The AP calls the race for Murphy
OPINION | EDITORIAL | ELECTION 2021
Democratic incumbent Governor Phil Murphy was declared the winner of New Jersey’s gubernatorial race Wednesday by the Associated Press, becoming the first of his party to be reelected to the role since Brendan Byrne in 1977.
With rare exceptions — some conservative pundits — no one thought that the race would be competitive, let alone razor thin. All it took for Murphy to be declared winner was consistent pandemic goalpost shifting and a load of mail-in votes that put him half-a-percent ahead of his Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli for the AP to feel comfortable making the call.
Former President Donald Trump may have made questioning elections taboo, but the new tagline here should be: Questioning election legitimacy — it’s not just for Democrats anymore. If Democrats can still claim that Stacy Abrams is “the legitimate governor of Georgia,” as lame-duck Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe did just prior to Election Day, then it is entirely reasonable that New Jersey Republicans can do the same. Far from being just one instance, those old enough to the past four years may remember every cable news channel and Left-wing media company informing dutifully informing the public that Donald Trump’s presidency was the illegitimate product of Russian disinformation.
Imagine their thoughts if mail-in voting was as widespread years ago?
Nevertheless, for another kernel of Liberal hypocrisy in the here and now, we turn to New Jersey’s third state legislative district. Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) has been declared the loser of his race by the aforementioned Associated Press. Sweeney, like Ciattarelli, has not conceded his race either, stating, “the results from Tuesday’s election continue to come in, for instance, there were 12,000 ballots recently found in one county.”
Found ballots used to be a meme that corresponded to the Right’s criticism of haphazard mail-in voting systems. Now it is a Democratic leader’s defense. This should be more telling than it is when the race for the top seat in Trenton is so close.
If that isn’t enough, consider a report brought to us by Project Veritas, the investigatory group that also exposed Murphy’s plans for a post-election vaccine mandate, that showed election workers in Essex County illegally giving a ballot to an undercover reporter who stated that he was not a citizen. The Left’s defense of this is that the type ballot issued to the Project Veritas reporter is only a provisional one, so why should it matter? It matters because, in contrast to the 2020 presidential election, the state took far longer to count votes for the governor’s race. After about 80% of the vote came in and showed Ciattarelli in the lead, the count came to a crawl. It took almost two days to bring the number 95%.
The idea that it took more time to count fewer ballots should raise questions. It also means that this race was decided by that same type of provisional ballot given to the Project Veritas reporter. This all comes on top of reports of malfunctioning voting machines and server resets at polling places that are difficult to verify but nonetheless deserve to be investigated. The New Jersey GOP has dispatched 20 lawyers to the state as part of their “election integrity team.” We wish them luck.
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Irrespective of these issues, if things continue down the same path, the Garden State will have to face four more years of Progressive governance. The only people who will benefit from said leadership are the public workers like those who are members of the New Jersey Education Association. That group is responsible for New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation taxes, and they are marching hard to more critical race theory in your child’s classroom. With Murphy vowing to cut school choice, there will be no escape for parents; New Jersey will continue to have the highest emigrating population in the country. It will be hard to see where Murphy will drum up the money for all his new spending proposals when the tax base is fleeing.
It also means vaccine mandates are likely on their way. We wonder if Murphy will allow people to certify that they are vaccinated by mail?
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