On Monday, the staff of the New Jersey Globe sat down with outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy for nearly an hour to discuss his tenure. You can read the article based on the interview here. The transcript below was edited for grammar, clarity, and length.
David Wildstein: One hundred years from now, somebody is going to do some listing of all of the governors. You’re going to come to Phil Murphy, and he’s going to get one, two lines in a list of all the governors in New Jersey for 350 years. What are your lines going to say? What do you want them to say?
Phil Murphy: I’d give you a couple things. We were who we said we would be — I hope that’s on there. In other words, we didn’t bait and switch. We turned the state around — I hope that’s on there as well, particularly economically, but also shrinking inequities. And I’d say, thirdly, kind of related, we stayed true to our pillars, which were stronger, fairer, and — we kind of added [this one] — more responsible. So “stronger” is grow the economy; “fairer,” shrink inequities; “more responsible” is a state you could trust again.
DW: What do you not want to be remembered for?
PM: I’m not sure. I think it’s inescapable, given that we had to deal with a once-in-100-year pandemic and lost 35,000 people. It’s hard to say, “It could have been a whole lot worse” when you’ve lost 35,000 people, and you’ve got multiples of that — family, friends — grieving. But that’s part of our story, whether we like it or not.
DW: Do you feel like you saved lives?
PM: No question about it. And I’m not patting myself on the back; again, when you lose as many lives as we lost, there’s no victory laps here. But I know for a fact we followed science, we followed the facts. We erred to be conservative. We pushed testing, vaccinations, public health, washing hands, masks. It’s hard to believe this, but early on, we were all debating, including the public health officials, were masks good or bad? Remember bringing the mail in with your gloves on, putting it on yesterday’s newspaper on the kitchen counter, and then spraying Lysol all over it? There’s no question we [saved lives]. But again, no victory laps there.
DW: How did you learn how to call these families?
PM: You know, I’m not sure. There’s no preparation. I probably would give my late dad credit, who always used to say that when someone passes away or somebody’s really sick, there’s always a good excuse not to call them, and you should always, always push back on that and get in there.
DW: Is there anything that you look back at and say, gee, I got this wrong dealing with Covid?
PM: You know, I just wish we knew more early on. I’m not alone in that one. I’m both proud of this and shocked by the fact that we’re the only government that I’m aware of, anywhere, at any level, that did a completely arm’s-length postmortem. The first time we read a word of that was the day it was published. We had no input at all, other than that we were all interviewed; I was interviewed for multiple days. So that is a playbook that I wish we had had that will be there for the next generation. It’s got 33 recommendations; they are mostly in the category of, “We need to do this to shore the place up for the next time.”
Joey Fox: Do you think the state is shored up for the next time? Do you think you’re leaving it in a better place than it was?
PM: There’s no question, in New Jersey. Without question. In fact, I don’t think there’s any government, as I said, that we’re aware of that did this. What we got right, what we got wrong; we were very transparent about that. What scares the heck out of me — and we were dealing with something literally just before you walked in here — is that the American public health situation, led by a clown, is deteriorating all around us. The thing I’m dealing with today is that kids now only require 11 instead of 17 vaccinations, which is crazy, so we’re going to push back on that. So I feel way more comfortable with what we’re leaving in New Jersey than what we were left with. But I’m extremely concerned about the American public health scene.
DW: Your non-profit has a new ad up where you say, ‘We did what we said we’d do. What’s the one that got away?
PM: Yeah, there’s two, actually. One is a public bank, which I really still love. We got a version of it done, but not the version that we wanted to get done. North Dakota is the one that has had this public bank for over 100 years. It’s played a particularly meaningful role in student loans at low-cost, competitive rates. That’s the one that I regret. And then the other one, which is kind of a half one, is we had to put the bear hunt back on, which I wasn’t happy about doing, but we almost lost some folks, including kids. So with all due respect to the bears, we’re gonna protect the humans first. I was convinced that there were non-lethal ways to cull and contain the population. There may still be — maybe we didn’t execute it as well as we should have — but that’s one that I’m not happy that we had to do.
DW: Would you say to your successors — not just Mikie Sherrill, but generations of your successors — that it’s okay to get into office and realize, I can’t do what I thought I could do?
PM: Absolutely. And when you’re on the outside — and by the way, the public bank is the best example of this — you assume stuff is easier than when you get on the inside. I think we had 52 campaign promises, and we got 50 of them done, something like that. Many of them were harder to do once we got into office, even the ones we got done. Minimum wage took longer than I wanted, legalizing weed, millionaires tax — we got all of it done, all of the game changers. I’m thrilled about that, but it took longer. I think the answer is yes, it’s okay. I think you have to be responsible when you’re campaigning. And Mikie’s been more than that, for sure. But some of this stuff’s harder, and it’s okay to admit that.
JF: Is there anything that when you were a candidate for governor, you thought, “Man, I really wish that the governor’s office or the state would do this.” And when you got there, you actually realized, “Oh, that’s not a good idea at all. And now I understand why people hadn’t done that in the past.”
PM: I’m not sure I’ve got a good answer for that. Chris Christie and I sat down the day after I won — you know him, right?
DW: I’ve heard of him.
PM: We had lunch. He had a tub of chili, and it was the biggest tub of chili I’ve ever seen in my life. And he was very kind, he gave me a salad. He gave me some really good advice. And I think, particularly if the person is in another party, your inclination might be to [just] be polite. I can’t even remember some of the stuff he said, but I have remembered over the years, you know, he was far more right than wrong.
DW: You’ll tell me whether this is a phrase that you wish you hadn’t said, but you said you would fix New Jersey Transit if it killed you.
PM: Hold on, I’m putting my finger to my pulse. … I’m alive. Listen, I think the most misunderstood story is the arc of NJ Transit. Here’s what I do not begrudge: You take a train to Trenton, the train’s late, you miss this meeting, and you’re pissed. Well, I cannot blame you. I’m pissed too. But people forget where it was and the arc of where it is now. Not enough engineers; every piece of equipment old; no stations getting renovated; positive train control, one of the big federal safety requirements, unlikely to meet; on-time performance; customer satisfaction; can’t see out the windows. Everything I’ve just said has changed. It’s either completely changed or it’s in the process. Rolling stock, rail cars, and buses — by 2031, every piece will be new.
So I reject the notion. People expect a transit system to bat 1.000, and I get that. There’s no transit system on the planet that bats 1.000, certainly not in the United States. These guys got rated No. 1 public transit system in America two or three years ago. And by the way, I might add, we solved our fiscal hole, which every big transit system has, particularly post-Covid, inside the four walls of New Jersey, unlike the moochers at the [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] who are balancing their books on the back of New Jersey commuters. So I’m kind of speaking on both sides of my mouth; I accept the specific instance and disappointment and have nothing but sympathy, but I think the bar is everybody out there expecting it to bat 1.000. Nobody bats 1.000 in this business, but we batted a very high batting average, much higher than we used to.
DW: Give me the batting average. What should it be?
PM: Oh, this should be upper .900s in terms of customer satisfaction and on-time performance. Those are the two that I would say. I don’t know where we are, but it should have a nine handle on it. You should be arriving on time more than 90% of the time.
DW: So you leave office with what average?
PM: I think it’s probably that. We actually track. We are complete Moneyball folks. The one caveat is that the infrastructure that surrounds NJ Transit is largely Amtrak. And while we’ve solved our funding issues and we’ve made great progress, Amtrak has a long way to go. They’ve been very good partners, I have to say, but they’re beholden to Congress and appropriations. And I think in the Summer of Hell, about 65% of the causality was Amtrak-driven — this is approximately right — about 25% NJ Transit and 10% other. That reality has gotten better, the partnership’s gotten deeper, we’ve worked to improve on some of those gaps. But that is a wild card that we have less control over.
DW: So what could go wrong now that would cause NJ Transit to go backward, instead of forward, without your stewardship? What are the traps that Governor-elect Sherrill should watch out for?
PM: I think the big thing — and Mikie will be very good at this, because the Amtrak funding story is a congressional one — is we need to root aggressively for federal funding out of Congress for Amtrak. That, to me, is the big X-factor. I’m not privy to her discussions about the leadership of NJ Transit, but clearly having the right leader will matter, both the commissioner of the Department of Transportation as the chair and then the actual CEO of NJ Transit. So those are obvious ones, but the capital investment program is on track, no pun intended. The stations are getting renovated, including big ones like Walter Rand in Camden, Newark, other stations.
Zach Blackburn: Do you think NJ Transit is ready for when it’ll be stretched to the limits next summer during the World Cup?
PM: I believe it is. I have a high degree of confidence it’s ready. I say that because we’ve taken it around the track aggressively with three Taylor Swifts, three Bruces, the Club World Cup. In the first few of those matches, they didn’t have a full house. The last four, it was 72,000 or more coming in, leaving; we had President Trump for the fourth one, which was the final. I’m highly confident — I would say supremely confident.
ZB: The start of your tenure was marked by some tensions with the legislature, including then-Senate President Steve Sweeney. Do you regret those tensions? Do you think you handled them well?
PM: I think everybody handled them as well as you could expect. In fact, I just reached out to Steve today. I’m told he’s now the new [Gloucester County] administrator. I haven’t heard back from him. [The tension] was kind of inevitable, but we got through it. I think about it now, eight years in total, it was probably a year, probably a budget and a half, where there was tension. But the tension was kind of understandable. Steve had been there. [Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin] and I were new. The state was a wreck. People focus on Steve Sweeney, Phil Murphy, Craig Coughlin; what they don’t focus on enough is that we had no pennies. I think the surplus that we came in on was $409 million. And you know, as of now, it’s just under $7 billion. Like any household, when you have no money, that inevitably leads to attention. But no, I think everybody ultimately handled themselves well. We got through it. The last, I’d say, two and a half years that Steve was Senate President, and Craig was Speaker, and I was governor, we were locked in, including through Covid.
ZB: If you were indeed a king, and at some point during your term, you could have, by decree, bypassed the legislature and regulatory concerns, what would you have liked to have done?
PM: Wow, that’s a good question. It might have been getting weed, minimum wage, and millionaires [tax] done sooner. In other words, I don’t sit here with a list — “God, I wish we had gotten that done, and we didn’t get it through.”
ZB: You’ve got 15 days left, and some of your appointees still languish in “acting” mode right now because they haven’t been confirmed. Do you think senatorial courtesy should continue? Do you think that’s a good system in place right now?
PM: Let me say two things. Yes, I think it is a very good system. Look at the lack of congressional input on anything that’s going on right now in Washington, or the screen door confirmation process that was in the Republican-controlled Senate. I think it’s a very good thing. I’d argue a little bit with your premise. We’ve gotten a ton of appointments through here — period, but also recently. We’ve closed the judicial gap mightily. We still have some outstanding stuff, but not much that we’re concerned about.
DW: Could you name one person you appointed, out of probably thousands, that you wish you hadn’t, that you made a mistake on?
PM: Yeah, the woman who ran the organization who wasn’t living in New Jersey.
DW: Tiffany Brewer. [Tiffany Williams Brewer’s short time as executive director of the State Commission of Investigation ended after the Asbury Park Press reported that she was living in Maryland and working as a law professor at Howard University. She resigned last January.]
PM: I mean, come on, man, you’ve got to be straight. And she got very defensive about it at the end. Like, okay, I didn’t move you to Maryland. That’s one that comes to mind. But we put a lot of good people up; particularly, we’ve had great cabinet representation. I’m gratified that Mikie’s going to keep at least a handful of these folks, which is kind of cool. And I think the judges is a good story. Five Supreme Court [justices] is the headline, but also there were periods when there were huge amounts of vacancies in the Superior Court ranks. We haven’t taken it to zero, but we’ve shrunk it pretty dramatically.
JF: Given that there have been some public, or maybe semi-public, tensions in the relationship, do you have any regrets about appointing Matt Platkin as attorney general?
PM: None. Matt was first-rate as chief counsel. I’ve been blessed with three exceptional chief counsels: Matt, Parimal Garg, Kate McDonnell, all of whom worked together from moment one. I think he’s done a particularly strong job in battling Washington. That has been literally a daily [task], either suing, joining the suit, leading a suit, joining a letter, joining an amicus. Whatever it might be, he’s been outstanding at that.
JF: Does your own relationship remain — I’m just curious because this has been sort of the subject of speculation —
PM: We had our Christmas party for the front office and cabinet, and Matt was right there taking pictures with Tammy and me. We’re having yet another thing a week from Friday for the front office, current and former, and Matt will be there. But the second point — which has nothing to do with Matt — the relationship you have with somebody when they become the AG changes. Like I’ll go to Matt if it’s his birthday, or we’ll see each other at a wedding. But if there’s a business matter, I’m 99.9% going through Kate McDonnell, who’s our chief counsel, which is the same way I dealt with [former Attorneys General] Gurbir [Grewal] and Andrew [Bruck].
JF: Given that he was an independent officeholder and had his own prerogatives that you did not necessarily get to shape, were there any actions he took as AG that you disagreed with or that you personally would not have done?
PM: Yeah, I know there’s a lot of noise around some stuff, I’m not going to get into that. It’s above my pay grade. Honestly, I’ve got no insights on any of that, but I do want to single out the fact that he has battled Washington and has done a really good job on that front in particular. So I’ll take the inverse of your question. I’ll talk about something that I do know something about that I feel is a good thing.
ZB: A lot of the state’s good-governance advocates took issue with the 2024 [Open Public Records Act] reform bill; they think last year’s county-line abolition legislation could have gone further. Do you believe the state government is more efficient and transparent after your eight years as governor?
PM: So I’d say two things. One is, I didn’t run for governor to revise OPRA. That was not a passion of mine. And when you are dealing with other branches of government and you’re trying to put through a very big, comprehensive agenda, you have to compromise. You end up doing things that — “Gosh, that wasn’t a top 10 priority of mine, but I know it is for someone else” — that’s making the sausage, as they say.
ZB: Do you regret signing that bill?
PM: No, because I know the broader agenda that we’ve prosecuted. We are dramatically more transparent. We have zero backlog on OPRA in the front office, zero backlog. And I’m proud of that, and I believe we have managed it to zero at every step of the way. Secondly, we are far more good-government, far more transparent today than we were eight years ago, notwithstanding OPRA. Which, by the way, even with OPRA, [there were a] number of things that we said, “You know what? Actually, I can understand why we do, in fact, need to revisit this.”
JF: Were you amenable to the OPRA bill in part as a conversation with the legislature, with the knowledge that going along with them on that would allow you to work better with them on other priorities? That was sort of the implication I was reading into that.
PM: Yeah, the implication is correct, there’s a broader agenda. There’s a narrative out there that I completely reject: the progressives have to reassert themselves, take the party back from the bosses. I can say this factually without any reservation: the past eight years, this is the most progressive state in America, and it’s not close. And secondly, it’s the most progressive administration in the history of New Jersey.
So my view is this: here’s the system. You campaign for governor, you walk in as governor, you kind of have two choices. You could go into the system to prosecute your agenda, and you’ve seen the reams of stuff that we’ve gotten done. And by the way, once you’re in the system, maybe you could tweak this thing and make improvements, because no system is perfect. The other choice is to whine about it, sit on the outside, throw stones at it. “This sucks, and we’re going to burn the house down.” The problem with that is you get nothing done. So if you accept, and I think we can prove this factually, that we’re the most progressive administration in the history of the state and in America the past eight years, I therefore reject the premise completely that we need to burn the house down. That’s why I was always ambivalent on the [county] line. I mean, I just never saw the line the same way the purists have seen the line. They’re welcome to their opinion. I’ve got mine, and I know what we’ve accomplished.
DW: Does it frustrate you that you’ve done all of these things for progressives and they’re never pleased? They’re always angry about something else — I can talk about environmentalists or any number of interest groups who were blessing your election and then you’re leaving office and they’re not happy?
PM: Yeah, I wouldn’t say they’re not happy. I mean, some of them may not be happy, but there are a lot of happy people out there. I do think if you’re a purist and your expectation is, “You have to bat 1.000 in my particular lane” — we talked about NJ Transit, but if you’re a purist [for the] environment, gun safety, whatever it might be — you’re probably, if not definitively, going to be disappointed at some point. There are, I’m happy to say, many more advocates who are pragmatic and understand that there’s a bigger narrative. They want to make sure that their agenda, their passions, are properly represented and asserted within that large agenda, but they understand there’s a bigger picture in play. That, to me, is far more my experience.
ZB: So do you believe that you essentially reached the peak progressivism that you could have without sacrificing the ability to actually achieve things?
PM: That’s a very good question, and I like the way you framed it. It’s hard for me to think through — what’s my tag? How do I refer to myself? Proud progressive and a cold-blooded capitalist. That’s who I am. So that’s the frame. It’s hard for me to think that we didn’t max out without jeopardizing other elements of the agenda. That’s a very good way to put it.
JF: You divided progressive politicians, before, into people who are willing to work within the system to accomplish the progressive goals that they want to see, and the people who spend a lot of their time sort of throwing stones from the outside. We’ve got a few people now in office who, a lot of their campaign strategy was the stone-throwing type, right? I think that a lot of that was Andy Kim’s campaign. You’ve now got these new Assemblymembers coming into the legislature who had some of that same attitude. What do you make of it now that people like that are actually going to be in government?
PM: I don’t begrudge that; that’s their approach. I wish them all well, and I mean that sincerely. We’ll see how that evolves over time. I know what my mindset is. I know how we’ve approached it. I’ve got enough experience, and I would argue success, to have a strong opinion. We’ll see. I would also probably agree with the statement that it takes a village — that it’s okay to have different approaches, with folks who accept the system as well as folks who are throwing rocks at the system. My guess is the Democratic Party can accommodate a lot of different lanes, but I know what my lane is.
ZB: You raised the minimum wage, and you offered a flurry of tax subsidies, affordability efforts. But last year, during the campaign, “affordability” still dominated how people approached the campaign and the election. Why do you think that after eight years of your achievements, that continues to be top of mind?
PM: I think it’s a perennial in New Jersey. It’s your default. It costs too much. What’s notable for me, at least, is for the first time in my memory, property taxes have been knocked off the top of the list. That’s some for good reasons, and some for concerning reasons. The good reason is, we have backed the truck up on property tax relief. So particularly if you’re means-tested below a certain income, $250,000 or $150,000, homeowner or renter — better yet, if you’re a senior — you’ve got historic relief. We’ve knocked you back probably a decade or more. And that doesn’t show in the gross; property taxes last year were up X, but they don’t factor in, which drives me crazy, the billions of dollars of relief that we put in there. I’m not suggesting property taxes aren’t still a concern or that they’re low. We still continue to be a high-value state where you get a good return, a basket of stuff, back for what you pay.
The notable other factor, which is why the spotlight’s been less sharp on property taxes, is energy prices and health care premiums have each skyrocketed. Again, neither specific nor unique to New Jersey, but that’s a reality. We’re not immune to it. We’ve done a ton on energy. We’ve made, I think, constructive changes to the State Health Benefit Plan, working in tandem with the unions and other stakeholders. I regret that we could not make more progress with the Local Plan. I worry a lot about that plan and its solvency. The energy reasons are a myriad of reasons. The Trump administration, I think foolishly, suspending offshore wind. When you’ve got a supply and demand imbalance, why the hell would you take 11-and-a-half gigawatts off the table? Makes no sense. [Regional power grid operator] PJM has not done what it needs to do — to pick two that are kind of exogenous to New Jersey, if you will. That’s why we’re exploring a lot of things like nukes and [being] aggressive on solar and storage and putting money on the street to give people relief from their bills.
ZB: Do you think, lowering the property tax — if you had another eight years, you could make a substantial change in that? Or do you think without systemic change, it would really take —
PM: I think we’ve done a hell of a job. Home rule is a big factor and a big reality. It’s the biggest source of why property taxes are high, but at the same time, it’s the biggest source of pride and why every list that comes out, “Top 100 Most Livable Communities in America,” New Jersey clocks in with 20 of them, right? Most livable cities, best school systems, highest quality of life — I mean, we constantly punch way up there. And that’s a big reason, because, “It’s our school district, it’s our Main Street, it’s our police and fire departments, our DPW.” That’s a long-winded way of saying, on property taxes, you could go far, and we have gone far. But there’s probably a point of diminishing returns, given you’ve got that reality of 560 atomic elements to the way the state’s constructed, which on the margin, I love.
ZB: On the margin, did you say you love home rule specifically? Do you think that system should change?
PM: No, I’m saying the opposite. I think we should embrace it. I love home rule, but we should accept that it comes with a price tag, and everybody has to understand that. “I want my school system to be in the top 10 in the state,” or “This is my X or my Y.” Love it. That’s why people flock to Westfield or Maplewood or Montclair or Princeton or Collingswood or Haddonfield, you fill in the blank. But you have to go into that with your eyes open. There’s a level below which you’re probably ultimately not going to be able to penetrate in terms of property tax relief.
Listen, there’s a pay-as-you-go here as well, right? If these 12 strategic innovation centers throw off the next Microsoft, Apple, J&J, Merck, you name it — as I think they will, and I think they’ll do it in multiple places — and you get the economy that we have built toward, you therefore get the state revenues and all the budget support that will come with that.
JF: So one of the victories early on in your first term was, you got sports betting legalized in New Jersey. You also supported, a few years later, an extension of online gambling. This is something where I think that the discussion has shifted over the course of your two terms, as people realize the potential downsides of the expansion of online gambling, especially on young men. With the benefit of that hindsight, with what we know now, is there anything that you would have done differently on that? Is there anything that you think the state should do differently going forward?
PM: I still would have done it. This is in the category of legalizing weed. We’re not inventing weed, we’re legalizing it and putting structures and protections around it. We’re not inventing sports betting. Chris Christie wrote a very good piece on this a couple of months ago after the NBA scandal came out, and his point was to remind folks that having a legality and structure and rules of the road around this is, in fact, really important relative to what you would have if you had only the black market. Probably more public service work [is needed]; I think the leagues, the professional leagues, probably need to rethink the intimacy between themselves and the industry.
I’ll tell you what, with my own kids in their 20s, and too many phones at the dinner table — we were just all on vacation together for 10 or 11 days, and the phones were on the table all the time — I wish the [school] cell-phone ban that I’ll sign this week were in effect when my kids were younger. I say that as a dad more than I do as governor. It’s just, the damage is unspeakable.
JF: I guess part of the gambling question then ties into that a little bit, which is, you say it’s good for it to have a structure and real legality. But also the argument against it is, you know, it means that it is within finger’s reach, for people, anytime that they choose. Does that —
PM: I don’t know this from my own personal experience, but I know it from personal experience: it’s within your reach illegally as well. My bigger issue is more addiction to personal devices as it is addiction to sports betting. I’m not denying the latter is a concern, but I wish we could have controlled the devices earlier on.
JF: One other priority that your administration had that never quite worked out was reforming the state’s antiquated liquor license system.
PM: Partial credit.
JF: Well, so I’m curious: why do you think that the full credit fell through?
PM: Because the vested interests are really hard to overcome.
JF: Do you think there’s a way in the future that that could be overcome?
PM: I thought we presented a very fair — like the State Health Benefits Program, we were prepared to put skin in the game; in our case, to forgive a lot of debt into that health benefit, the local program. Likewise, in liquor license reform, we were prepared to put a significant amount of chum in the water to ease the pain of the current license holders who had legitimate concerns about the value of their licenses. That, to me, is still the trade. I’m happy that we finally moved the pocket licenses. I think we’ve been too strict in ABC and getting those licenses on the street, we’re working on that even through our final days. So partial credit. But the trade we put on the table, plus or minus, is the trade. The state’s got to put money to work, got to have some phase-in period. It should happen. I think it’s like offshore wind: it’s a no-brainer. It should happen. I think it will. This should happen, and therefore I think it will, but it won’t be in the next 15 days.
JF: We’re two years off of the Tammy Murphy for Senate campaign. With those two years of hindsight, I wanted to ask you, what do you think didn’t go right about that campaign? Why do you think it provoked the reaction that it did?
PM: I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask, you should ask her. I hope you sit with her. She feels, and I completely agree, as do her advisers, that she could have, if she chose to, won that campaign. It would’ve cost more money. That wasn’t going to be the issue. The gating factor was it was going to be an explosion within our party at a time when, I don’t want to put words in her mouth, she felt strongly that that’s kind of the last thing we needed: Democrats spending money on other Democrats, as opposed to keeping our eye on the prize. Unfortunately, 2024 didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to in the end, either in the House, Senate, or the White House.
It’s really hard, I think, for a woman running. It’s really hard for a woman who’s the spouse of an elected [official] to run. I don’t think you can underestimate that. And I think, again, there was this narrative of, “What lane are you in?” In fact, I think her campaign platform was more progressive than our administration. There might have been a false argument about who was progressive or who wasn’t. She was pretty damn progressive — more progressive, in fact, than I am. She was on me on congestion pricing as an example, and single-payer healthcare.
JF: She’s on the other side from you on congestion pricing?
PM: I don’t know if she ever went public, but some folks in New York were taking shots at me, and they said, “We’re so upset with you, we’re not going to support your wife.” I said, “Why don’t you ask my wife where she is on this?” She’s Al Gore’s founding board member of the Climate Reality Project. She’s a hardcore enviro; single-payer health, which is a Bernie thing, which I never got to. So there’s this false narrative around that. And again, this gets back to my point earlier. You go, “The system’s not perfect.” I get it, but are you going to work in the system and get shit done, or are you going to throw stones and complain about how the system’s not right? She was in the former. It didn’t work out, but I’m incredibly proud of her. She’s been an incredibly consequential first lady, too. Works her ass off.
JF: You’ve had a relatively cordial relationship with President Trump throughout the four non-consecutive years that you have been governor while he has been president. I’m curious what you think the benefits and drawbacks to that relationship were, and how you would advise Governor-elect Sherrill to proceed with her three years of being governor under Trump.
PM: First, the broad answer is, and she’s great at this: stand your ground on the stuff that’s in your values orbit, in your communities who have nowhere else to turn, in individuals who are being attacked. Stand your ground. I mentioned earlier with Matt Platkin, that turns into an enormous amount of aggressive legal action that we’ve taken, and I’m sure Mikie will continue that, and [Attorney General-designate] Jen [Davenport] is a great selection. Jen, we know well, having worked in our administration. But on the other side, that doesn’t mean you can’t find or have a spirit of goodwill to find common ground, and that’s sort of the way we’ve approached it.
The more complicated part of the answer: this is a different animal than the first time around. [Trump] and I didn’t have a deep relationship before Covid. It got really deep from February through the fall of 2020, talking multiple times a day, not every day but a lot of days. They were really good early on. It’s hard to think about that now, but they really were good. Jared [Kushner] was particularly good, but the president was very helpful and supportive. A lot of the stuff we now associate with him and Covid came later, came in the late summer, fall, the re-election campaign, et cetera. This time around, it’s very different. There’s nobody holding him back. You saw this weekend, it’s a different world right now. So this is harder.
ZB: When’s the last time you’ve talked with him?
PM: I haven’t talked to him in a while. X months — I can’t remember how many, but months. I talked to Susie Wiles, probably a month ago, his chief of staff, on something. It was for him, but it didn’t rise to the level where I needed to call him on his cell. I called her and said, “Listen, could you relay this to the boss and have him come back to me if he’s got any questions,” and they were satisfied with something that we moved on.
DW: Are you happy you ran for governor?
PM: Thrilled.
DW: I mean, I didn’t think you’re going to win when you first got into it. I saw you as the third guy in the race.
PM: At best. Yeah, I’m thrilled I did it. And that doesn’t mean it was always easy or fun, but it’s been overwhelmingly the most consequential eight years of my life. It’s been an extraordinary eight years.
DW: So I was looking back at some of the other former governors — you are the first governor that I can think of that is leaving office with more hair than when you started.
PM: That could be true.
DW: I think it’s definitely true.
PM: That’s due to my barber, Miss Kim, who said about four years ago, “Mr. Murphy” — she’s Korean, so I won’t do the impersonation — “Mister Murphy, why am I cutting your hair all the time?” I said, “What do you mean? Are you telling me I should go to somebody else?” I thought she meant she didn’t want to cut my hair anymore. She said, “No, no, you have to let your hair grow.” True story.
DW: So one of my early memorable Phil Murphy experiences is that on Election Night 2017, you came up on the stage in a fairly theatrical way.
PM: I did a big kick.
DW: Eight years later, could you still do it?
PM: Probably not. Probably not. I was asked by someone else — I’ve had two particular viral moments — would I choose the kick or “We’re from Jersey, baby!”? And I picked “We’re from Jersey, baby!” because I think it’s had more legs, no pun intended, but I also could repeat that much more easily than the kick.
JF: Well, you’re forgetting the second part of the phrase: “And you’re not!”
PM: That was a funny anecdote. The DNC was very hard about the rules of how you’re supposed to announce your delegation’s votes. They were really hardos. So we’re kind of good doobies. It’s LeRoy Jones, it’s me and it’s Joeigh Perrella. So the three of us are up at the front; Peg Schaffer’s there, Tammy’s there. And all of a sudden, Georgia, Lil Jon comes out and starts rapping and dancing! And we said, what the hell is this! We said, quick, we’ve got to do something cool! And I was the first guy up to bat. It was me to LeRoy, to Joeigh, as I recall. I said, “Oh, Jesus.” Tammy said, “Quick, you’ve got to come up with something!” So literally in the space of like 15 seconds, I came up with that. I still can’t believe it. That’s how it happened.
DW: And nobody called you from the DNC?
PM: They had not a leg to stand on, because it wasn’t just Georgia. There were like 10 states that went off script. But Georgia was the one — I think it was LeRoy that said, “Everything’s out the window now. We’re going to do what we got to do.”
JF: What’s next?
PM: No answer on that, other than, we’re gonna travel. Tammy gave me, as my birthday present, a handful of trips, and we’re literally leaving the night of the 20th. We’re going to go to Europe for a few weeks, and then we get another couple of warmer-weather hits in the late winter and spring. We’ll use that, God willing, to recharge, rest up a little bit. We’ll do something. I don’t know what it is, but we want to make sure we’re not tired and sprinting through the goal line and then collapsing and making a decision. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to wait a while.
DW: Legally, you can come back for eight years and do this again.
PM: I can, I’m told, but I won’t. This is it.