How Tammy Murphy Can Stop The Bleeding In Nj’s Senate Race

New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy was supposed to be the front-runner to succeed indicted Sen. Bob Menendez thanks to support from the state’s powerful Democratic county chairs.

Now she faces a potential make-or-break test for her candidacy at a convention in New Jersey’s biggest county after unexpected enthusiasm around rival Rep. Andy Kim’s campaign and a grassroots revolt against the establishment threw her nomination in doubt.

The very fact that there's even a question about the Bergen County Democratic nod reveals the extent of the troubles her campaign has faced since its November launch.

A Kim victory would bolster his viability in the June 4 primary while striking a dagger into the very political machinery that Menendez and Murphy’s husband, Gov. Phil Murphy, have relied upon in the past. For Murphy, a victory in Bergen could be a much-needed reset after badly losing the first five party conventions to Kim and having her campaign manager leave after just a few weeks. Bergen County Democrats who spoke to POLITICO say she is still favored to win when the party holds its convention Monday.

Bergen County, 70 densely packed towns and cities across the Hudson River from Manhattan, is the largest county in the state. And it produces more Democratic votes in primaries than almost anywhere else in New Jersey.

“I think if she didn’t win Bergen it would concern me,” said Passaic County Democratic Chair John Currie, an early Murphy backer whose county party recently endorsed her.

It could be more than concerning. She has trailed in polling and faced intense blowback from progressives who see her as a party-switching elite who is using her power to gain a coveted Senate seat. So a loss in a Democratic stronghold where she has the county chair’s support could reverberate through other counties, where party leaders historically hold inordinate sway over outcomes.

“[I]f you’re a county chair, now you’re in this incredible predicament. The Kim movement has clearly moved below the feet of county chairs. It’s permeated to county committee members and beyond,” said one influential municipal chair who has endorsed Murphy and was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“You have two choices: Are you going to muscle this thing through for her… and see if you can deliver, and a lot of people don’t think they can,” the chair added. “Or are you in a position where if she loses Bergen, are you looking at her and saying ‘it’s time to cut bait’?”

A party boss gets tested

Despite Kim’s county convention winning streak in Burlington, Hunterdon, Monmouth, Sussex and Warren counties, the conventional wisdom is that Murphy is favored to win Bergen’s in part because she is endorsed by the influential county Democratic Chair, Paul Juliano. With the governor's backing, Juliano has a $280,000 job leading the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, the agency that oversees the Meadowlands Sports Complex, host to the New York Giants and Jets and, in 2026, the World Cup.

“I think the majority of our convention [delegates] will probably follow his leadership, but I think Andy Kim will get a pretty substantial vote,” former state Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, who is still active in local Bergen County politics and has not endorsed in the Senate race, said in an interview.

“If Andy somehow pulled out a win, that would send larger shockwaves than either Hunterdon or Monmouth,” Weinberg added.

The Bergen contest will be decided by secret ballot from around 1,300 eligible Bergen County Democrats that includes elected officials and regular county committee people. In the first five counties Murphy lost, low-level delegates — not party bosses — decided who got the party endorsement. In four of those five counties, Kim won the coveted and controversial “county line” that bestows favorable ballot position in the primary.

The “line” puts party endorsed candidates together on the primary ballot in a single column, making them appear more prominently to voters. Other states list candidates in an office block style (just two of New Jersey's 21 counties, Salem and Sussex, do the same).

Every other county party in New Jersey differs in how the line is awarded: In some counties, including Bergen, it is awarded by a vote of low-level party officials while a single party boss can award the favorable ballot position in others.

Kim has won all five county conventions so far where rank-and-file Democrats vote by secret ballot. Murphy has locked up support in large Democratic counties that are more top-down in their endorsement process, the latest being Union County over the weekend. Bergen County makes up around 10 percent of the Democratic electorate in the state.

And if Kim were to beat the strong influence of Juliano here, it would suggest that he would be able to win the line in nearly all other counties that democratically award it. A Murphy win would solidify her favorable ballot positioning in a majority of the state, putting Kim at a significant statistical disadvantage.

But the pressure is on Murphy after her troubles piled up in February. Her campaign manager, Max Glass, departed last week without an immediate replacement. She lost the Monmouth County Democratic convention — the state’s first, in Murphy’s longtime home county — by 18 points when her allies viewed it as winnable. Kim buried her at the Burlington Democratic convention, Kim’s home county, with 90 percent of the vote.

And in rural Hunterdon County, a last-minute proposal from a Murphy ally that would have effectively shared the county line between Murphy and Kim was met with yelling and cursing from the convention floor and defeated. Kim then beat Murphy by nearly 30 points.

Murphy allies are quick to point out that Kim had some home field advantage in the first two contests: Kim has represented much of Burlington County since he was elected to congress in 2018 and his district now includes about a third of Monmouth County after redistricting. And while Kim and Murphy didn’t have any political roots in Hunterdon, Sussex or Warren Counties, their committee members tend to be more progressive.

Murphy’s campaign did not comment after saying that it would.

Murphy backers remain loyal

Murphy, a Republican until a decade ago, has her loyalists. Somerset County Democratic Chair Peg Schaffer acknowledged that the Murphy campaign’s start has been rough, but said she won’t abandon it because she believes Murphy would be a better general election candidate than Kim.

“I’m a little disappointed in the roll out. I don’t know that her message is resonating. It doesn’t appear to be with the conventions so far,” Schaffer said, adding that she’s “unimpressed” with Kim, whom she said she hadn’t seen at one of her political events in his six years in the House.

“Obviously he’s doing a much better job campaigning right now. But up until January of this year I’ve never been in his company other than passing at an event,” Schaffer said.

Currie, the Passaic Democratic chair, said despite his concern, he’ll stick with Murphy no matter what. But other Democratic insiders POLITICO spoke to and granted anonymity said more is at stake than the Murphy candidacy. The power of their county lines is itself on the line, and just a year before the gubernatorial contest to succeed Phil Murphy. Three major Democratic candidates are already running and several more, including Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill, are all-but-declared.

To complicate matters, New Jersey political bosses tend to care less about who represents the state in the U.S. Senate than who the next governor will be, or even the next state or county legislator.

But the chairs also face another, less desirable option if they defect from Tammy Murphy: Risk getting on the bad side of a governor who controls a $56 billion state budget that often includes perks like park improvements, road projects and grants that local leaders can brag to voters about.

Phil Murphy has said his wife would campaign for the party nomination on her own. But Kim and some supporters allege that party leaders who support Tammy Murphy have been working around the edges and exploiting Bergen County’s complicated vote allotment process to tip the contests in her favor.

Chad Coleman, a county committee member from the Bergen County borough of Tenafly and a Kim supporter, said that at a recent committee meeting held over Zoom, Borough Democratic Chair Shama Haider — also a state assemblymember who endorsed Murphy — had a slate of three bonus delegates ready to go, all Murphy supporters (Bergen County Democrats allot towns bonus delegates based on prior election turnout). They were quickly approved by a show of hands in a process that took about eight minutes, he said.

“This has never been a fair process. New Jersey is an outlier,” Coleman said. “We should be embarrassed as Democrats with this process.”

In a statement, Kim spokesperson Katey Sabo said Democrats Kim has met with in Bergen County have been “excited by his experience and passion, as well as the prospect of the first Korean American Senator ever representing one of the largest Korean American communities in the nation.”

“Unfortunately, Congressman Kim and his supporters continue to have their voices silenced by Democratic Party leaders who have impeded the Congressman’s many efforts to address convention delegates in person and have pressured delegates to support First Lady Murphy.”