candid, more honest, more issues-oriented, and less negative.

In terms of policy differences, I slightly prefer Wisniewski as well because Wisniewski voted for SFRA whereas Phil Murphy is a board member of the NAACP, which opposed SFRA. Wisniewski also has supported various versions of tax caps in the past (though he voted against the final version of the 2010 tax cap law), whereas according to Tom Moran Phil Murphy opposes the concept of a tax cap.

And if I had to choose a lawyer who has been in the legislator and somebody from Goldman Sachs who won't even discuss what he did for Goldman Sachs, I'll choose the lawyer/legislator. It's not the Goldman Sachs wealth itself which bugs me, it's the hypocrisy that comes along with that wealth.


I also respect courage.

I was never a Bernie Sanders person, but I respect Wisniewski for backing Sanders when Sanders' campaign looked like it would go nowhere. Wisniewsk's public stance in favor of red light cameras IMO is terrible politics, but good policy. That was courageous.

I respect Ray Lesniak for his animal rights advocacy, since while that isn't risky, there's almost no constituency for it. (Lesniak also voted for Sweeney's state aid reform resolution, which is good.)

I see no equivalent to this political courage in Murphy and I think political courage is what NJ needs.

I am an independent though who wants NJ's next governor to focus on taxes and debt reduction. I would happily vote for Ciattarelli over any Democrat currently running.





Runner_Guy said:

"...I am an independent though who wants NJ's next governor to focus on taxes and debt reduction. I would happily vote for Ciattarelli over any Democrat currently running."

OK, so this is just a hit-post on Murphy. Got it.

Edited to add: Advocate for your guy. Don't just try to split the Dems.


Murphy appears to be more of the same b.s. Don't like him.



jimmurphy said:



Runner_Guy said:

"...I am an independent though who wants NJ's next governor to focus on taxes and debt reduction. I would happily vote for Ciattarelli over any Democrat currently running."


OK, so this is just a hit-post on Murphy. Got it.

Edited to add: Advocate for your guy. Don't just try to split the Dems.

The title for this thread gave away that I didn't like Murphy. There are plenty of threads here on MOL which are entirely critical of politicians, from Torpey to Trump. I see nothing wrong with this.

I was just attempting to find someone who did like Murphy and who would explain why. So far I haven't.

I compared Wisniewski and Murphy because you assumed that I was a Wisniewski person based on my comment about their respective number of Twitter followers. (I know that Twitter isn't representative, but in the absence of polling, it's one of the few indicators of support we have.)

I see nothing wrong with having a preferred candidate and still be able to rank the other candidates. Of the 5-6 major candidates running, I like Murphy the least.


Thank so for making your position clear. Just sick of all the negative campaigning I guess. For once it would be great to hear someone extol the virtues of their candidate rather than just trying to take down the other guys.


I think Wisniewski was courageous and astute to get ahead of the Bridgegate scandal and start investigating it. He deserves a lot of credit for that, and I would vote for him. Murphy seems ok, but another wall street Democrat trying to buy his way in, as Corzine did.


Where's the Ciatterelli? thread?



jimmurphy
said:

Thank so for making your position clear. Just sick of all the negative campaigning I guess. For once it would be great to hear someone extol the virtues of their candidate rather than just trying to take down the other guys.

I will start a thread about Jack Ciattarelli soon, although how many positive political threads on MOL take off? People are usually here to complain. ( ;

But don't most of us both for one candidate and against the other candidate? There's nothing wrong with a vote for Ciattarelli being motivated by fears of Phil Murphy.

Anyway, Phil Murphy is the clear frontrunner on the Democratic side and the favorite in the general election too.

Yet, since I only know a single person who has Murphy as a genuine first choice, I'm eager to see if I can find any other truly pro-Murphy people and what their reasons are.



Murphy is such a phony.


This seems like a fairly unbiased assessment of Murphy's first year in office:

https://www.nj.com/expo/news/g66l-2019/01/da777d3ae31173/19-campaign-promises-gov-phil.html

I don't think he's done a particularly good job so far, but I don't get the intense hatred a lot of people have for Murphy.  I guess being a rich guy who essentially bought the office for himself will do that.  Also, we have a tendency in NJ to hate all of our governors (at least the ones we elected, because Cody seemed to have avoided the intense disgust of most of the others).  And with regard to Murphy, it makes sense that conservatives hate him.  The things he has accomplished so far are probably making their heads explode, like tougher gun laws.  I'm not understanding why liberals seem to hate him equally.  Probably because he's a rich Goldman Sachs guy.

I think Murphy's biggest mistake so far has been in not recognizing that the legislative branch is going to have to be his partner if he wants to get any of his big promises enacted.  It seems like Sweeney has been fighting Murphy a lot harder than he ever fought against Christie.


This guy would do a much better job.



yahooyahoo said:
Murphy is such a phony.

A funny complaint about politicians whose stock in trade is acting.  At a certain level, if you think a politician isn't a phony, the most likely explanation is that you been taken hook, line and sinker.

That said, I guess we all form certain impressions of politicians.  I would be happy to sit down for a beer with Bush or Obama among living presidents.  Bill Clinton, while I voted for him, always struck me as being fos.


my info is third hand, but actually I've been told the one thing that Murphy is NOT is a phony.  A friend of mine is friends with a guy who grew up with Murphy.  According to that person, Murphy has been the same guy all his life, and the liberal positions he has on issues are reflective of the attitudes he's always held.

My sense of why he's struggled so far in office is that he's another of those guys like Bloomberg who made a fortune in business, and doesn't understand that you just can't order people around when you hold elected office.  Steve Sweeney has no incentive to listen to the governor or help him get anything accomplished.  Until Murphy understands that, he's going to have a rough go.


ml1 said:

My sense of why he's struggled so far in office is that he's another of those guys like Bloomberg who made a fortune in business, and doesn't understand that you just can't order people around when you hold elected office.  Steve Sweeney has no incentive to listen to the governor or help him get anything accomplished.  Until Murphy understands that, he's going to have a rough go.

 That certainly is true.  Not sure that Sweeney is being smart about this, but I guess that's another story.


I don't like Goldman Sachs folks either, but with that handicap, Murphy strikes me as a good guy who set out some good goals. I agree he probably ran into Sweeney trying to implement those goals, but he is going to have to figure out how to work with him, that's part of his job.


I’d almost forgot this guy was Governor.


ml1 said:
my info is third hand, but actually I've been told the one thing that Murphy is NOT is a phony.  A friend of mine is friends with a guy who grew up with Murphy.  According to that person, Murphy has been the same guy all his life, and the liberal positions he has on issues are reflective of the attitudes he's always held.
My sense of why he's struggled so far in office is that he's another of those guys like Bloomberg who made a fortune in business, and doesn't understand that you just can't order people around when you hold elected office.  Steve Sweeney has no incentive to listen to the governor or help him get anything accomplished.  Until Murphy understands that, he's going to have a rough go.

I think his career at Goldman is a direct contradiction to what your friend's friend's friend said.

He must have put those liberals ideals aside while making millions at Goldman.


The 100 days Murphy spent out of state includes this trip:


"The first was an 11-day trip to Italy where Murphy and his wife own a 23-room mansion in the small town of Parrano they purchased for about $7.3 million in 2004. "


I hope Chris Christie read that.  


Red_Barchetta said:
The 100 days Murphy spent out of state includes this trip:


"The first was an 11-day trip to Italy where Murphy and his wife own a 23-room mansion in the small town of Parrano they purchased for about $7.3 million in 2004. "


I hope Chris Christie read that.  

I must be missing something. Why must Christie read this?


Because if he wants a vacation like that he has to follow around some rich guy with his lips firmly attached to their ***. 


Wisniewski was the only one of the 4 main Dem candidates in the primary who had anything resembling a serious plan to address school funding.  


Any chance the President of the Italian Province of Terni summers in Wildwood?


tjohn said:


ml1 said:

My sense of why he's struggled so far in office is that he's another of those guys like Bloomberg who made a fortune in business, and doesn't understand that you just can't order people around when you hold elected office.  Steve Sweeney has no incentive to listen to the governor or help him get anything accomplished.  Until Murphy understands that, he's going to have a rough go.
 That certainly is true.  Not sure that Sweeney is being smart about this, but I guess that's another story.

Murphy's problem is himself and his misunderstanding of NJ's fiscal reality.

As a candidate, whenever Murphy was asked about how he would pay for his promises he would respond with some nonsense like "you prioritize" or "a budget is a statement of values" and imply that everything could be solved if NJ passed a millionaire's tax and eliminated tax incentives.  

Murphy would also say that NJ wasn't going to get to his progressive utopia "overnight," but what that fails to recognize is that NJ's debt payments growth more quickly than its revenue does and the debt payments are determined partly by factors outside of his control, like the performance of the stock market.  Passing a millionaire's tax and a 7% sales tax would give NJ one year of breathing room, but NJ cannot increase the income tax and sales tax every single year.  

Further, Murphy did not understand how many laws in New Jersey actually worked.  His initial proposal for 2018-19 state aid ignored the legislative consensus from the two previous years and gave the smallest state aid increases to the most severely underaided districts and even increased state aid for overaided districts, like Asbury Park and Jersey City.

So Murphy's campaign was built around a lot of budgetary lies, saying "yes" to every union, and that's what is catching up to him.

If you think Murphy is in political trouble now, just wait a few weeks until his FY2020 budget comes out.  It's not going to be pretty.  The FY2019 budget was the easiest one Murphy is going to have.

And if you think Murphy spent a lot of time out-of-state in 2018, just wait until 2020 when he chairs the National Democratic Governor's Association.





I'm not denying there's no personal bitterness, but the differences between Sweeney and Murphy are that Sweeney has been around longer than Murphy, plans to be around NJ longer, understands the state budget better, and understands things like state aid better.

If Murphy knows that 25-30% of the state budget in the 2020s is going to go to debt payments, he doesn't care.  

Sweeney does care. He knows that's unsustainable.  

https://www.app.com/story/opinion/columnists/2019/01/10/nj-pensions-health-benefits-budget-fix/2535251002/?fbclid=IwAR0c4nM-lNzet1C3FmYP3ki7HtduZPzD


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