Two days after Tammy Murphy launched her U.S. Senate campaign, the New Jersey Department of Human Services was spending $100,000 to air radio commercials using the First Lady’s voice to advocate for her signature issue, maternal and infant health.
The use of tax dollars to fund ads featuring Murphy comes at a time when some Democrats are questioning whether Gov. Phil Murphy is using the power of this office to secure a Senate seat for his wife.
The governor’s office told the New Jersey Globe on Friday evening that they would stop airing the ads featuring Tammy Murphy.
“Out of an abundance of caution and to avoid even the slightest appearance of impropriety, we have decided that any radio ads featuring the First Lady’s voice will be discontinued effective immediately and instead replaced with ads featuring other voices,” said Tyler Jones, a spokesperson for Murphy.
Jones said the Nurture NJ ad campaign “delivers critical information about maternal and infant health care to historically underserved communities.”
“The First Lady is deeply proud of the work she has done in this space over the last six years,” she said.
Mendham Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner, the frontrunner for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, called on the State Comptroller to launch an ethics investigation.
“There is no legitimate reason for Nurture NJ to continue using the governor’s wife as a spokesperson now that she’s officially declared herself as a candidate,” said Serrano Glassner. “This is just another example of the ‘Murphy Monarchy’ at work.”
Serrano Glassner criticized Phil Murphy for using government resources for the political benefit of his wife’s Senate campaign.
While first ladies have appeared in official side paid communications before – Mary Pat Christie joined her husband in a “Stronger than the Storm” television commercial after Hurricane Sandy – the circumstances are unprecedented: Murphy is both the wife of a governor and a candidate for statewide office.
Democrats sharply criticized then-Gov. Chris Christie for spending $2.2 million of federal Sandy relief funds on TV ads in an election year.
Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-Long Branch) demanded and got the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Inspector General to determine whether the expenditure was appropriate.
The radio ads using Murphy’s voice were initially conceptualized and approved in August and September, before the indictment of Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez on bribery and conspiracy charges, and roughly $17,000 to $20,000 has been spent so far, the New Jersey Globe has learned. Some ad insertion orders were placed with a start date of November 17
The Department of Human Services is spending $250,000 on the second year of the Nurture NJ/ConnectingNJ marketing campaign. The communications plan was recommended in the 2021 Nurture NJ strategic plan.
Still, in the early phases of her first bid for public office, Murphy will need to watch out for optics and unforced errors.
“Just this week, Tammy Murphy said she’d be able to keep her political role as a candidate separate from her public role as First Lady, and less than two days into her candidacy, New Jersey’s taxpayers are left to wish that were the case,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
The messaging of the radio ads mirrors one of the major themes of her announcement video, leaving her open to criticism for using government funds to drive her campaign message.
“If either role is to be successful, she will need to draw a much brighter line to get this right going forward,” Rasmussen said. “She must be especially careful about reinforcing the perception that state government powers are being used to advance her candidacy, or that she is being anointed for the Senate seat, which would be absolute poison to her chances— ballot lines or not.”
Editor’s note: an early version of this story reported that the ads began running on September 17. Some ran earlier.
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