“I’m just staying here and we will stay together and try to get this terrible crisis behind us as hard as we can,” Murphy said.
New Jersey Phil Murphy said Wednesday he would not take a position in the Biden administration if former Vice President Donald Trump was defeated in the November election.
‘My job is New Jersey and I can not imagine, even in peacetime, I can not imagine another job. But certainly not under the circumstances in which we find ourselves, ‘Murphy said during an interview on POLITICO Playbook Live.
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Murphy told New Jersey Playbook author Matt Friedman that his decision to stay in New Jersey and likely pursue a second term in 2021 was “uniform, univocal.”
For the better part of the past year, there has been speculation that Murphy, who served as the US ambassador to Germany during the Obama administration, may step down as governor of an incoming Democratic administration. The self-proclaimed “pro-growth progressive”, who previously led the financial efforts of the Democratic National Commission in the mid-2000s, is also the chairman of the Association of Democratic Governors.
Murphy, along with most of New Jersey’s top Democratic officials, endorsed sen.Cory Booker’s presidential bid during the primary before stepping down behind Joe Biden after the former vice president appeared as the party’s presumptive nominee. Biden officially secured the party’s nomination on Tuesday night.
“I’m just staying here and we will stay together and try to get this terrible crisis behind us as hard as we can,” Murphy said.
The first-term governor has long had a personal relationship with Biden, who got on track with Murphy when he campaigned three years ago.
Murphy has grown its national profile in recent months as New Jersey was pummeled by coronavirus. Daily press conferences and a full-court press communications strategy made former executive Goldman Sachs a frequent presence on national broadcasts and media outlets.
Roughly 16,000 New Jersey residents are expected to die in the pandemic, including more than 7,000 residents and staff of state facilities for the long term. However, like neighboring New York, New Jersey fared better than most of the country in late spring and early summer.
Much of the state’s recent success in controlling the spread of the virus has been attributed to Murphy, who, after struggling in his first two years in office, establishing identity with New Jerseyans, is now among the most popular politicians in the state.
The approval rating of Murphy, who once hovered in the low-to-mid 40s, was regularly in the 70 percent ballpark in the heyday of the pandemic. And while he began to see pushback from the business community over his conservative and sometimes ill-defined rescheduling plan, about two-thirds of the state’s residents want to keep Covid-19 restrictions in place until there is a vaccine or treatment. is, according to a July interview from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
However, concerns about Murphy’s treatment of the health crisis began to bubble to the surface.
A recent legislative hearing on Covid-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities and New Jersey state-run veterans included eyewitness testimony alleging widespread failure and incompetence. Two members of the New Jersey Congressional delegation, Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell jr. And Josh Gottheimer, have called the CEO of one veteran institute, Matthew Schottlander, to resign.
Steel prisons are also struggling to contain the virus, leading to one of the highest rates of infection among invasive populations in the U.S., according to statistics compiled by The Marshall Project.
“Had we known earlier that this virus was in our midst – one of us, not just New Jersey – and not just long-term care, but especially long-term care, we would have closed visits,” Murphy said during Wednesday’s interview. , added that outbreaks probably started from staff and loved ones who carried the virus in their communities. “We will do a full soup-to-nut post-mortem on long-term care, at veterans’ homes, along the way how we have dealt with the entire pandemic.”
