Transcript: Lost in Jersey Interview with New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy

RACHEL:
Hi, Janette.

JANETTE:
Hi, Rachel. We just had a great interview with Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey. Yes, it was such a great interview. We talked about his background, some of the things that he’s proud of. that has happened during his last seven years and some of the things he still has on his desk to deal with.

RACHEL:
Which is quite a lot. Yes. We have a primary coming up on June 10th. We’re one of only two states having a governor election in November. So a lot is going on in the state of New Jersey right now and obviously in the United States of America. So we do touch upon a lot of different topics, how he grew up, how he got here. He’s really fascinating and just a lovely person and very easy to talk to. Yep.

JANETTE:
Enjoy this interview. Welcome, Governor Murphy, to Lost in Jersey. It’s so nice to have you on the show.

PHIL_MURPHY:
I love it. This evokes the famous lyric from Rosalita, somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. I’m the boss. I’m thrilled to be with you ladies. Thanks for having me.

JANETTE:
It’s very nice to have you. And you know, we did do a deep dive on you after your team reached out to us to be on the podcast. We were like, well, we got to know everything. And we know that you’re a big boss fan.

PHIL_MURPHY:
I’m a big boss fan. I was on with him texting back and forth yesterday, telling him to stay strong out there in Europe as he’s going through his next month and a half.

RACHEL:
He’s a beacon of light for a lot of Americans right now that are wishing they could be with him in Europe.

JANETTE:
His sentiments are appreciated by a lot of people. We wanted to structure this interview in a way that we can really kind of how we always interview people is we want to know your background. Even though some people may know it, some people might not, but there’s always some things that we discover about people when we learn about where they grew up and their journey to where they are today. So can you give us a little bit about your background? I believe that you’re not from New Jersey.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Yeah, most of my background gets me no votes in New Jersey. So another reason I’m probably blessed to be term limited at this point. Born in Boston, literally grew up just west of Boston, youngest of four. I have described my family, which I think is a very accurate middle-class on a good day. There’s an acronym called ALICE, A-L-I-C-E, asset limited, income constrained, but employed. And I think that describes my mom and dad in our situation. My dad never graduated from high school, really brilliant guy, but wasn’t a school guy. My mom did graduate from high school. That was her last degree. He made sure we cared about public service and politics and current events. She made sure we got an education and all of us did. Public school guy. Got into Harvard University on a scholarship, majored in economics. Beginning in middle school, high school, and college, big theatrical guy. I’m still a theatrical junkie. I love that.

JANETTE:
Rachel wants to talk to you about that. You’re going to have to pause for a moment.

RACHEL:
Yeah, I was very much, I love the musical theater. I was very excited to read that about you.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Yeah, so that’s still a passion. And I was the first guy ever to be, this in $4.09 will get you a grande latte at Starbucks. But I was the first guy ever to appear in four Hasty Pudding Theatricals productions alongside a classmate named David Merrill. That’s a first. That was a first. At the time, it was a first.

JANETTE:
Wow. I love that. That’s where the achievement started after getting into a very, very good school.

RACHEL:
That’s when you got a taste of auditioning for something and getting the part, like running for office and getting the part.

PHIL_MURPHY:
That’s true. I just gave a commencement address at University of Pennsylvania Law School, and I made the point that you could have worse training than theater if you have an aspiration to be in politics or government. It allows you to… It’s true. There’s always somebody who forgets their line, or the scenery collapses, or people laugh when they’re not supposed to laugh, or applaud when they’re not supposed to, and you’ve got to be able to think on your feet. And keep going. Yeah. So that part of my life’s been important. I then sold textbooks for two years. I would not recommend that if the podcast does not work out for the two of you.

JANETTE:
Yeah, I don’t think that industry is thriving right now. My husband’s a professor. You know, textbooks are really not being used. They’re not used.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Got a master’s in business at the Wharton School at UPenn and basically worked on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs around the world for the next 20 odd years. New York, Germany, Hong Kong, back to New York, running some global businesses, and then hung up my Wall Street cleats, became the national finance chair for the Democratic National Committee. I was a big believer in Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. That was a volunteer position, but I did it full-time, raised a lot of money that got Congress back to our side, got Barack Obama elected. He then asked me to be our ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. And then we came back from Germany and never expecting to run for office. And one thing led to another. We started a think tank. We took what was going on in New Jersey at sort of a policy level, very seriously, ultimately decided to run and got elected twice. I’ve left out the most important part. I’ve been married going on 31 years to Tammy. We have four kids. Josh, 27, Emma, 25, Charlie, 23, Sam, 21, two dogs and a goldfish.

RACHEL:
Wow. Wait, a goldfish? That’s surprising. That is actually surprising.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Actually, our son Charlie’s, he brought it home when he graduated from Princeton a couple of years ago. I think it’s the world’s longest living goldfish. Yeah.

RACHEL:
I would say normally when you say you have a goldfish, you have like a four-year-old, not a 21-year-old.

PHIL_MURPHY:
That’s a long story, trust me on that one.

RACHEL:
I like it. When we were talking, we were talking about the ambassador to Germany part because we were really fascinated also knowing about the Goldman Sachs part where you were over there in Germany working and how you were learning some German and also understanding the economy there and what was going on and then going back as an ambassador. What was that like for you?

PHIL_MURPHY:
So at least in his first term, comment about it and Barack Obama, I thought was great at the time. And he’s looking better by the second. Everybody’s looking better by the second. George W. Bush is looking better by the second. It mattered to him. He was Dr. Spock in terms of where he put people. We didn’t have a great, in fact, we had no desire to be in Washington, nothing against Washington. It just wasn’t a big attraction for us. But both my wife and I spent meaningful amount of time overseas as adults. And we each independently, and then when we fell in love and got married, then as a couple came to the overwhelming conclusion, gosh, wouldn’t it have been nicer for us as kids to have lived overseas? My family would never have dreamt of that because we couldn’t put two nickels together. And we both agreed, you know what, if we are fortunate enough to have kids, let’s try to find a good experience for all of us. And it turned out having been a Goldman first single and then married, speaking some German, knowing a little bit about Germany, having met Angela Merkel and a few of the other, by the way, including Friedrich Merz, who just became chancellor in early May. I think, I don’t want to speak for President Obama, but there was logic to us being in Berlin. And then when you add to that a very fair premise of your question, as a banker, we knew the economy. We not only knew some of the players, some of the language, but also some of the economic drivers, and it so happened, our time in Berlin coincided with the European sovereign debt crisis. So that was something that I had more than a passing, in terms of capital markets, more than a passing understanding of. So it was a lousy experience in terms of the markets and the economic crisis, but fortuitous for me in terms of the skills that I could rely on. It was an extraordinary experience.

JANETTE:
On that topic about your experience with the financial industry, I read that you started as an intern at Goldman Sachs and then you worked your way up to the top of that industry. And the amount of experience also internationally that you have, is that what brought you to when you started to go into government? Is that, could you see things in a way and feel like you have brought that type of experience to the job? Is that one of the greatest features? Because when we look at what you’ve done over your last seven years, it looks like that experience is really showing.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Yeah, it certainly helped. I mean, I lived my little tiny version of the American dream. I did start as a summer intern. You know, I think I had one suit. It was polyester. I had a Samsonite briefcase. I had no bankers in my family or in my life. So the fact that the match actually took in my life is one of those small miracles. And then the international experience, so not just Wall Street, capital markets, but dealing with CEOs across the table around the world, ultimately running some global businesses. In my case, private wealth management, asset management, didn’t quite make it to the top, got to the management committee. So the top 15 or 20 folks, but an extraordinary experience. And if you flip forward to New Jersey, New Jersey was a wreck when we, we got into office. And one of the dimensions of that wreck was it was a fiscal wreck. It needed to get itself back on its feet. The economy wasn’t growing, there were huge inequities, and we had become a very irresponsible, poorly run, in particular, fiscally irresponsible state. So when I first ran, I got a whole lot of crap about being a Goldman Sachs banker, particularly given one of my predecessors also was a Goldman Sachs banker and a dear friend. That has died down over the years. People realize maybe there was some relevance of that experience into what New Jersey needed. And, you know, we’re not perfect by a long shot, but I think we’ve made a good amount of progress on that front. And that experience has been very important to that progress.

RACHEL:
It was the also because I had we were looking up about the pension, the funding, the pensions, and I wasn’t really I didn’t really understand what that meant. And Janette was we were sort of explaining.

JANETTE:
I was like, I was so impressed with the pension, you know. part of the budget and what, how you’ve turned that around. When you look at the accomplishments that you have had over the last seven years and a couple of change, I’m sure that that is one of them, but what are some of the accomplishments that you really look to that when you started and now when you, as you’re leaving, that you really are proud of?

PHIL_MURPHY:
Yeah, we’ve got about six or seven months to run and we’re going to sprint through the tape I’m not into the legacy thing, I’m not into patting myself on the back, but I’ll give you a couple of, at a very high level, a couple of things that I think are notable. One is, as we speak, more people live in this state than ever before. More people are employed in the state than ever before. There are more businesses in operation than ever before. So one of our big focuses was on growing the economy. We hadn’t grown, but prior to our time here, we hadn’t, we were sort of sideways for a long time. So I’m proud of that. We’ve particularly emphasized recapturing our place in the startup economy. We used to be really good at birthing companies. That skill had migrated elsewhere to California, New York City, Boston, et cetera, Austin, Texas. We’re now back in that lane in a big way in terms of venture capital destination as one metric. We’re only now behind New York and California and they’re a lot bigger than we are. So that’s a good place, which is big. Secondly, I would say inequities that we have shrunk and we still have work to do on everything, including this, but we were horrifically inequitable as a state, particularly across racial lines and secondarily, I’d say across gender lines. And we’ve closed a lot of those gaps, whether it’s wealth disparity, our clemency initiatives, access to housing, social determinants of health, particularly my wife’s lived in the infant and maternal health space. So the second bucket would be we’ve shrunk a lot of inequities. Our work is far from done. We still have a lot of progress yet to be made there. And then the third one is what you all were alluding to being fiscally responsible and reliable. You know, we’re obligated to make our pension payment. We hadn’t made it in 25 years. This will be the fifth year in a row with the budget. I signed later in June that we will have made it by the way, $7.1 billion a year, which includes an enormous penalty all those years that we hadn’t paid it. Uh, rating agencies that have upgraded us basically doing business, if you will, in a responsible. reliable way. So those are the three buckets that we are obsessed with, that we spend 99% of our time with. And I feel good about the progress. Again, we’re not perfect. We’re not done yet. We probably won’t even be done when we’re done. But we’ve reset the state across all three of those very important buckets.

JANETTE:
Right, so the budget that you just put out recently, I believe it’s 50, I have it down $55 billion. And I think that’s the concern is that can we maintain that high level because our taxes are so high. The basic thing is our property taxes are so high and the budget’s just ballooning. How do you respond to such a simple question like that?

PHIL_MURPHY:
Yeah. So has the budget gone up since we’ve been in office? Absolutely. Guess what? The budget goes up when you inherit a state that didn’t pay its bills.

RACHEL:
Yeah.

PHIL_MURPHY:
So the year before we got here, the pension payment maybe was a billion. I forget what the number was. We will have just printed, assuming the budget lands where I think it’ll land, we will have put more money into the pension system than the prior six governors combined. We never fully funded our school funding formula. We have now funded it fully. We’re the only administration in the history of the state. So my point is, has the budget gone up? Yeah. Have we made investments that we think are smart? Yes, we’ve done that too. But that’s what happens when you inherit a state that didn’t pay its bills. And shame on the critics. who don’t have the courage to point that out. Secondly, can we continue to afford it? Very good question. That’s why our emphasis has been overwhelmingly on growing the economy. And the answer is, based on where I sit now, not just this budget, but as I look to the future, we absolutely can afford it. That doesn’t mean we don’t do everything we can to make the life of families in this state more affordable. We have record property tax relief in this budget, all time highs. We do everything we can to make the state a good value for money state. We’re never going to be the low cost state. When you have the number one public education system in America, which We just, that mantle was reaffirmed by US News and World Report last month. When you’ve got top five healthcare quality, when you’ve got top quality of life more broadly, location second to none, all the things that we offer as a state, that doesn’t come cheap. The point is not to be the, would I love to be the low cost guy on the planet? You betcha. But that’s not who we are. I want to make sure for folks like you and your families living in Montclair to pick an example that you have a good value for money proposition. This may not be cheap, but boy, do I get a lot back for that. That to me is New Jersey’s rightful resting place. And I think that’s where we are and we’ll continue to do everything we can to stay there.

RACHEL:
Are you feeling by attracting VCs and things like that and companies like that and Netflix, which was that wonderful, we saw those photos and the film Tax Breaks, you’ve done a lot for the film industry to bring them back to New Jersey and to shoot here and do their work here. that that will give us the funds that we’ll need.

PHIL_MURPHY:
So where we used to be. Yes. The answer, if this got cut off right now, the answer is emphatically yes. New Jersey used to be what I would call a metal bender state. We made cars, trucks, chemicals for some good reasons, some bad reasons. The fact of the matter is that’s not who we are anymore. And it hasn’t been for a while. I think when you wake up in the morning, We as the three of us as individuals, a company, a foundation, certainly a state, you have to look in the mirror and be cold-blooded about who you are, who you’re not, what you can be, what you can’t be, and then play the hand that you were dealt and maximize that hand. And so when I look in the mirror, putting aside what I look like, which please keep me in your prayers, when I see New Jersey, I see an innovation economy. I see pharmaceutical, bio, life science, tech, telecom, increasingly generative artificial intelligence, film, television, digital, green economy, fintech, financial technology, fintech, sports betting, not just the handle, which we lead the nation and have been for seven years, but I mean the guts of the industry, the technology, the jobs. That’s who we are. Let’s own that space. Let’s dominate in those industries and in that space. Photonics. No other state in the nation is as photonic as we are.

RACHEL:
Can you explain what that is? What is photonics?

PHIL_MURPHY:
No, I can’t explain.

JANETTE:
But what in the world? Like photons? We’ll look it up and we’ll put it on the screen.

PHIL_MURPHY:
No, but this is extreme value-added, highly engineered, industries and photonics is among them. We’ve launched 10 strategic innovation centers. One of them is with Princeton University, the NJ AI Hub with State of New Jersey, Princeton, Microsoft, Corwin, which is an emerging Mega player in a i’ll bet you will do one in photonics are in that sort of neighborhood before we’re done but just think highly value added highly technical. The very high end of engineering i give you one data point before i shut up here is new jersey is the highest concentration of scientists engineers. Research professionals per square mile in the world. Really? That’s amazing. My point is be clear-eyed about who you are and dominate where you’re good and just resist the temptation to go up a field into areas where you’re not going to be as competitive.

RACHEL:
Well, that’s good life advice also for all college students graduating. Look in the mirror and see what you’re also what you’re good at.

PHIL_MURPHY:
You bet.

JANETTE:
Yeah. I mean, it definitely makes you very Jersey proud hearing all that’s happening in New Jersey. And also you’re you’re known also for that clean energy. How are you feeling about that sector and the work that you’ve done in that area?

PHIL_MURPHY:
Well, with the Trump administration, not very good at the moment.

JANETTE:
Yeah.

PHIL_MURPHY:
They have really gummed up our offshore wind program, which was the largest in the country. I still hope we’ll get that back on its feet, but they have been absolutely on the wrong side of history. If you care about climate change and the environment, these guys, I’d love to think otherwise. And I desperately try to find common ground with the president and his people. And we do, we’re able to do that from time to time, but this is not one of those areas. So I feel really good about what we’ve done inside. I could say this about a lot of things right now. I feel really good about what we’ve done inside the four walls of Jersey on climate. We’ve led the nation for the past seven and a half years. Thanks to my wife and a lot of great legislators, we’re the only state in the nation that teaches climate change in our K through 12 curriculum. Is that because we’re woke or progressive? Yeah, I’m a proud progressive, but I’m also a cold-blooded capitalist. That’s the real reason is so that when those kids graduate, that they know everything they need to know about that industry and that they will succeed, get great paying jobs, have a real multi-decade career in that space. No other state does that, but I’m really down and depressed about the national picture on that front. As good as I feel about what we’ve done, I feel really negative about where it’s headed nationally.

RACHEL:
The fact that the governors really are the first line of defense to protect their people in their state and then you have changing, you’ve been through multiple administrations that believe in what you’re doing and then don’t believe in what you’re doing. How much of a whiplash is that for you and how do you manage that and manage to Do you have like a daily mantra or how do you stay steady as the governor of this state?

PHIL_MURPHY:
So this is a fact as opposed to something that I’m promoting, if you will. I’m the longest serving Democratic governor alongside Donald Trump as president. So the, and that included three years in his first time through. And we largely coexisted. He was to his credit and his team early in the pandemic were exceptionally important to us saving lives. And people hear that now and they say, what are you talking about? But in the first few months, in early in the spring and early summer of 2020, we were talking literally almost every day. And he and his team, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in particular, were extremely important to our saving lives. Again, I know folks now hear that and they say, that’s crazy, but it’s true. I look back on the three years that we overlapped on his first time through, almost, you’re going to laugh at this, almost with a fondness, you know, we were, we were able to find common ground on the one hand and then fight like hell for the values and the communities that were being impacted or attacked. Then we had four years of president Biden and largely, not entirely, but largely sympathetic agendas, both in Washington and here in New Jersey. And now this. And this is a completely different ball game. I don’t know if this is true, but I’ll bet you they didn’t think they were going to win in 2016. When they did win, they weren’t really sure what levers to pull and whatnot. They surrounded themselves with at least some institutionalists. All of that’s different. They were supremely confident. They know exactly what they’re doing. There are no institutionalists. And this is really, really hard right now. This is 24-7, hand-to-hand combat, still trying to find common ground. And we have, but boy, there’s a lot of stuff that we’re battling. A lot of it in court. It’s not easy right now. I’m looking for sympathy, but it’s not easy. No, no.

JANETTE:
I mean, we’re watching it. We’re watching. Can you tell us, like, right now, when you wake up in the morning, what are the issues that you are shifting to the federal, as we’re talking about, that are on your desk that you really are urgently trying to deal with? I know that we have this big, beautiful bill that just, you know, passed. It’s about to go in to the Senate. the Senate. So I’m assuming that’s one of them. But what are these things that you’re looking at?

PHIL_MURPHY:
Yeah, that’s the top of the list. And when this airs, it’ll be interesting to see where the Senate has landed with the House bill that got passed by one vote. That’s the 800 pound gorilla right now. This is billions of dollars to New Jersey that we are getting now that we won’t get. Overwhelmingly, Medicaid, SNAP or food stamps, Planned Parenthood, other things, overwhelmingly directed at the lower income strata of our residents, billions. It also means, depending on the program, probably I’ll say hundreds of thousands of folks that will go without. They’ll be taken off the rolls, whatever the rolls might be, due to work requirements in Medicaid or some other factor. And the real tragedy, so that’s tragic, period. The further tragedy is no state, including New Jersey, has remotely the kind of money lying around, the pocket money, if you will, to compensate for those cuts. So folks will go without. Maybe on the margin, we can trim some of the pain and we will continue to try to do that. But this is awful. This is not American. It’s just awful, awful, awful. That’s the big 800-pound gorilla.

SPEAKER_03:
It is.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Do we have immigration challenges? You betcha. But in terms of the overwhelming sort of tidal wave impact of the biggest scale impact on New Jersey, it’s this awful, big, beautiful bill.

JANETTE:
Well, it seems that it’s framing it as an immigration, it’s marketing it as an immigration solution. But it really is not that that it doesn’t seem to be really what it is. It’s really just a gutting of the Medicaid system.

PHIL_MURPHY:
And they’re hiding behind phrases which are Orwellian, like this is about Waste fraud abuse right you know what is this waste run abuse sign me up i want to get rid of that too that’s not what this is about we do roundtables with folks who are impacted we did one in westfield a few weeks ago. There was nobody at that table taking advantage of the system. And I might add, there was nobody at that table. These were six or seven families who have nowhere else to turn if Medicaid is cut. That was very moving. Nobody at that table could work if they wanted to. So this work requirement stuff is complete BS.

JANETTE:
It is. Right. A little bit, a thing about that. I listened to the roundtable for Medicaid and it was very moving. The thing that really struck me was where will people go? The institutions are removed for people who need intense care like this. And then I thought it was very interesting because on to women’s reproductive rights and how much they care about, you know, lives that it’s just like a conflict of interest between the Republicans saying they care about people and babies and everyone.

PHIL_MURPHY:
They want you to have more babies. They want to control women’s reproductive freedoms.

JANETTE:
But not support them.

PHIL_MURPHY:
At the same time, they will literally kill people with this bill. They will. People will literally go without and die, and the blood is on their hands. It’s despicable.

JANETTE:
Well, something that I’d like to point out about this is that is the cascading effects. Everyone thinks it’s going to affect someone that they might not know, like they don’t know. It’s people they don’t know. But I’ve told Rachel this several times is that I’m part. This is a side thing that I do. I work for a lot of projects that I work for are international and I build tech and web development for USAID projects. You would never think, you would never think that cutting that would have so many cascading effects. And I was even talking to my accountant. I was like, you know, you’re going to lose your job because we don’t have jobs anymore. People are not considering when they just think, I don’t want immigrants getting health care. You know, it’s just, it’s a little bit of a pet peeve of mine that I’m like, you don’t look, look at the cascading effect.

RACHEL:
Well, it’s personal.

JANETTE:
It’s also personal.

RACHEL:
I think we’re all sort of trying to figure out, you know, as you know, that people are going to the polls to vote on June 10th for, you know, the primaries for the governorship and People are worried about the Democrats’ message and how we can hold it up against the Republican message. And what is the messaging? And it’s hard when you feel, well, when I feel that, you know, certain facts don’t matter. Sure. Is there like a secret meeting of Democratic leaders that they’re like, okay, let’s get on board. What’s our message?

PHIL_MURPHY:
Yeah, it’s extremely frustrating. Before I take a stab at that, just to give you one example, back to Janette’s comment about the unintended consequences of the cascading. I’ll give you one that we get. I mean, the Trump stuff nicks us up big time. About five or six years ago, I signed a law that would give folks access to a driver’s license regardless of their immigration status. So the folks on the other side, wonk, wonk, wonk, wonk. You know why we did it? Here’s why we did it. Because we actually did our research, and the states with the safest roads in America are those that allow everybody to get access to a driver’s license, meaning you have to go through driver’s ed. You have to take a test. You have to take a road test. You have to read an eye test. You have to re-up over time. That’s why we did it. So there’s this feeling like, well, it’s for them. Well, it is. I guess if you’re trying to get to work and we heard some incredible stories about, you know, buses and trains and walking. Yes, it is quote unquote about them. It’s for all of us. It’s to make our roads safer for all of us.

JANETTE:
Yeah.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Yeah. I mean, I’d be very critical of my party right now in terms of coherence. We’re starting to get our mojo back, I think, kind of for all the wrong reasons, I would argue, because everybody’s now starting to wake up and realizing that some of this stuff is crazy. Trump’s poll numbers are starting to go down. The stock market is wobbly. The bond market is wobbly. Our allies are questioning whether or not we’re a reliable partner anymore. You know, the first move on the chessboard to end the war in Ukraine is to side with the Russians.

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Hello. So that’s starting to impact people deeply. I think for the first few months post-election, we were all deer in the headlight. Now it’s beginning to bite. And I think that’s politically, for all the wrong reasons, a good thing. As you rightfully point out, we have, I think about a week after this podcast goes up, we have the primary for governor. You’ve got six Democrats that have a legitimate shot. You’ve got three or four Republicans with a legitimate shot, although they feel like they’re much more baked than we are. And we’ll see. I think this is going to be a very close, tough general election. President Trump did a lot better last year than he did. in 2016 or in 2020 in New Jersey. I know he personally feels as though Jersey’s winnable. Typically the textbook would say the Democrat would be favored because you’re running against really what just the election in Washington and what’s happening. But on the other side of it, putting aside his better performance last year, It’s hard to staple three terms together of the same party. Historically, that would be unusual.

SPEAKER_03:
Yes.

PHIL_MURPHY:
I’ve had two. I was the first Democrat to get reelected in 44 years. Can we find the magic again and get a third Democratic term? I’ll be it with a different governor. I’m obviously, I’m not taking sides in the primary, but in the general, I will be all in to see that happen. But I think it will be very, very close.

JANETTE:
Well, I was to Rachel’s point about the messaging for the Democratic Party and the way that the landscape has changed so much. You said it’s hand to hand combat every day. From the time that you we were kind of laughing that you had worked for Howard Dean and that he showed a little bit of anger and his campaign was over. Right. And today, what he did was just so minor, so incredibly minor. And so the landscape has changed so much. And it really does seem to be more about emotions and not about facts. It seems to be getting to culture and thoughts and feelings. And the Democratic Party seems to lead with the facts, you know, and discredit to some extent the culture, heritage and values of the Republican Party, which causes this backlash. So I’m wondering, is there kind of a pivot to maybe being a more, less throwing out facts and rules and, you know. Bring back the Howard Dean scream. Bring back the Howard Dean, like, you know, I’m mad. Like, we are doing a good job. Like, do you not realize the cascading effects of this thing?

PHIL_MURPHY:
Listen, they’re probably, I think showing our raw side, assuming it’s real and it’s not fabricated is always, not always, it didn’t work for Howard, but. Yeah. I think sort of showing our anger is not a bad thing. Bernie and AOC have been doing that successfully. And this is, you know, to their credit, period. The history would suggest we have to attract a chunk of people in the middle. Trump, go figure, was able to do that. We have to be able to do that. I would, if you look beyond this year, there are only two statewide races, by the way, in the year after a presidential New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races. Virginia feels like it’s coming our way. You never put anything in the bank at this time of the year. And then New Jersey, I think, will be really nip and tuck. If you look at next year, midterm elections, you have 36 governor’s races next year, with only two this year. But you’ve got all of the House, a third of the Senate. I would be optimistic on the House. I’d be pretty shocked if we didn’t win the House back. I’d be pretty surprised, not shocked, if we win the Senate back, not because of lack of emotion, but the map. You all know this, but when you have only a third of the chamber up, it matters what third that is and where you’re defending and where they’re defending and whatnot. So we’ll see. But I think the short answer is showing our emotion. right now has to be a good thing. It has to be. Without abandoning the basic facts that prove our case, I think there’s no reason why both of those can’t exist.

JANETTE:
Well, moving on, we we do want to know a little bit about your relationship. You said that you do come together a little bit with Donald Trump on a couple of issues. Is there something about Donald Trump and his, you know, governing style or some of the policies he’s put forward that you agree with, that you connect with him on?

PHIL_MURPHY:
So we have a relationship, and there aren’t many Democrats who do. In part, by the way, I’m the governor of New Jersey, and he’s going to be, as we’re taping this, he’s flying in this afternoon. This is, I’d say, of his two states of interest right now. This is second behind Florida. And we’ve found common ground over the years. In his first term, it was infrastructure. And I mentioned secondly, and as a life and death matter, the early days of COVID. Some of his principles I have no quibble with. He wants to manufacture more stuff in America. So do I. He wants a more efficient government. Sign me up. He wants wars to end and peace to break out. Who doesn’t? It is less in those areas, other principles I’m not going to agree with. It’s not the principle, it’s the execution around those three things that is, I’d say, disastrous. Tariffs are not the way to make more stuff in America. In New Jersey right now, I’m working with the legislature on a big $500 million manufacturing incentive for multinationals who are worried about tariffs. to say come on into new jersey make your stuff here and will help make the finances work for you on government efficiency i thought with elon musk who’s a tech genius and pretty much not a genius away from anything that related to technology that’s for sure you would think you know back in november i was hoping you know what we’re gonna see stuff in his efficiency endeavors that we’re gonna be able to learn from i mentioned where we’re getting really big into generative artificial intelligence. We’re training all 61,000 folks who work in state government on, on AI and how to upskill their jobs. There’s been none of that. It’s complete. The Marx brothers are in charge of that department. And then I mentioned a few minutes ago, peace over war. Yes, absolutely. But that doesn’t mean getting in bed with the Russians who started the war, right? So it’s just, it’s less. So those principles I share. But the execution has gone awful. There’s no strategic overlay. There’s no, hey, wait a minute, let’s be really clever about this. And that’s where I think this is falling down right now.

RACHEL:
On that, are you looking forward to taking a break from politics?

PHIL_MURPHY:
I haven’t really thought about it. I know our time is ticking here, so I should at least say that we’re running through the tape. And if we weren’t already running through the tape, thanks to the stuff that’s coming at us out of Washington, any amount of time that I could have otherwise devoted to thinking about what’s next. You don’t have time yet. It’s crazy. Well, that makes sense. I’ve been busy. I’ve never been busier than I am right now.

RACHEL:
Yeah, I see that. I see that. We can wrap this up because we know you’re busy, but we’d like to end our conversations with a couple of fun things about Jersey.

PHIL_MURPHY:
I love that.

JANETTE:
We want to know, first off, the mountains or the shore of New Jersey?

PHIL_MURPHY:
I love them both, but I lean shore. Okay. And it’s funny. Our lakes get undersold.

RACHEL:
The lakes are amazing.

PHIL_MURPHY:
It’s part of the beauty of our state. And I tell you, every summer I go up and have lunch on Lake Hopatcong with the four or five mayors that have communities that abut the lake. But I’m a shore guy. We spend as many weekends as we can on the shore. We live, literally as we speak, I’m three and a half miles from the ocean. The Jersey Shore is an incredible asset for New Jersey.

JANETTE:
Okay. And the next one, this one is Rachel’s, which I love that she said, and I feel like you’ve already done this a little bit, but what is your elevator pitch for New Jersey?

PHIL_MURPHY:
I’ll tell you what, I think every state has a bumper sticker and ours is the number one state in America to raise a family.

SPEAKER_03:
I love that.

PHIL_MURPHY:
And that to me embodies a whole lot of other stuff that I could, if the elevator were going to the, my wife and I had dinner at an event last week on the hundredth floor in New York City. That elevator I could give you a lot more details on, but if you’re going from the ground floor to the third floor, you just got it.

RACHEL:
Well, that’s why Janette and I both moved here. It was to raise our families.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Yeah. We bought our house. I’m not from here. My wife’s not from here. We bought our house explicitly to raise our kids here. It was the best move we ever made.

RACHEL:
Exactly. We are not from here either, and that’s why we were lost in Jersey, but we love it.

JANETTE:
I have a question. I know, totally lost in Jersey. I have a question about that. So when you first decided, how did you decide to move to New Jersey? Like what, what was the impetus?

RACHEL:
Long Island where I grew up or, you know, Westchester.

PHIL_MURPHY:
I tell you what the story was. We were working for Goldman Sachs. By the way, for a separate podcast, we got engaged 18 days after our first date, so we should talk about that.

RACHEL:
I don’t know if that’s separate, because it’s kind of amazing, and I don’t understand how that happened.

PHIL_MURPHY:
It’s true. Don’t try that at home, by the way.

RACHEL:
Do you tell your kids to do that, or no?

PHIL_MURPHY:
No, we tell them not to do what we did. Jesus, please don’t do that. But we’ve been married for 31 years this summer. It worked out. It worked out okay. Best thing that ever happened to me. Um, so we were working for Goldman overseas. We got married early in our time in Germany. We then moved to Asia, got pregnant in the process with our first child. And so one of the things we noticed is that most of the folks that Goldman had asked to go overseas did not end up spending the amount of time that they thought they were going to spend overseas. They either. The tour got cut early or it stayed late. So when we got pregnant with our oldest, we said, you know what? That could happen to us. The chances were overwhelmingly likely that if we were cut short, it would be to go back to headquarters in New York. We should really start looking at Metro New York and have a place, not just a home, but also pick out a school. So we looked all over. We looked in New York City. We looked in Westchester. We didn’t do a whole lot in Long Island. We looked in Jersey, but at first we didn’t look on the shore. And then a friend of ours who lived at the time in Colts Neck, which is not too far from where we live today, said, you got to check out the Two Rivers area. And we live in what is called the Two Rivers area in Monmouth County. And we, as they said, Jerry Maguire, they had us at hello.

JANETTE:
Yeah. You were like, this is it. This is it.

PHIL_MURPHY:
It was just a matter of them finding the house. So we ultimately got lucky and found our home.

JANETTE:
And you just moved in and decided to become the governor. You were like, you know what?

PHIL_MURPHY:
It was a little bit more complicated than that. What the heck?

JANETTE:
Okay. So here’s another question. Your go-to New Jersey sightseeing spot for somebody that is visiting you, where do you take them?

PHIL_MURPHY:
Island Beach State Park. In fact, we have a dear friend who is going to have dinner with us down there tonight and spend the night with us. One of the very few perks on the list of being governor is that there is a wonderful home on Island Beach State Park. This is the infamous photo of Chris Christie on the beach.

JANETTE:
Really? So you take him there? Is there like a little shrine for him there?

RACHEL:
Like a little post? Like a beach chair and a beer?

PHIL_MURPHY:
The beach chair is still there, but there’s no shrine. But the shore and Island Beach in particular is an incredible gem. It’s a 10-mile long barrier island, unspoiled. It was named, I think, two to three years ago as the number one state park in America. Clearly, if it’s January, I’m probably not going there.

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah.

PHIL_MURPHY:
But if it’s Memorial Day to Labor Day or even the shoulder months, that’s where I’m taking somebody.

RACHEL:
Awesome. And then what do you put on your pizza? What toppings?

PHIL_MURPHY:
I’m simple.

RACHEL:
Plain.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Plain. Tomato and cheese. All right. Yeah. Don’t eat it with a knife and fork in case you’re wondering.

JANETTE:
I wasn’t going to even ask that.

PHIL_MURPHY:
I eat it with my darn hands. Yeah.

JANETTE:
Good. Good. I can imagine that. We normally close out our interviews with the question of what do you love about New Jersey?

PHIL_MURPHY:
I think it’s our character, our grit, our attitude. We’re from Jersey, baby.

JANETTE:
That’s right. That’s what I love about New Jersey, too.

PHIL_MURPHY:
No other state in America could say that with the same amount of, you talking to me? You know, one of my great lines that Brendan Byrne, one of my predecessors had, which says all you need to say about Jersey, this is to Governor Byrne, how did you know that you were no longer governor? And his answer was, because everybody started waving at me with all five fingers. That’s Jersey. So it’s our attitude, character. There’s also a big amount of tolerance in there. We’re the most diverse state in America. We’re the most densely populated state in America. We live on top of each other. You can’t help but walk in the other guy’s shoes. I just think we’re, we are a very special, very unique state. I’ve been chair of the National Governors Association. I was twice chair of the Democratic Governors Association. I say that seven and a half years in. I know enough to be dangerous. There’s no other state like us.

RACHEL:
That’s the best. Thank you so much, Governor Murphy. This was a blast.

PHIL_MURPHY:
Great to be with you.

RACHEL:
Loved it.

PHIL_MURPHY:
So nice to meet you. Look forward to giving you each a high five in person. I hope sooner than later. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on.

RACHEL:
This podcast was produced by Rachel Martens and Janette Afsharian. You can find us on Spotify, iTunes, and Buzzsprout. Thanks for listening. See you next week.