In race to replace NJ's Sen. Menendez, first lady Tammy Murphy would have advantages few women share

New Jersey Democrats are searching for top-flight candidates to run for the seat held by Sen. Robert Menendez in 2024 — and perhaps the biggest name who has come up so far is Tammy Murphy, wife of Gov. Phil Murphy.

Menendez is rejecting calls from the party’s elite to step down after federal authorities charged him with taking bribes in exchange for helping Egypt and interfering with criminal investigations, and hasn’t yet said if he’ll run again. But state party leaders have urged him to step down and are looking for alternatives. Tammy Murphy hasn’t declared a run, but on WNYC’s “Ask Governor Murphy” call-in show, her husband acknowledged she’s had talks about the idea.

Two insiders privy to their strategy discussions say Democratic bosses want a woman to run, as a counterbalance to the disproportionate number of men already in the state’s elected offices. But political scholars, activists and those insiders say that speaks to a larger problem: There are few women who could mount a bid for higher office because the state’s powerful political machines have always protected entrenched interests.

And those entrenched interests are usually men.

“We have a pipeline problem in the state,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “You see when you really break it down by gender and then also by gender and race, how underrepresented women are and how overrepresented white men are in all elective office.”

A recent study by the center found women made up only 29.5% of all political offices in New Jersey in 2022. Women made up just 34% of the state Legislature, and accounted for 15.4% of all mayors for New Jersey cities with more than 30,000 people.

New Jersey has never sent a woman to the U.S. Senate, and only two women are in the state's 12-member congressional delegation.

Tammy Murphy has a combination of advantages few other women in New Jersey do — a high public profile, a history of successful fundraising for the governor’s statewide campaign, personal wealth that would help fund a run, and strong connections through the state’s powerful county political organizations. Gov. Murphy said for now, his wife is “laser-focused on these upcoming legislative races,” helping raise money for this fall’s Assembly and state Senate elections.

Latina Civic Action and its political action committee run Latinas Building the Bench, a program that identifies and trains women to enter politics. The organization’s goal is to get a Latina from New Jersey to Congress in the next 10 years, said its president, Patricia Campos Medina.

“Latina Civic Action and the PAC have been sounding the alarm for a long time that there’s not a commitment from either political party, but in this case, the Democratic Party, to actually have a pipeline to identify women who can run and step up,” Campos Medina said. “We have a leadership void.”

She said it’s not just that the overall numbers of women in elected office are low, but also that those women in office aren’t usually considered contenders for more prominent roles, like U.S. senator. Campos Medina said she respects the first lady's work to defend reproductive justice, to address maternal mortality and to raise money for female incumbent candidates.

When she was asked this week about what her possible candidacy means for women in New Jersey politics, and why there seems to be such a shallow bench of potential female candidates, Tammy Murphy said in a statement she believes women “should be well-represented at all levels of elected office and positions of leadership.

“Representation matters and women must empower one another to be powerful advocates for our values and to protect our rights,” she wrote. She added that she is supporting many women who are running for the state Legislature.

Rep. Andy Kim, a Burlington County Democrat, has announced he’ll run in the 2024 primary for the senate seat. He’s the only candidate so far with a significant history of garnering party support or fundraising. Progressive activist Larry Hamm has filed to run in the Democratic primary, but is generally regarded as a long-shot — he got just 11% of the vote in a primary race against Cory Booker in 2020. Kyle Jasey, a real estate lender, has declared a run but never before run for elected office. Quadir Selby, another candidate, got just 8% of the vote in his own previous primary run for the 28th District state Senate seat.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, an Essex County Democrat, is among New Jersey’s most prominent female politicians, and has significant support among the party leadership. But Sherill says she will not run for the Senate seat. Instead, she’s widely expected to run for governor in 2025.

There are other candidates who might be expected to declare runs for the Senate seat — members of New Jersey’s mostly male House delegation would typically be considered contenders to move into the Senate.

“It's just that they're all waiting to see what Tammy Murphy does or doesn't do,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics.

A primary win would give most Democrats a likely path to victory; the state hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate in more than 50 years. And open or competitive races are rare. Menendez has been in the Senate since 2006, and Cory Booker has been there since 2013.

This is not a challenge of not having enough women to run. It's really a challenge of the male gatekeepers that keep women out of the ranks.

Antoinette Miles, interim state director of New Jersey Working Families Alliance.

The power of the machine

In New Jersey, it's difficult to win a primary without the endorsement of the state’s powerful county Democratic and Republican organizations.

“And that has just been, in fact, probably the biggest challenge that any newcomers have in New Jersey politics and women, unfortunately, are still newcomers to this process,” said Walsh, from the Center for American Women and Politics. She added that it’s also a challenge for people of color.

The endorsements place primary candidates on “the county line” or the “party line” in all but two New Jersey counties, a ballot design that isn’t used by any other state. The line presents candidates as a slate with those at the top of the ticket — for instance, a presidential or congressional candidate. And candidates who run on the county line usually win their primaries.

“We're not a state where all comers are welcome in a primary and the party stays out of it and lets the voters decide,” Walsh said. “We are a state where those party chairs, who are largely men and largely white, make the decision about who gets the party nod.”

Of New Jersey’s 21 counties, there are six where women are the chairs of the Democratic Party organization, but five of those are in counties where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats, which means they have little power to affect the outcome of the election. Only three women chair Republican county committees.

In the primary for this year’s legislative elections — when every seat in the Assembly and state Senate will be on the ballot — women made up just 28% of state Senate candidates with county line endorsements, according to research compiled by Julia Sass Rubin, a Rutgers University professor and trustee of the Good Government Coalition of New Jersey.

“There are plenty of women who are capable and can step up,” said Antoinette Miles, interim state director of New Jersey Working Families Alliance. “This is not a challenge of not having enough women to run. It's really a challenge of the male gatekeepers that keep women out of the ranks.”

LeRoy Jones, who chairs both the state Democratic Party and the Essex County Democratic Committee, declined comment on party strategy until after the upcoming fall election, when all of New Jersey’s legislative seats will be on the ballot.

Why Tammy Murphy could benefit

The two insiders who’ve been privy to strategic conversations with state Democratic leaders said party figures are rarely willing to share their power with people who aren’t already established in the political machinery, including women. They would only discuss those conversations, held privately among some of the state’s most influential Democrats, on the condition of anonymity.

For example, about a dozen party leaders met on the day of the Menendez indictment and decided to call for his resignation, they said. There were no women in the room.

“There’s always the sentiment [to support women], but the follow-through isn’t there. It’s easy to back the governor’s wife,” one of those insiders said.

In some ways, a Tammy Murphy run could follow the same playbook her husband’s did. Phil Murphy was an outsider who had never held elected office, but could self-fund his 2017 gubernatorial campaign with his earnings as an investment banker. He sewed up party chair support early and got himself the best placement on primary ballots.

Phil Murphy raised millions of dollars for national and local campaigns for the Democratic Party for years before he ran for office. In the run-up to his first gubernatorial campaign, Phil and Tammy Murphy donated more than $136,000 to the county Democratic organizations that hand out the coveted endorsements. Tammy Murphy, who’d been the governor’s chief fundraiser, would have the same wealth and network available to her.

The governor has generally avoided taking a public position on the use of the county line until this month, but defended it on this month’s “Ask Governor Murphy" as “a system that has largely worked very well.

“You got to go through a very large convention where you’ve got to get up there and sing for your supper and you're doing it sequentially with the folks you're running against,” he said. Not all counties have conventions; on some cases, county political bosses decide on endorsements themselves.

If Tammy Murphy runs for Menendez's seat, many good government activists, political science professors and political operatives expect her to quickly rack up county party support, much as her husband did.

“She would be a strong candidate because of factors that would be at work in other states as well, name recognition and such, but also because of our very unique and very broken system of endorsements, which essentially guarantee the win to those candidates that are selected by the county party chairs,” said Sass Rubin, the Rutgers professor.

This story has been updated to correctly describe Latina Civic Action President Patricia Campos Medina's comments about Tammy Murphy's work on issues affecting women, and to correctly state the number of counties in New Jersey.