It’s been a turbulent few days for New Jersey Governor Philip D. Murphy.
On a Tuesday in mid-February, he publicly rebuked Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, by name, calling his education policies “disgraceful.” At noon the next day, he proposed that all new cars sold after 2035 be electric, following California’s lead. In the early hours of Thursday, Mr. Murphy, a Democrat, had made an unannounced stop in Ukraine on his way to a security conference in Germany.
Back home in Jersey, the message was clear: The governor’s slow romance with Washington was now a full courtship, even though his core audience might have trouble finding Trenton on a map.
“It doesn’t fade into the woodwork if you have national ambitions,” said Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University’s Polling Institute, who for decades has watched New Jersey politicians use the state’s peculiar election cycle and the proximity to New Jersey. York Media Market as a stepping stone to a senior role.
“You never know when an opportunity might arise.”
The 2024 presidential contest is underway. President Biden is expected to run for a second term, and the list of Republicans who have announced campaigns or are expected to run already includes Mr. DeSantis (who did not respond to Mr. Murphy’s criticism), former President Donald J. Trump, former Vice President. President Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina.
Mr. Murphy has consistently said he would be Mr. Biden’s top No. 1 booster if he runs again, and he recently joined an advisory board of Democratic loyalists who are expected to be deployed as Biden surrogates when the campaign increase
Even so, Mr. Murphy, a former Democratic National Committee finance chairman and ambassador to Germany who amassed a fortune at investment bank Goldman Sachs, has never completely closed the door on a run for the White House if the president’s plans change.
And, in any case, he appears as always with the desire to cultivate a national image, aware, perhaps, that there are often concessions.
Saturday, Mr. Murphy will try to spit out his resume with humor when he takes the microphone at the Gridiron Club’s annual dinner, a famously irreverent white-tie and white-tail roast that attracts Washington’s top reporters and political pundits. (The other speaker will be that night Mr. Pence.)
Close collaborators say that Mr. Murphy, who declined to comment for this article, isn’t genuinely sure what job he might want next, but there’s speculation he might be interested in returning to ambassadorship or even secretary of state.
A graduate of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania who grew up outside Boston, he now counts musician Jon Bon Jovi among his closest friends. But he comes from humble means, the youngest of four children in a working-class Irish Catholic family. Only his mother graduated from high school; his father worked for a time managing a liquor store near his home.
Governor Ron DeSantis and his administration
Florida’s Republican governor has turned the swing state into a right-wing laboratory by leaning into culture battles.
Always social, Mr. Murphy has become a retail policy professional. He throws his arm around his shoulders cheerfully when asked to pose for selfies, his broad smile and index finger pointed, showman-like, at the new best friend by his side.
But it’s the hundreds of off-camera calls he made to families who lost loved ones to Covid-19 that his chief of staff, George Helmy, cites when he calls him “one of the most genuine human beings I’ve ever seen never.”
Mr. Murphy came to Trenton with few allies, but has racked up a remarkable share of victories.
During his first term, New Jersey lawmakers raised taxes on incomes above $1 million, passed a $15 minimum wage, legalized marijuana, strengthened gun control laws , they blocked paid sick leave for workers and reduced the long-ignored pension debt by billions of dollars. leading to several improvements in the state’s credit ratings.
But after being re-elected in 2021 by a narrower-than-expected margin, Mr. Murphy has made an overt effort to appeal more to moderate voters, leaving part of his left-wing base frustrated by what they see as a lack of urgency to finish. up strong
Michael Feldman, a communications consultant and friend of Mr. Murphy, said none of the governor’s political victories had been “one-sided.”
“His ambition now is to try to help advance the agenda that he’s pursuing in New Jersey, to help advance some of these issues nationally,” said Feldman, who was a senior adviser to former Vice President Al Gore.
“I don’t know what the job is or will be, but there are a lot of places where someone with his experience could be useful to do some of these things.”
New Jersey governors cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. And over the past year, observers wondering about the next move of Mr. Murphy has taken note of his suddenly youthful hairstyle, new glasses and changing rhetoric.
The governor who once suggested New Jersey was not best for residents or businesses primarily concerned with low taxes is now being described as a “cold-blooded capitalist.” His budget speech concluded with an ode to the value of hard work. And his State of the State emphasized the importance of bipartisanship, buried in a humble presumption by his friendship with Utah’s Republican governor, the vice chairman of the National Governors Association, which now runs Mr. Murphy.
Mr. Murphy, 65, is also chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, the first governor to hold both leadership positions at the same time. He has used the roles to his advantage.
During a recent trip to Los Angeles for the National Governors Association, he and his wife, Tammy, dined with movie studio leaders to tout New Jersey’s assets as a filmmaking center, while raising funds for the four political accounts they now juggle. The alliances he has formed have led to speaking gigs in Nevada and Florida. And both governors’ associations are holding major conferences this year in New Jersey.
There are younger Democratic governors with bigger names or bigger bank accounts, including California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Illinois’ JB Pritzker.
But during Mr. Biden’s presidency, New Jersey has been a regular stop for members of the administration, with at least two visits each from the president, the first lady, Vice President Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary.
If Mr. Biden were to win re-election and Mr. Murphy for a job he found attractive enough to fill could mean leaving Trenton before his term ends in 2026, making the governor’s race already a foregone conclusion. -the popcorn thriller, even more alive.
Still, even among liberals inclined to support him, reviews of Mr. Murphy have been growing more and more mixed.
Last year he reinstated a bear hunt he had promised to ban, angering animal rights activists. He opened the door to private development at Liberty State Park, the state’s largest and busiest public oasis, at the behest of groups funded by the billionaire owner of an adjacent golf club. And there are so many judicial vacancies that some counties have had to halt divorce trials.
A coalition of environmental groups is suing the state to force Mr. Murphy to comply with the ambitious climate change rules he ordered as part of a 2019 law. “A poster boy for actions that don’t live up to the rhetoric,” said David Pringle, leader of the coalition.
And residents of communities as disparate as Jersey City, Newark and Gibbstown in the state’s rural southwest are furious that Mr. Murphy for widening the freeway near New York City and failing to stop six new fossil fuel projects, which are expected to worsen air quality in minority communities already burdened by pollution.
“The governor has a lot of words for environmental justice, but he doesn’t really show leadership on behalf of our community,” said Maria López-Nuñez, who lives in Newark and is fighting to block the construction of a backup power plant in the city’s Ironbound. neighborhood.
Ms. Lopez-Nuñez is also a member of the Biden White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
“I would love to encourage the governor,” he said. “But I need to see the work.”
A spokesman for Mr. Murphy, Mahen Gunaratna, said some opposition was expected, especially after a first term in which Mr. Murphy kept so many of the campaign promises that endeared him to his progressive base. His second-term priorities are closer to the center.
At least part of his change in tone is tied to November’s legislative races. Democratic leaders who control the state legislature remain uneasy about losing seven seats in 2021, and Republicans believe they are within striking distance of regaining control of the majority, an outcome that would undermine the legacy of Mr. Murphy.
A January poll by Monmouth University suggested that the popularity of Mr. Murphy was steady at 52 percent. But less than a third of those polled said he would make a good president.
Only one New Jersey governor has been elected president: Woodrow Wilson, whose memory is now so tainted by his racist policies that Princeton removed his name from its school of public and international affairs.
Other New Jersey luminaries have also had designs on the White House in recent years: Sen. Bill Bradley was eclipsed in the 2000 Democratic primary by Mr. Gore; Gov. Chris Christie ended his 2016 campaign before endorsing Mr. Trump; and Sen. Cory Booker withdrew from the latest presidential contest after a yearlong campaign.
Mr. Booker, 53, a Democrat and former mayor of Newark, appears to be keeping his options as open as Mr. Murphy. “I’m not running in ’24 if Joe Biden runs,” Mr. Booker said in a recent television interview.
“My goal in life is to put more ‘indivisible’ back into this ‘one nation under God,'” he said, adding, “and that’s how we see the future.”
Jennifer Palmieri, a Democratic strategist who was President Barack Obama’s communications director, knows Mr. Murphy since 2005 and considers him a friend. She said she didn’t know what she expected to do next. But, he added, “it doesn’t look like he’s about to.”
