Is abortion really a sleeper issue in the NJ Senate primary? Murphy, Kim spar | Stile

First lady Tammy Murphy, the self-dubbed “Jersey girl with grit," argues that the state's voters would be better served by having a female U.S. senator to crusade for a federal law ensuring abortion rights.

“I don't think a man is going to put a priority on abortion and getting it codified at the federal level," she asserted at a candidates' forum at Monmouth University on Feb 3. “That's going to take a female who was worried about the next shoe dropping. And that’s me.”

It was an eyebrow-raising attempt by Murphy to contrast herself with her chief rival, Rep. Andy Kim, D-Burlington, who is also pro-choice and has twice voted for a national law enshrining abortion rights since he arrived in Congress in 2019.

And, in the context of the short, yet fierce Democratic primary to succeed Sen. Bob Menendez, the remark is steeped in irony. At a Morris County event last month, Murphy asserted that she was a victim of sexism.

Accusations of nepotism that have dogged Murphy since she jumped into the race in November probably might not have been leveled at her, she said, “if my name had been Tommy.”

'A really strong criticism'

Kim fired back, accusing his rival of deploying a reverse sexism that discredits the allyship of pro-Democratic male leaders including her husband, Gov. Phil Murphy, who signed the law codifying abortion rights in New Jersey and has been a reliable advocate of reproductive rights in his entire six years in Trenton.

“I thought that was a really strong criticism of President Biden, who has been standing up very strong right now to be able to protect women's reproductive rights," Kim said in an interview. “I think that's a very strong criticism of [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer, someone that the next senator from New Jersey is going to need to work with. I think it was a very strong criticism of [House Democratic leader] Hakeem Jeffries.”

A Murphy spokeswoman, Alexandra Altman, dismissed Kim’s “mansplain of abortion rights to Tammy" and doubled down on her gender-as-advantage argument.

“Tammy will be a champion for women and girls every single day in the Senate and will not stop fighting until her rights and her daughter's rights are restored and abortion rights are codified into law," Altman said.

More Charlie Stile: Is the NJ Democratic nomination for Senate really 'in play'? Can Kim win?

Abortion remains central to Democratic strategy

The spat — which teeters on absurdity at times as both candidates seek to claim the higher ground on the issue — underscores the power of abortion rights as a political issue heading into the 2024 campaign. Democrats continue to capitalize on the anger of women voters in the wake of the 2022 Supreme Court decision that scrapped the constitutional right to an abortion.

Though the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision was cheered by anti-abortion forces as the culmination of a five-decade crusade, the backlash has proved to be political gold for Democrats, who since have blocked moves to roll back abortion protections in the red states of Kansas and Ohio and thwarted a GOP takeover of the Virginia Legislature.

This year, President Joe Biden has made a pledge to protect abortion rights the centerpiece of his reelection campaign as he faces a likely rematch against former President Donald Trump, who stocked the Supreme Court with a conservative supermajority that produced the Dobbs decision.

Murphy and Kim, locked in a battle to be bracketed on the ballot in each county along with Biden, have both been forced to stake the claim as the more trusted defender of reproductive rights. Both campaigns have touted support from prominent abortion advocates, with Kim getting the endorsement of the National Organization for Women of New Jersey PAC, which noted that its decision departed from its preference of supporting women candidates.

The PAC leaders said Kim “demonstrated his commitment to the core issues espoused by NOW” and noted that his election would elevate the first Korean American to the U.S. Senate. But on Thursday, Murphy nabbed the endorsement of EMILY's List, another prominent pro-choice group, citing her long commitment to women’s health care and climate change.

“We know that if extremist Republicans get their way, they’ll ban abortion across the country, not just for New Jerseyans but for all Americans," the group said.

But the fight to seize the mantle as the true abortion champion has become a stand-in for a wider question that has shaped the race: Who has the DNA of a true Democrat?

More Charlie Stile: 'Kim-mentum?' A tide of unease about Tammy Murphy washes across NJ Democratic grassroots

Kim, for example, has challenged Murphy’s appeal by questioning her earlier life as a Republican donor in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Murphy gave $1,000 to then-presidential candidate George W. Bush, who would go on appoint Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Alito, in turn, authored the Dobbs decision in 2022 that shredded abortion rights. Murphy also remained a registered Republican until 2014, a year after her husband finished his term as U.S. ambassador to Germany in the administration of President Barack Obama.

“She has to explain why she continued to be voting in Republican primaries through 2014 [and] through a big chunk of the Obama administration,” when Republicans “pressed to take away reproductive rights for women," Kim said.

It should be noted that Murphy also gave to Democratic candidates in that time frame, including a $1,000 gift to former Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee who lost to Bush in 2000. She also made contributions to former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley's campaign for president in 2000 and Hillary Clinton's campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1999.

Altman, the Murphy campaign spokeswoman, said Kim’s pokes at Murphy's Republican pedigree were “rich” given his work as an intern and later as a low-level staffer for the U.S. Agency for International Development for five months in 2005 during the Bush administration.

Kim, a Rhodes scholar, left the post to attend Oxford University. He would go on to serve as a counterterrorism expert and a director for Iraq issues on the National Security Council for the Obama administration. In 2018, Kim used cited his stint during the Bush years to give a gloss of bipartisanship in his bid to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur in the highly competitive 3rd Congressional District.

In one campaign ad, Kim boasted that he was a “national security officer for both Republican and Democratic presidents," a claim that the Washington Post fact checker at the time called a “classic case of resume puffery.”

In an interview last Saturday, hours before he won the Monmouth County Democratic Organization convention, Kim pushed back on the notion that his months working in Bush administration discredited his Democratic bona fides. He said the Murphy campaign is conflating public service with partisan patronage.

“There's a difference between donating money to George W. Bush and then, you know, being an entry-level intern, just trying to get experience in public service. And if they're trying to equate that, I find that ridiculous," he said. “I can be a Democrat that works well with Republicans that are willing to seriously engage on issues. But that doesn't make me a Republican.”

Kim tries to raise concerns about Murphy's filibuster position

Kim also says Murphy’s evolving replies to questions about abolishing the Senate filibuster rule — a priority policy goal of Democrats in recent years — should also raise further doubts about her dedication to the Democratic Party's priorities.

Under Senate filibuster rules, 60 votes are now needed to win passage of legislation. Republicans, who are in the Senate minority, have thwarted many Democratic Party priorities in recent years, including reforms on voting rights, gun control and abortion protections. Many Democrats — including Obama, who called the filibuster a “relic of Jim Crow" — have called for the practice to be reformed or abolished.

When asked if she would abolish the filibuster in a New York magazine profile published Jan. 30, Murphy replied, “I don’t know. ... I haven’t given it a lot of thought other than I hate it when I watch it.”

Soon after, Murphy’s spokeswoman declared a pronounced opposition to the filibuster in the publication Business Insider. Yet, in an interview with New Jersey Monitor last week, Murphy continued to defend the process — which allows senators to stall or defeat legislation with unlimited debate.

“I think that the United States Senate is the most deliberative body in our country, and I believe that when a senator is speaking, if that senator is speaking and advancing the education of other senators, they should be allowed to do that, if it’s on topic,” she said. “If it’s not on topic, having Ted Cruz get up there and read ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ is an embarrassment.”

Kim said her “bizarre” and “weak” comments on the filibuster prompted him to question whether Murphy has thought through what it will take to pass a law codifying abortion through a Senate with a thin Democratic majority and with Republicans able to block passage.

In reply, Altman offered the same statement given to Business Insider: "Tammy is in favor of removing the filibuster and believes that reforms are necessary in order to make meaningful progress on crucial legislation.”

Charlie Stile is a veteran New Jersey political columnist. For unlimited access to his unique insights into New Jersey’s political power structure and his powerful watchdog work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: stile@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ abortion rights: Murphy, Kim spar in Democratic primary battle