Phil Murphy pushes again for abortion access and New Jersey affordability in State of the State

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat entering the final legislative session of his career but whose wife is trying to bring the family name to the U.S. Senate, used his annual State of the State address Tuesday to push back against attacks on abortion rights, champion the economic potential of artificial intelligence and hammer away at the state’s most stubborn issue, affordability.

“We have seen a resurgent, radical, right-wing agenda that is hellbent on coming after our fundamental rights. Voting rights. LGBT rights. Reproductive rights, and explicitly, the right to an abortion,” Murphy said. “There is no sugarcoating it: Women’s health care in America is in a state of crisis.”

Murphy has long been rumored as having an eye on national office but for now, it’s another Murphy — his wife, Tammy — who is running for Senate, attempting to replace scandal-plagued Bob Menendez, another New Jersey Democrat.

In his speech, the governor bragged about his own coattails, which look longer now than in 2021, when he won a closer-than-expected reelection. Looking out across the Assembly chamber to a gathering of the state’s lawmakers and top officials, he flicked at a political truth: there were more Democrats there now than last year, even though many predicted a Republican wave in the legislative elections this fall with all 120 lawmakers on the ballot.

“Congratulations,” Murphy said. “Especially to those legislators who some predicted would not be sitting here today. I guess being in a picture with me wasn’t so bad after all.”

He’ll need them to shore up his own legacy.

First elected in 2017 as a progressive promising to wipe away the legacy of Gov. Chris Christie, Murphy is now entering the lame duck stretch of his time in Trenton. By this time next year, the race to replace him in New Jersey’s 2025 election will be fully joined, though two major Democratic candidates are already running.

Murphy didn’t announce many major new policy pushes, though he often saves those for a budget address that is also early in the year. But he teased some kind of criminal justice reform.

“In the next few months, I will be announcing a new clemency initiative that will ensure we live up to our promise as the state for second chances,” he said, without more details. Murphy has not taken clemency actions, such as issuing pardons or commuting a person’s sentence, since taking office in 2018.

There were also major issues facing the state the governor did not mention in his premiere speech to kick off the New Year. He didn’t talk about a looming budget deficit at the state’s transit agency. The governor did make a passing reference to immigrants — saying they “are the backbone of New Jersey” — although he did not specifically mention migrants coming to New Jersey en route to New York City to avoid restrictions there, an issue that has flared up in recent days.

He called 2022’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to get rid of constitutional abortion rights the “dreadful Dobbs decision” and renewed a push to eliminate out-of-pocket costs for abortions on state-regulated health plans — a policy goal he’s had since 2020.

Republicans have argued that abortion is thoroughly protected in New Jersey by state law and the constitution. State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth) said it was an “absolute garbage red herring issue” while Assembly Minority Leader John DiMaio said it was a “non-issue.”

“There is no problem with access to abortion in the state of New Jersey,” DiMaio, Republican of Warren County, said in the Republican response to Murphy’s speech. “That’s something they make up to scare their voters into coming out and voting. We are worried about the ability for families to put enough food on the table, afford a vehicle that they can get to work with, make a fair living [and] keep enough money to have a good lifestyle.”

Taking up a perennial issue for politicians here and across the country amid inflation, Murphy’s speech hammered on the state’s cost of living being too high.

While he threw out some ideas for reducing it, the speech also highlighted an issue that has been a stubborn fact of his whole administration.

Among other things, Murphy promised to signan affordable housing bill, backed by legislative leaders, that would streamline the process for municipalities to meet their affordable housing obligations after years of lawsuits due to a defunct Council on Affordable Housing.

The housing bill popped up late last year and thenstalled in the lame duck legislative session that ended on Monday night.

Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin said in a statement he was pleased by the governor’s shoutout for housing because, “it’s time to increase availability for more New Jersey families.”

The governor also introduced a new plan to help families struggling with medical bills and highlighteda related push from last year’s budget, which set aside $10 million for RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that forgives medical debt, though that project is not fully off the ground.

“Pulling people out from crushing medical debt is vital,” Murphy said. “But so is protecting them from falling down that hole in the first place.”

He proposed new legislation, named in honor of an aide who was working on it and died in a Jan. 1 car crash. The Louisa Carman Medical Debt Relief Act would “require every medical bill to be clear and transparent,” the governor said.

Despite some major setbacks last year — notably a Danish company’s decision to cancel two of the state’s three approved offshore wind projects amid turmoil in that industry — the governor said he is still committed to his clean energy goals. But he did not mention a bill to make his goal into law or promise to sign such a bill, though one is expected to come up early in this legislative session.

Murphy, like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul inher State of the State address Tuesday, also highlighted artificial intelligence. He was mostly optimistic, talking about it as a major economic development opportunity and talking up a “moonshot” push to grow the industry here, building on a previously announced partnership with Princeton University to create an AI innovation hub.

“With New Jersey’s AI Moonshot, our mission is for our state’s top minds to pioneer a series of AI-powered breakthroughs, over the next decade, that will change the lives of billions for the better,” he said.

He also noted fears about AI, fears that he didn’t detail but that include the technology replacing human labor and even human beings. Yet, he suggested proceeding with AI because if the state doesn’t, then others, including the nation’s competitors, like China, will.

“Think about it this way: if a governor, back in 1994, talked about the transformative potential for the internet, you might have yawned,” the governor said. “Looking back, we have long since stopped yawning.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated when offshore wind projects were canceled. It was last year.