Friendly Fire: Will soccer abuse scandal stick to Murphy?

Can Americans still have a sensible and friendly political discussion across the partisan divide? The answer is yes, and we prove it every week. Julie Roginsky, a Democrat, and Mike DuHaime, a Republican, are consultants who have worked on opposite teams for their entire careers yet have remained friends throughout. Here, they discuss the week’s events with editorial page editor Tom Moran.

Q. A damning report from the U.S. Soccer Federation found that the women’s team owned by Gov. Phil Murphy, Sky Blue, fired its coach after he verbally abused players and had sexual relations with one. At the time, in 2018, the team called it a “mutually agreed” separation, allowing Christy Holly to take a job with another club, where the same pattern of abuse occurred. This sounds a little like the Catholic Church moving around predators with no consequence. Does this damage Murphy, who declined to answer questions about his own responsibility in this?

Mike: The real problem for the governor if he runs for higher office is this. Whenever allegations like this arise, whether in his campaign or his soccer team or his administration, he shows outrage, but it seems to stop there. He doesn’t accept responsibility as the head of the organization or hold others accountable. The governor showing outrage mollifies the press in New Jersey until we voters move on to another story. You can get away with that as governor, because people do appreciate the outrage, and New York and Philly TV news won’t latch on to this. But if he runs for higher office, this pattern will be examined and questioned by his own party, not the press. He is the boss of all these organizations, not a staffer or analyst. Bosses fire people who deserve it.

Julie: Nothing is certain in this world except death, taxes and Phil Murphy letting women down. The reality is that no man who works for the governor has ever been held to account for maligning women. Manage a gubernatorial campaign where multiple women accuse you of creating a hostile work environment? You get to keep working for Phil Murphy, while Murphy fires the woman for reporting your toxic behavior. Violently throw a chair with full force in a blind rage to intimidate a woman half your size? You get promoted to deputy chief of staff, while the woman gets pushed out. Ignore the pleas of a sexual assault survivor who begs you for help? Congratulations! Phil Murphy has just made you his attorney general, while the survivor is pushed out of her career in New Jersey government.

Julie: Live under the most unacceptable conditions as an elite female soccer player for Phil Murphy’s team? Go play in Europe if you don’t like it. Governor Murphy has never apologized – not once – to the women whose professional lives he damaged. He has never punished one man for engaging in misogynistic behavior. And he has never taken any personal responsibility for his own toxic behavior. Countless talented women in both politics and soccer have seen their careers ruined or stalled on his watch. He’ll limp out the rest of his term in New Jersey, but I cannot imagine Democratic primary voters in any other state suborning this record.

Q. Georgia Republicans are rallying around Herschel Walker, their pro-life candidate for U.S. Senate, despite credible reports that he financed an abortion for a woman he impregnated, and his son’s claim that Walker was a violent philanderer who scared the family. Walker is reportedly raising more money now as a result. So, I guess character is no longer a thing?

Mike: I highly doubt Walker is raising more money as the campaign claims. Campaigns in free fall rarely see an uptick at the donation box. Several pro-life leaders have openly said they care about his policy positions more than his personal life. They made the same bargain on Trump, and it worked out. However, I think most voters will see him as the worst kind of hypocrite. Importantly, Walker’s son came out this week to eviscerate his father as a human being. Voters respond to family. For all of Trump’s personal life issues, his children have always stood firmly by him. Voters responded in 2016. Hillary Clinton saved Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992 and ultimately his presidency in 1998 by publicly forgiving his personal failures. Voters responded. If your family forgives you, voters forgive you. In Herschel Walker’s case, his family is trying to crush his chances.

Julie: You really have to ask whether the party that almost uniformly supports Donald Trump still considers character “a thing?” If we were not living in Bizarro World, Walker would have long ago been left for dead. But we live in the Trump era, where the pursuit of power trumps any rhetoric we hear from Republicans about the sanctity of life, marriage, or personal ethics.

Mike: Maybe there’s still time to drop out? Can someone call Frank Lautenberg?

Julie: The Georgia GOP should call Angelo Genova. I bet he can persuade the courts down there to allow a Walker replacement in two minutes.

Q. The Supreme Court is starting a new term packed with explosively divisive cases on affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act, and the Clean Water Act. This comes as Gallup finds that only 25% of Americans trust the Court to do the right thing, a record low. Is that number about to drop even lower?

Mike: How much lower can we go? Confidence has eroded in all our institutions over the last six years. Why should the Supreme Court be any different when by its very role, it is thrust into controversial divisive issues.

Julie: The Supreme Court is overwhelmingly controlled by Republican appointees. A Republican has won the popular vote only once since 1988. In fact, the only justice appointed by a Republican who entered the White House with the support of the majority of American voters is Clarence Thomas. No wonder that the court is entirely out of step with where the nation is today. If its next term is anything like its last, there is no bottom.

Q. Climate protesters who demonstrated outside Rep. Josh Gottheimer’s house last year pleaded guilty to reduced charges and will pay a small fine. Put aside how obnoxious it is to harass politicians at their homes. Why pick on Gottheimer, when he played a key role in brokering the compromise that led to America’s most ambitious effort on climate? Can’t a centrist get any love these days?

Mike: Because the far-left environmentalists are unforgiving ideologues. The only thing they hate more than corporate polluters are Democrats who are only with them 95% of the time. You must be with them 100% of the time or you are a traitor. No room for compromise. They turned on Gov. Corzine, and they often turn on Gov. Murphy, both of whom are objectively in their corner far often than not. But, if you have one ounce of pragmatism on energy, you are out of the movement! You can’t be in the green club if you admit that less than 10% of our electric generation in New Jersey comes from renewables. You must close your eyes and wish that windmills and solar panels will sprout up like dandelions around the state and we will magically reach our 2030 climate goals with hamsters running on treadmills if need be. No pragmatism allowed. Only ideologues need apply.

Julie: It is impossible to get any legislation to the president’s desk without massive compromise. You may not like having to give certain things up to get something passed but unless you are prepared to change the hearts and minds of ten Republicans in the senate, the bill will die on the vine. Rep. Gottheimer is pragmatic. That kind of pragmatism may not get you five million Twitter followers. It may not get you invited to the Met Gala. But it does move the needle towards where you want to go a lot more effectively than wanting the whole pie and settling for none.

Q. A Washington Post investigation found that a majority of GOP nominees on the ballot for House, Senate and key statewide offices have denied or questioned the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election, 299 of them in all. Most of them are likely to win, the Post said, since they are in safe GOP seats, including our own Rep. Jeff Van Drew. Is the 2024 election going to work, with so many deniers in power?

Mike: The sad part is most of them know the truth but don’t say it. They are worse than the believers who simply believe what they’re told. The election wasn’t stolen. Trump lost. Bigly. The Republicans telling the truth are losing primaries.

Julie: I do not for one moment believe that Jeff Van Drew really thinks the election was stolen. I do believe that he, and so many of his colleagues, will say it was to play to their increasingly unhinged base – our democracy be damned. If these people get control of the House of Representatives this year, we should all be very concerned about how or whether the 2024 presidential election will be certified in the event that a Democrat wins.

Q. Finally, a former Jersey journalist, Jim McQueeny, offered a jarring report of routine bribery in the newsroom when he was a cub reporter at the Hudson Dispatch in the 1970s. “The paper deliberately paid their reporters a pittance with their tacit understanding that they would take weekly cash envelopes from the ‘public relations’ agents for local pols,” he wrote. And when McQueeny refused, he said, he was “roughed up” by an agent of the mayor of West New York. Journalists taking bribes? Is it something in Hudson County’s water?

Mike: You’ve got to love Hudson County. Even the newspapers were in on it back in the day. Why buy ads when you can buy a reporter or two?

Julie: Listen, plenty of “journalists” in this state practice access journalism, where they get spoon-fed stories in exchange for favorable coverage. At least the guys in Hudson County were self-aware enough back in the day to cash in on it directly.

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A note to readers: Mike and Julie are both deeply engaged in politics and commercial advocacy in New Jersey, so both have connections to many players discussed in this column. DuHaime, the founder of MAD Global, was chief advisor to former Gov. Chris Christie, and has worked for Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and President George W. Bush. Roginsky, a principal of Comprehensive Communications Group, has served as senior advisor to campaigns of Cory Booker, Frank Lautenberg, and Phil Murphy, and has worked with Rep. Phil Norcross, the brother of George Norcross. We will disclose specific connections only when readers might otherwise be misled.

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