First lady Tammy Murphy abruptly suspended her campaign for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate on Sunday. Murphy’s team probably did bungle their launch a bit, looking to the party bosses for approval before working on their message to voters. They also never counted on U.S. Rep. Andy Kim (D-3rd) catching fire as a candidate — or the movement to tear down the “county line” on ballots that could change the course of elections in New Jersey forever.
“Andy Kim is a once-in-a-generation candidate to help bring about that culture change, to see that culture change coming and to step into it and to help bring it about says a lot about him but … she didn’t see any of that coming,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “And he saw things that were stacked against him and he wasn’t willing to take no for an answer and he found a way around it and in a way he changed the game.”
With Murphy out, the conventional wisdom is that Kim is all but the presumptive Democratic nominee for the seat currently held by embattled Sen. Bob Menendez.
