Tammy Murphy, the first lady of New Jersey, said on Sunday that she is withdrawing from the race for Bob Menendez’s Senate seat.
A video of her announcement to suspend her Senate candidature was uploaded on X. “After many busy, invigorating, and yes, challenging months, I am suspending my campaign today,” she spoke. “I have always been forthright and honest, but I am not prepared to continue this race because doing so would require me to wage a highly contentious and negative campaign.”
“And with Donald Trump on the ballot and so much at stake for our nation, I will not in good conscience waste resources tearing down a fellow Democrat,” she continued.
This judgement by Murphy comes days before a judge was supposed to make a ruling on a case that sought to limit the influence of local powerful people in party primaries and the nomination process.
Democratic Senate candidate Andy Kim had previously requested a preliminary injunction barring the use of the so-called party line, a voting system that enables county officials to favour their own candidates in the primary election on June 4.
However, the defendants and the judge both felt that the deadline was too short to implement such a change. However, since that Murphy has dropped out, there is no longer any pressing need to fix the primary ballot design.
Even if Kim isn’t going to withdraw from the lawsuit—which also includes two other plaintiffs—it seems probable that the decision will be postponed, so the queue will remain in place until the next primary election.
Despite his decision to not seek reelection in the Democratic primary, Menendez once again left the door open to the prospect of running as an independent this summer. He is now facing charges of bribery and obstruction of justice. The senator has claimed he is the victim of prosecutor persecution and has vehemently refuted the accusations against him. He has promised to prove his innocence.
Murphy, who has served as the wife of two-term governor Phil Murphy, ran for office for the first time in November as a Democrat despite her ties to the Republican Party. On the other hand, she had early primary support that gave her a shot at a plum spot on the ballot, giving her a possible edge over Kim.
In the party line system, candidates who are endorsed by the party run for different posts in one conspicuous column, while those who are not are spread out over the ballot. The progressive grassroots action that followed Donald Trump’s 2016 election helped speed up the movement to overturn the party-line system, but it really took off when the Murphy-Kim race began to heat up.
