Murphy, Tammy (1965- )

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    Who Will Replace Bob Menendez in the Senate?

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    Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey announced that he would resign in August. Gov. Philip D. Murphy will choose someone to serve the remainder of his term.Democrats have spent months engrossed by the slow-motion downfall of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey. But no sooner had he announced his resignation on Tuesday than their focus jumped to another question: Who would serve out his Senate term?Party leaders had already been swapping names for weeks. Among them are a trio of prominent Black women; New Jersey’s first lady; and Representative Andy Kim, the Democratic nominee in November’s general election to replace Mr. Menendez on a more permanent basis.The decision will fall to Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat in his second term, and advisers said he was winnowing his own list.Here is what we know so far:Menendez will vacate his seat in AugustMr. Menendez, 70, has been under intense pressure to resign since a Manhattan jury convicted him last week on all counts in a sweeping bribery scheme involving Egyptian intelligence, bars of gold and a Qatari sheikh.On Tuesday, Mr. Menendez relented rather than face a possible vote to expel him from the Senate. He told Mr. Murphy in a letter that he would resign effective Aug. 20, giving the governor about a month to line up a replacement.Whoever Mr. Murphy selects will serve until Mr. Menendez’s current term, his third, expires on Jan. 3.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Andy Kim Wins New Jersey Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate

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      The victory makes Mr. Kim a favorite to replace Mr. Menendez’s father, Senator Robert Menendez, who is on trial, charged with corruption — a detail that became central to his son’s re-election race.Representative Andy Kim, a lawmaker who has turned New Jersey politics on its head since entering the race to unseat Senator Robert Menendez, won the Democratic nomination for Senate on Tuesday after a campaign marked by a watershed ballot-access ruling.The victory makes Mr. Kim, 41, a favorite to become New Jersey’s next senator. He would be the first Korean American to be elected to the U.S. Senate.“I’m humbled by the results,” Mr. Kim said at Terhune Orchards in Princeton, where his supporters had gathered to celebrate. “This has been a very challenging and difficult race, a very dramatic one at that, and one that frankly has changed New Jersey politics forever.”The results, announced by The Associated Press minutes after polls closed, capped a tumultuous campaign that began a day after Senator Menendez, a Democrat, was accused in September of being at the center of a sprawling international bribery scheme.The senator’s criminal case thrust his son, Representative Rob Menendez, 38, into a suddenly competitive race for re-election to a second term. But the younger Menendez managed to hold on, winning a Democratic primary over Ravi Bhalla, the mayor of Hoboken, N.J., by a decisive margin.“This is about showing that you’re resilient in the face of challenges,” an exuberant Mr. Menendez told supporters crowded into a beer hall in Jersey City, N.J.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Jersey Ballot Ruling Applies Only to Democratic Race, Judge Says

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      A federal judge who tossed out the state’s unique ballot design said his ruling would affect only the Democratic primary.New Jersey moved a step closer last week toward overhauling its unique-in-the-nation election ballots, in a decision that could reshape party politics in the state for years to come.But not — at least not immediately — for both major parties.On Saturday, the federal judge who ordered the redesign, in response to a lawsuit filed in February by three Democratic candidates, said in a statement that only the Democratic primary, which includes the race to replace Senator Robert Menendez, would have to use the new ballot. The Republican ballot, he wrote, can stay the same, though he said his order did not prohibit Republican leaders from choosing to alter their party’s ballot.The clarification is the latest twist in a long legal battle in New Jersey to shift the balance of electoral power away from party-backed candidates and open the door for newcomers in both parties. But if the decision stands, Republicans, too, may soon be forced to change their ballot, though perhaps not in time for the June 4 primary, said Julia Sass Rubin, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University who was an expert witness in the lawsuit.“It’s just a hiccup,” Dr. Rubin said. “If this decision holds, it will completely upend New Jersey politics.”On Friday, the federal judge, Zahid N. Quraishi of U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, ruled in favor of changing the format of primary election ballots used in 19 of 21 counties in New Jersey, which have historically favored candidates put forward by party bosses.The so-called county-line ballot, in which local political leaders’ preferred candidates are grouped together in a prominent position, is an anomaly in the United States, with only New Jersey using the system, said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a professor at Harvard Law School.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tammy Murphy Drops Out of Race for Menendez’s Senate Seat

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      Ms. Murphy, the first lady of New Jersey, had racked up early endorsements from Democratic Party leaders in the state, but she struggled to gain support among rank-and-file voters.Tammy Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady, has ended her run for a U.S. Senate seat now held by the state’s embattled senior senator, Robert Menendez, she announced on Sunday in a video posted to social media.Ms. Murphy said that she had concluded that continuing to compete in the Democratic primary against Representative Andy Kim, a third-term congressman from South Jersey, would mean waging a “very divisive and negative campaign.”She was unwilling to do that, she said, and instead decided to suspend her campaign and to “focus entirely on re-electing President Biden” and other Democrats.“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 said.An aide said that Ms. Murphy, the wife of Gov. Philip D. Murphy, held a meeting with county Democratic Party leaders at 2 p.m. on Sunday before making a final decision and notifying her campaign staff members.Candidates who plan to run in June’s primary are required to file petitions with at least 1,000 signatures by the end of the day on Monday. Ms. Murphy’s decision on the eve of that deadline means that her name will not appear on the primary ballot.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tammy Murphy Wins Crucial Support in Her Bid for U.S. Senate

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      The first lady of New Jersey won the endorsement of Democrats in Bergen County on Monday night, beating her closest primary rival, Representative Andy Kim.Tammy Murphy, the first lady of New Jersey, gained crucial support in her bid for the U.S. Senate on Monday night, winning the Democratic convention vote in Bergen County by a decisive margin.It was Ms. Murphy’s first victory at a convention decided by delegates using secret ballots, and it was considered a must-win matchup in her primary battle against Representative Andy Kim, a third-term South Jersey Democrat.The vote was 738 for Ms. Murphy, 419 for Mr. Kim.Over the past month, Mr. Kim, 41, won the first five county conventions in New Jersey that permitted delegates to select a nominee, including in Monmouth County, where Ms. Murphy and her husband, Gov. Philip D. Murphy, have lived for 25 years.With the support of Mr. Murphy, who has nearly two years left in his term, Ms. Murphy, 58, racked up early endorsements from a raft of influential Democratic officials even before hitting the campaign trail.But she has been battered by claims of nepotism and has struggled to gain support among rank-and-file Democrats as she makes her case that she should be their nominee to run for a coveted seat now held by Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat who has been charged with taking bribes. Mr. Menendez has not ruled out running for re-election, but he has been abandoned by most Democratic leaders and has almost no path to victory.Bergen County, in northern New Jersey, is the state’s most populous region. It has more Democrats than any county other than Essex, which includes Newark, the state’s largest city.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      John Fetterman Endorses Andy Kim in High-Stakes New Jersey Senate Primary

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      The Pennsylvania senator, the first among his colleagues to weigh in on the primary battle to oust the indicted Senator Robert Menendez, said he had concerns about Tammy Murphy’s G.O.P. history.Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is endorsing Representative Andy Kim of New Jersey in the primary to unseat Senator Bob Menendez, the embattled veteran Democrat who is under indictment in a federal corruption case, taking the rare step of wading into a high-stakes intraparty fight to oust a colleague.Mr. Fetterman, the harshest Democratic critic of Mr. Menendez in Congress, who has repeatedly called on him to resign, is the first sitting senator to endorse any candidate in the race. In an interview, he explained his decision to intervene in a primary to take out a fellow sitting senator, stating bluntly that “anything would be an upgrade over Menendez.”Mr. Kim, a three-term congressman representing a southern New Jersey district that former President Donald J. Trump won twice, is running for the seat against Tammy Murphy, the first lady of New Jersey and a first-time candidate who is a former registered Republican. Ms. Murphy has locked up much of the institutional support in a state where county leaders hold enormous power in primary campaigns, but has struggled to gain grass-roots traction.Mr. Kim is leading by double digits in some recent polls.In an interview, Mr. Fetterman said that he was “enthusiastic” about Mr. Kim and that Ms. Murphy’s political background — she changed her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat only in 2014 — gave him pause.“One of the most important things is that we have a reliable Democratic vote,” Mr. Fetterman said. “We have to run this table in ’24 in order to maintain the majority. But we need to count on every Democratic vote. Andy Kim is the kind of guy we can count on.”Mr. Fetterman said Ms. Murphy was likely “a lovely woman, but the last time I had to deal with a Republican from New Jersey, that was my own race.” Mr. Fetterman in 2022 defeated Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate whom he trolled relentlessly as a celebrity carpetbagger from the Garden State.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘Would a Call From Tammy Help?’ Pressure Grows in Race to Oust Menendez

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      In a series of calls, a person in contact with the Senate campaign of Gov. Philip Murphy’s wife pressured a student Democratic group not to endorse her chief rival in the New Jersey race.The College Democrats of New Jersey were preparing to make an endorsement in one of the country’s most closely watched U.S. Senate primaries when calls began to come in from someone in touch with the campaign of Tammy Murphy, the presumptive front-runner and the wife of the state’s governor.The caller, a female college student who works as a youth coordinator for the Democratic State Committee, wanted to know what Ms. Murphy’s campaign could do to block the group from endorsing Ms. Murphy’s main rival, Representative Andy Kim.“Would a call from Tammy help?” the woman said she asked, while indicating she was relaying a message from the Murphy campaign.Then, in a series of calls over the next two hours, the pressure from the caller, Keely Magee, escalated to warnings — about funding and future job prospects for leaders of the College Democrats, according to several people involved in the discussions and a recording of one call.In an interview, Ms. Magee said the Murphy campaign had not asked her to pressure the group on its behalf. But she acknowledged being aware that members of Ms. Murphy’s campaign staff “wanted to do something to prevent the endorsement,” and said she was receiving text messages from a Murphy campaign consultant, Dave Parano.On the recorded call, Ms. Magee described Mr. Parano as a co-worker who had “talked directly” to the campaign manager and was “very, very close with the Murphys.” Mr. Parano did not respond to messages seeking comment.The effort to stop the endorsement failed. On Wednesday, both the College Democrats of America and the New Jersey chapter issued full-throated endorsements of Mr. Kim, a South Jersey Democrat running against Ms. Murphy for the chance to oust Senator Bob Menendez.The episode offered a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the high-stakes political battle playing out as New Jersey’s first lady, a first-time candidate, struggles to gain grass-roots traction in her bid to unseat Mr. Menendez, who faces federal bribery charges.With support from her husband, Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a second-term Democrat, Ms. Murphy has been endorsed by many of the state’s most powerful Democrats and has raised a record amount of contributions in her campaign’s first six weeks. Yet several polls suggest that she continues to trail Mr. Kim by a wide margin.Ms. Murphy and Representative Andy Kim are the front-runners in the race to unseat Senator Robert Menendez, who is facing criminal charges.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAlex Altman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Murphy’s campaign, said Ms. Magee’s comments were “totally and completely inappropriate, and they in no way represent this campaign or what we stand for.”“They were made by a young person with no connection to our campaign, one who seemed eager to help, albeit in a misguided manner,” Ms. Altman added.Ms. Magee, a 21-year-old Rutgers University junior, has worked part time as a paid youth coordinator for the Democratic State Committee for several years.Ms. Magee said her main objective had been to persuade members of the College Democrats’ executive board to halt an online endorsement vote that was underway and remain neutral instead. She said she believed that statewide Democratic organizations should not pick sides before a primary and was worried that a group she was responsible for guiding might face repercussions for doing so.“It wasn’t coming from a place of threatening at all,” she said.But students on the other end of the calls said they had felt threatened, so much so that they recorded the final call to have proof of the exchange if they were penalized later. The students then gave Mr. Kim’s campaign access to the recording, which was also shared with The New York Times.“I felt a mix of shock and fear,” said Nate Howard, 20, a Princeton University junior who is vice president of the New Jersey chapter of the College Democrats and participated in the call with Ms. Magee that was recorded. “Shock because: Why are these people threatening us? Are we really that important?”According to the recording, Ms. Magee warned the students that an early endorsement of Mr. Kim could harm their future job prospects, deprive their organization of as much as $2,000 in funding and hurt their odds of being selected as delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.“If Tammy Murphy does somehow win being senator, I’d be careful about ever getting a job in that office or anything like that,” Ms. Magee said. “At least for the first few years of her term until her staff turns over.”Mr. Kim won the endorsement of the College Democrats.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMr. Howard said Ms. Murphy called him on Friday to apologize. Ms. Magee said Mr. Parano, a political field consultant who also does work for the state committee, had also apologized to her for involving her in the process in the first place.Ms. Murphy’s campaign said that all of the students involved in this “unfortunate situation” should be afforded the “grace, allowance and forgiveness that we all deserve at that age.”In the 2020 election, 67 percent of New Jersey voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast ballots, the highest rate in the country.A spokeswoman for the Kim campaign said it was excited to receive the college groups’ endorsements, but had no comment about the recording.Mr. Howard said the experience had underscored what he believes is wrong with politics.“For things to get better,” Mr. Howard said, “I believe that it will require courageous people to tell the truth about the inappropriate and frankly gross behaviors of the status quo.” More

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      Tammy Murphy Is Running for NJ Senate, in Hopes of Replacing Menendez

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      Ms. Murphy is likely to face at least three Democratic primary challengers — and possibly Senator Bob Menendez, who is accused of accepting bribes.Tammy Murphy, the wife of Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, announced on Wednesday that she was running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate seat now held by the state’s embattled senior senator, Robert Menendez, who has been charged with accepting bribes.Ms. Murphy, 58, is a first-time candidate for public office who describes herself on tax forms as a homemaker. During her husband’s six years as governor, she has been an active first lady who has worked to improve the state’s high rates of maternal and infant mortality and to expand instruction about climate change in public schools.Before she and Mr. Murphy married, 30 years ago, Ms. Murphy worked as a financial analyst, and she has since volunteered on nonprofit and philanthropic boards.Ms. Murphy has been preparing for more than a month to run for the Senate, and she announced her candidacy on Wednesday with the release of a nearly four-minute video.“We owe it to our kids to do better,” she says, speaking directly to the camera and presenting herself primarily as a mother of four who, when given the chance, used her platform as first lady to advocate for improved pregnancy outcomes.“Right now, Washington is filled with too many people more interested in getting rich or getting on camera,” she says as a photo of Mr. Menendez flashes in the background, “than getting things done for you.”Ms. Murphy already has at least two Democratic primary opponents: Representative Andy Kim, who has represented South Jersey in Congress since 2019, and Larry Hamm, a political activist and second-time Senate candidate who leads the People’s Organization for Progress. Patricia Campos-Medina, a left-leaning labor leader who runs the Worker Institute at Cornell University, said on Tuesday that she was also preparing to enter the race.Mr. Menendez has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of bribery and plotting to be an agent of Egypt, and he has said that he will not resign from the Senate.He has not ruled out seeking re-election, but if he does compete for the Democratic nomination, he will face several practical challenges.A federal judge has scheduled his trial to start a month before the June primary, and he has been abandoned by nearly every leading Democrat in the state, including Mr. Murphy, leaving him an extremely difficult path to victory.Mr. Menendez said Ms. Murphy’s entry into the race proved that the governor, who was among the first officials to call for his resignation, had a “personal, vested interest” in doing so.“They believe they have to answer to nobody,” Mr. Menendez said about the Murphys in a written statement. “But I am confident that the people of New Jersey will push back against this blatant maneuver at disenfranchisement.”Ms. Murphy, in Wednesday’s video, called her role as New Jersey’s first lady the “honor of my life.” But she has also earned a reputation as an aggressive campaign fund-raiser and now has seven months to introduce herself to voters as a candidate in her own right.She is running as a Democrat for one of the most coveted political prizes in the country, yet she is a relative newcomer to the party. Voting records show she regularly voted in Republican primaries until 2014, three years before her husband was elected governor of a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly one million voters.Ms. Murphy continued to vote in Republican primaries even while Mr. Murphy served as finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee and as the ambassador to Germany, appointed by former President Barack Obama.She declined an interview request, and her aides have refused to discuss her reasons for changing parties as a 49-year-old.But Mr. Kim said Ms. Murphy’s voting history raised valid questions, particularly in a Democratic primary.“I think she needs to explain that,” Mr. Kim, 41, said Monday in an interview.Mr. Menendez also took a swipe at the first lady’s changed party affiliation.“While Tammy Murphy was a card-carrying Republican for years,” he said, “I was working to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.”Mr. Kim, a national security adviser during the Obama administration, entered the Senate race a day after Mr. Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for the senator’s efforts to steer aid and weapons to Egypt and help allies avoid criminal prosecution.Mr. Kim also released a campaign video this week, in which he is shown talking to a group of disenchanted voters.“I believe that the opposite of democracy is apathy,” Mr. Kim, the father of 6- and 8-year-old boys, said to explain his motivation for running.“I look at all the craziness in the world,” he said, adding, “I don’t want my kids to grow up in a broken America.”Mr. Kim, who gained national prominence after being photographed clearing debris from the floor of the Capitol after the Jan. 6 attack, raised nearly $1 million in a single week after announcing his candidacy, and he said he was continuing to raise money at a brisk clip.To win, he will most likely need to capture the imaginations of voters without significant help from New Jersey’s Democratic Party leaders, who hold sway over the so-called county line — ballot placement that is often considered tantamount to victory.New Jersey has a unique election system that enables Democratic and Republican county leaders to anoint favored candidates in each race on a primary ballot and bracket them together in a vertical or horizontal column.Studies have shown that being chosen increases a candidate’s likelihood of victory by as much as 38 percentage points.“It’s a rigged game,” said Julia Sass Rubin, an associate dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University who has researched the influence of the county line in federal and legislative races. New Jersey’s Working Families Alliance and several former candidates have filed a federal lawsuit that they hope will lead a court to overturn the practice. “The election is almost over before it starts,” Brett Pugach, a lawyer who brought the federal suit, said about the ballot system, which he believes is unconstitutional.But in the meantime, the governor and Ms. Murphy have been busily courting Democratic leaders in the state’s heavily populated counties nearest New York City and Philadelphia, according to three people familiar with the conversations who did not want to be identified saying anything that could be considered critical of the governor.Several of those chairmen work as lobbyists with significant business before the state or hold lucrative state jobs, limiting the likelihood that they might openly oppose a governor with two years left in his term — and control over the next two multibillion-dollar state budgets.Ms. Campos-Medina, who emigrated from El Salvador as a 14-year-old, said it was these “back-room deals among political elites” that had pushed her to run.“The line disenfranchises women and, in particular, women of color and doesn’t encourage voter participation,” Ms. Campos-Medina, 50, said.After Ms. Murphy’s announcement, a coalition of 26 left-leaning organizations in New Jersey signed a letter criticizing the first lady’s candidacy.“We are offended that the corruption from Senator Menendez, who is under indictment and who has still refused to resign, is going to be replaced with nepotism,” the coalition, Fair Vote Alliance, wrote.Whoever wins the Democratic primary will square off next November against a Republican hoping to break the Democrats’ four-decade Senate winning streak. There are at least two Republicans interested in vying for the nomination: Christine Serrano Glassner, the mayor of Mendham Borough, and Shirley Maia-Cusick, a member of the Federated Republican Women of Hunterdon County.If one of the women is successful, she would make history as the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from New Jersey.Ms. Murphy would also be the first spouse of a sitting governor to be elected to the Senate in the United States. And she would also be likely to become the fifth member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation with relatives who have held prominent political positions, joining Representatives Tom Kean Jr., Rob Menendez Jr., Donald Norcross and Donald M. Payne Jr., all of whom are Democrats.Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University professor who has studied Congress for 50 years, said New Jersey’s county-line system contributed to what he called “political dynasties.”“It’s fundamentally undemocratic,” Professor Baker said. “Politics shouldn’t be a family business.” More

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      N.J. Legislative Races on the Ballot

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      Despite being outnumbered by nearly a million voters, Republicans hope to cut into Democratic majorities in the state Legislature on Election Day.The news landed like a bombshell a week before New Jersey’s pivotal legislative races: Orsted, a Danish company that had been hired to build two wind farms off the South Jersey coast, was abruptly abandoning the project.Overnight, a linchpin of Gov. Philip D. Murphy’s clean energy plan vanished, unleashing finger-pointing among his fellow Democrats, who are fighting to retain control of the Legislature, and I-told-you-sos from Republicans, who had opposed the offshore-wind projects.Orsted cited broad economic forces, including higher building costs, as the reason for pulling out, but it retained the rights to the seabed lease, preventing New Jersey from immediately bringing in another company to develop the site. “The Republicans are going to do a victory lap,” said Jeff Tittel, a longtime New Jersey environmental advocate who supports the development of offshore wind farms, “while the Democrats have egg on their face.”In 2021, with Mr. Murphy at the top of the ticket, Republicans gained seven seats in the Legislature, which Democrats control, when voters, angry about the state’s Covid-19 mandates, turned out in droves. Stephen M. Sweeney, a Democrat who was State Senate president at the time, lost to Edward Durr Jr., a conservative, first-time candidate.Republicans hope to tally further gains when voters go to the polls on Tuesday, as Democrats try to recover lost ground. Some Republicans have speculated about the possibility of flipping either the Assembly or the Senate, something that has not occurred in two decades and that would require virtually every competitive race to cut their way.All 120 legislative seats are on the ballot. Democrats hold a 46-34 majority in the Assembly and a 25-15 advantage in the Senate.“We’re close enough to the target,” Alexandra Wilkes, a New Jersey Republican Party spokeswoman, said about winning a majority, “but we have to hit the darts right every time.”There are highly competitive races in South Jersey, in legislative Districts 3 and 4; along the Jersey Shore, in District 11; near Princeton, in District 16; and in Bergen County’s District 38.A lawsuit filed on Thursday, and the accusations that underpin it, illustrate how high each party considers the stakes.In the suit, filed in Atlantic County, Republicans asked a judge to take steps to blunt what they said was a dirty-tricks campaign by Democrats in the fourth legislative district. The complaint cited “phantom candidates,” whom the plaintiffs argued were on the ballot solely to siphon off Republican votes.On Friday, a judge blocked future spending by a group funding the Democratic candidates. Ms. Wilkes said Republicans were pleased the court had recognized the “egregious violation of the public trust.”Much of the campaign rhetoric has involved cultural wedge issues, including abortion rights and whether schools should be required to tell parents about how students express their gender. State policies meant to make residents less dependent on gas-powered stoves and vehicles have also been used by Republicans to energize their base. Orsted’s announcement added force to that rallying cry.Assembly Republicans produced a mocking video. Senator Michael Testa, a South Jersey Republican who represents shore communities where opposition to wind energy is strongest, called the Orsted deal a “boondoggle.”Voting by mail began over a month ago, and early machine voting has taken place over the past two weeks. With no statewide office on the ballot, though, Election Day turnout is expected to be low.LeRoy J. Jones Jr., the New Jersey Democratic State Committee chairman, said the party’s focus this cycle had been on expanding its base by adding “younger and less consistent voters.”“It’s all about get-out-the-vote now,” Mr. Jones said on Tuesday.During the legislative elections in 2021, Mr. Murphy, who governed as a steadfast liberal in his first term, became New Jersey’s first Democratic governor to win re-election in 44 years. But he won by just three percentage points. Since then, he has governed as more of a moderate, talking regularly about affordability. In June, he signed a bill geared toward cutting property taxes for most older homeowners by 50 percent beginning in 2026. Democrats have featured the tax cut prominently in their campaigns.A loss or significant erosion of the Democratic majority in either house could be politically damaging to Mr. Murphy in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly a million voters. It might also dim the political prospects of his wife, Tammy Murphy, who is expected to enter the race for Senator Robert Menendez’s seat as early as next week. Ms. Murphy, who has championed reproductive rights, joined her husband last week at an event where he promoted a new website where residents can get information about abortion services. Several Democratic lawmakers in tight races attended the event, a sign of how potent they believe reproductive rights may be as an issue this year. Senator Joseph Lagana, a Democrat, said voters appeared concerned that abortion rights could be curtailed in New Jersey, where the procedure remains legal, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.“It’s a very real issue,” Mr. Lagana said. “It’s a driving factor.” More