Shockingly, Tammy Murphy Supporters' Sopranos-Style Persuasion Tactics Not Helping Her New Jersey Senate Campaign

College Democrats of New Jersey still endorsed Rep. Andy Kim.

Jan 23, 2024

Felony indictment collector Bob Menendez, who’s somehow still a sitting senator, is up for re-election this year, and polls show that his New Jersey constituents are sick of him. Meanwhile, the battle’s heating up between his two major competitors in the Democratic primary, Rep. Andy Kim and New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy.

Kim was set to land the endorsement of the College Democrats of New Jersey, but Murphy’s campaign moved behind the scenes to block it. According to Kim, the college students “were pressured and threatened to not endorse me. Good thing they recorded the call. Here’s what happened.”

The New York Times reported last week that a college student who works as a youth coordinator for the Democratic State Committee contacted the College Democrats and asked what it would take to keep the group from backing 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.

Keely Magee insists that the Murphy campaign had not directly asked her to lean on the College Democrats but she claims that members of the campaign staff clearly wished that someone would rid them of that meddlesome endorsement. She says she received text messages from Murphy campaign consultant, Dave Parano, whom she described as someone who “talked directly” to Murphy’s campaign manager and was “very, very close” with the candidate and her husband, Gov. Phil Murphy.

Magee’s strong-arming didn’t succeed. This past Wednesday, the College Democrats of America and its New Jersey chapter publicly endorsed Kim, praising his “proven track record of steadfastly fighting for New Jerseyans.” He was their “unequivocal choice,” suggesting that Magee’s less-subtle threats hadn’t moved them to reconsider.

Alex Altman, a spokesperson for Murphy’s campaign, denounced Magee’s tactics as “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,” she added.

Magee, a 21-year-old junior at Rutgers University, said she’d hoped to persuade the College Democrats to remain neutral and not endorse any primary candidate. (That wouldn’t give the group much influence, as obviously the College Democrats will inevitably back whoever’s the eventual nominee.) She claims she wasn’t threatening them but gently warning them about what might happen if they endorsed Kim.

However, the students Magee called felt threatened enough to record the conversation, during which Magee warned 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,” Magee was recorded telling the group. “At least for the first few years of her term until her staff turns over.”

Magee seems to think Tammy Murphy and her staff are vengeful assholes.

This obviously has become a variation of The Streisand Effect with a “Sopranos” twist. Kim has gotten even more press over the endorsement, and this failed effort to stop it has tainted Murphy’s campaign.

Since announcing her candidacy, Tammy Murphy has received endorsements from state Democrats far more influential than college students, and she’s raised a significant amount of money. However, several polls show her trailing Kim by double digits. This incident won’t help.

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