Did Tammy Murphy just make Phil Murphy a lame duck in New Jersey?

A few months ago, Phil and Tammy Murphy appeared poised to become a powerful New Jersey political dynasty — the popular two-term Democratic governor with political connections on the national stage married to the front-runner to become the state’s first female senator.

The first lady’s spectacular flameout in her Senate candidacy Sunday ended that prospect. It also may hasten Gov. Phil Murphy’s status as a lame duck governor with almost two years left to go in his term.

“It’s going to be a long 18 months for Murphy,” said one Democratic state lawmaker granted anonymity to speak candidly about the governor. “He has no capital, no pull. The only thing he can do now is raise money, which is how he got into this in the first place.”

Phil Murphy is still constitutionally the most powerful governor in America, so party leaders will want to stay in his good graces — illustrated by the fact that some of them privately chafed at the Murphys’ foray into the Senate race but publicly came to their defense.

The Murphys spent years building a strong network of support before coming to office in 2018. Phil Murphy was finance chair for the Democratic National Committee under chair Howard Dean and then served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany in the Obama administration. He exploited party divisions to become the 2017 front-runner for governor, and quickly consolidated key party support to win a historic second term.

Still, the Murphys’ prospects as a long-lasting power couple in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., crashed, and quickly. As soon as Tammy Murphy entered the Senate race to replace indicted incumbent Bob Menendez in November, progressive activists mobilized against what they saw as a nepotistic abuse of the state’s one-of-a-kind party boss system.

The relentless criticism from the left and Tammy Murphy’s string of county convention losses to her chief rival for the nomination, Rep. Andy Kim, left Democrats wondering how much enthusiasm Phil Murphy will have in the second half of his second, and final, term.

“I hope he still has the energy and is excited by the job, but I think human nature is he feels burned and embarrassed by this process,” said Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who is running for governor and, earlier this month, dropped his support for Tammy Murphy and backed Kim in a very public blow to her campaign.

Though Phil Murphy stayed in the background of his wife’s candidacy, his influence was impossible to ignore. Without it, the state's Democratic bosses almost certainly would not have quickly coalesced around Tammy Murphy’s candidacy, stoking intense backlash from the party base that enthusiastically supported Kim, who’s now the favorite to be the next senator.

“Kim is king,” said one person close to a Democratic county chair. “And Tammy is no longer queen.”

New Jersey’s Democratic party bosses — most of whom chair powerful county organizations — have long had influence over state lawmakers and their crucial votes. Now those party bosses find themselves atop a teetering power structure that could crumble this week if a federal judge rules in favor of Kim’s lawsuit charging that the “county line” is unconstitutional.

The line, as it’s known, refers to New Jersey’s unique ballot structure that bestows an advantage on party-backed candidates by placing them on a single column or row instead of by office, as all other states do.

Even New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin — a gubernatorial appointee and one of the closest members of the Murphys’ inner circle — broke with the Murphys when he wrote a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi declining to defend the line in court and saying he found it unconstitutional.

The line’s potential demise was accelerated by grassroots Democrats’ disgust at what they saw as the party bosses’ overreach in trying to anoint Tammy Murphy the party’s nominee for Senate in the wake of Menendez’s scathing federal indictment. All for an office that, despite the grand title and national implications, many county party chairs care less about than a county commissioner seat.

Still, New Jersey’s governorship is one of the most constitutionally powerful in the nation, with the governor still controlling key cudgels for legislators like judicial nominations, and retaining veto authority over the next two state budgets. And even former Gov. Chris Christie — coming off the Bridgegate scandal, a failed presidential campaign and an approval rating in the teens — managed to sign major legislative initiatives, including a gas tax hike, in his final two years in office.

Murphy’s office said he is not letting up on policy and that the governor “intends to continue building” on progress he’s made stabilizing the state’s finances and protecting “our fundamental freedoms, from abortion to gun safety to LGBTQIA+ rights.”

"Just in the last week, the Governor signed the most significant affordable housing legislation in 40 years and saw 12 new judges confirmed, reducing judicial vacancies to the lowest level since 2019. Tomorrow, he will sign major legislation reauthorizing the Transportation Trust Fund and rebuilding the state’s infrastructure, which passed with bipartisan support," Murphy spokesperson Natalie Hamilton said in a statement.

Politically speaking, most of the governor’s detractors declined to be named, demonstrating that the office itself remains powerful.

Middlesex County Democratic Chair Kevin McCabe, one of the most influential people in the state, said that “there’s lots of work to be done for the residents of NJ and we plan on continuing to work with the governor where our priorities meet.”

Peg Schaffer, who leads the party in Somerset, said “absolutely not” when asked if Tammy Murphy’s candidacy will hurt her husband’s governance.

“This is a decision that unfortunately a lot of women make to protect the people she loves and her family. I think she’s stepping aside for the good of those people and the party,” Schaffer said.

Another saving grace for Murphy is that he hasn’t laid out a particularly ambitious agenda for his final 21 months in office. One of his heaviest policy lifts — increasing the gas tax and creating an electric vehicle surcharge to replenish the Transportation Trust Fund — was completed just a week before the end of Tammy Murphy’s Senate candidacy.

The biggest item Murphy is pushing is increasing the Corporation Business Tax on companies with profits of over $10 million to create a dedicated funding stream for NJ Transit — a troubled agency facing a nearly $1 billion fiscal cliff, and which Murphy has repeatedly vowed to fix “if it kills me.” But there’s already legislative sympathy for that proposal, a version of which Senate President Nick Scutari had suggested before Murphy unveiled it. The governor is also renewing a push to eliminate out-of-pocket costs for abortions in state-regulated health plans.

“I don’t see any diminution in his ability to govern and his ability to connect with the Democratic Party in terms of continuing to grow it,” said state Democratic Chair LeRoy Jones, who also chairs the party in Essex County.

Former state Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, who remains active in state politics, agreed and pointed out Murphy still has two more budgets to sign.

“I just think that people standing up to power and chalking up a win makes it more comfortable for others to stand up,” she said.