KEY EXTRA: My machine, she's a dud, out stuck in the mud
You get Jersey Points if you got the reference in the headline.
"My machine, she's a dud, out stuck in the mud,
somewhere in the swamps of Jersey."
— Bruce Springsteen
Once in a while I'm going to depart from the usual format of this newsletter and just tell you some thoughts that are on my mind and that might contain some little bit of enlightenment, and this is one of those times.
So let's talk Jersey. And mud. And swamps.
I've lived in the swamps of Jersey for more than thirty years — long enough to know a few Springsteen lyrics, I guess. Whenever people ask me how I ended up in New Jersey, I say, "It was my dream growing up." Not one person has believed this.
I actually grew up in Portland, Oregon, moved to New York City in my twenties (as one does), and ended up getting a job on the Jersey side so I moved there. Fair to say, it was a culture shock. One of the old-timers in the neighborhood told me she was going to a dinner event "at da mafia." I said, "What?", thinking I must have misheard. She said, "You know, da mafia."
As a naive young newspaper reporter from relatively clean Oregon, I would see how things were done in New Jersey and say, "Uh, okay, that seems wrong but I guess that's how you're going to do it." Everything in New Jersey is a weird overlap of machine politics, shady deals and personal animus. I would wonder why Politician X and Citizen Y hated each other so much, and then I'd find out one of them had stolen the other one's girl in high school, decades earlier. Of course.
Nowadays the machine is more professional-class, more suit and tie, and a little more diverse, than in its glory days — but it's still a machine, still grimy in its own way. You may have heard of one of our former governors, Chris Christie — he's the ONLY one of the last three governors who wasn't a Goldman Sachs executive and didn't buy the office with money from his personal fortune. (He had his own issues, though. Don't get me wrong.)
So our current governor, Phil Murphy (D-Goldman Sachs), decided to buy a U.S. Senate seat for his wife. The seat is currently held by Robert Menendez (D-Golden Bars), who seems to be on his way out of office due to that Jersey-est of reasons, a criminal prosecution for bribery. A lot of our Democratic officeholders, including some I used to canvass for and respect, endorsed her because of I guess money and power. (Looking at you, Mikie Sherrill and Josh Gottheimer.) It was gross.
So a surprising thing happened last week. The people, who didn't want the Senate to be a gift from the rich governor to his wife, won. Patty Murphy dropped out, leaving the field open for the much better candidate and dude, Rep. Andy Kim.
My favorite reaction to this news came from my fellow Hoboken citizen Nancy Colasurdo in the Newark Star-Ledger:
Tammy Murphy, my brain thanks you
I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I felt such relief at seeing Tammy Murphy’s announcement suspending her campaign to run for Senate on Sunday. Up to this point, I was only lightly invested in that race, dipping in and out of the news to keep up.
And then when I watched her video, I realized what the feeling was – a sort of bliss at not having to take a stand on one more thing. . . .
I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t care about my state’s politics or this race. What this is about is my crowded brain and overtaxed emotions. I can’t take any more parsing, researching, engaging in political fights this year. Like many of my fellow citizens, I’m exhausted from it. My joy at this announcement is coming from a place of perhaps caring too much.
Yes! Why did I have to spend brain cells and time on a Democratic primary that didn't have to happen? Why did I have to spend money on blue New Jersey that could have gone to John Tester, Sherrod Brown, Colin Allred or Ruben Gallego? Why didn't anyone say no to the governor?
• There’s a reason we're talking about this, right?
Yes, there are two points to all this.
1. Just do the right thing. Jeez. Doing the wrong thing makes you look bad and sometimes will backfire horribly. (Example.) If you elect the Republican in a blue state, you should have known better.
2. Let me take you on a quick side trip to Orange County, California, and then we'll circle back again.
One of my favorite Congress members, Katie Porter, is quitting her House seat — a seat that only she might have been able to win — because she decided to run for Senate. That didn't work out for her (for one thing, she had terrible ads; more on that in a future newsletter), and so Democrats have to fight uphill for a very loseable seat now.
Katie Porter's endorsed candidate is state Sen. Dave Min, and since I've been spending most of this winter in southern California, I decided to go try to make a difference in that district. I signed up to volunteer for Min, and then checked out more about him. What I found was: (a) he's exceedingly dull, and (b) he had a DUI last year in Sacramento. Hmm.
So I took a look at the other Democrat in the race, Joanna Weiss, and I found out that right after the 2016 election she put together an activist organization called Women for American Values and Ethics. I found a video of Weiss speaking to an event honoring some of the other women who had been a part of the organization. Can I say, this is what I LOVE to see in a candidate — personal commitment, human connections, and supporting others. Something besides just holding office and casting votes.
So I knocked on doors for Joanna Weiss, and when people wanted to know more about her, did I say (as I have for other candidates) that she's a mom, and a lawyer? No! Because everybody’s a parent and being a lawyer is kind of a minus. I said something like this:
"Well, I'll tell you why I like her. After Trump was elected, she created an organization called WAVE for women in Orange County who wanted to work together and make a difference. So that's what I really love about her — the way she brings people together."
This was the most perfect thing I've been able to say about any candidate I've canvassed for. Every voter I talked to liked that.
Unfortunately, Joanna lost the primary. (California has these tricky "jungle primaries," in which all the candidates run in one pool regardless of party, and the top two go to the general election.) The Republican came in first, Dave Min second, and Joanna Weiss third.
So what happens now is, billionaire-funded dark-money organizations have budgeted 7.1 katrillion dollars to run ads about Dave Min's DUI and bad judgement and wreck his campaign. I just don't think it was wise to go in this direction, and if he loses in November, it will be obvious in hindsight that this was a bad choice.
(If he wins, it might be thanks to the large Korean vote in Orange County. Please turn out, guys!)
So the message of today's newsletter is if only — IF ONLY! — we had two things: (1) some kind of smoke-filled Zoom rooms in which people who know the players and the constituency would just decide on one candidate per race, and (2) they would choose the good one, not the bad one! I wish we could stop the bloodletting between different Dems, save the resources for our real battles, and also put up the best candidates — the Andy Kims and the Joanna Weisses.
Do I trust the scuzzy old New Jersey bosses to do that? Hell no. Do I trust Katie Porter to make the best endorsement? Not anymore.
If the party needs somebody to make these decisions, my e-mail is below.
Footnote: This is also how we got terrible mayor Eric Adams in New York, because the large field that included multiple progressive women candidates canceled each other out. One of these days I'll explain more about that race and talk about the flawed dream of ranked-choice voting. If you think it’s awesome, it isn’t.
Back to our normal programming on Friday.
Thank you for supporting Joanna and for mentioning WAVE!
Yes, more on RCV please. Thank you