New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy, who has taken an active role in helping govern the state, is running in the 2024 Democratic U.S. Senate primary to replace the indicted U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez.

The 58-year-old former Republican is the second major Democratic figure to declare her candidacy, following Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.). But she instantly becomes the frontrunner thanks not just to her husband’s position as governor but her long list of contacts with party leaders, for whom she’s spent the last six years as a prolific fundraiser.

Murphy did not name Menendez specifically, but she included his image in part of her video launch decrying Capitol politics.

“Right now Washington is filled with too many people more interested in getting rich or getting on camera than getting things done for you,” she said.

Menendez, who’s facing extensive federal charges of bribery and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the Egyptian government, has not said whether he plans to seek reelection but hinted at it Friday, saying in a statement that he is “used to tough fights and next year won’t be any different.” Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, also took a vague swipe at Tammy Murphy last month, saying that if she runs “she’ll have to deal with a lot of baggage.”

But while Menendez won reelection by 10 points in 2018 a year after beating previous corruption charges with a hung jury, his popularity has cratered in New Jersey, with an October poll showing his favorability at just 8 percent.

Tammy Murphy, who grew up in Virginia, has said she was a Republican until the mid-2000s, when she began considering herself a Democrat due to her views on abortion, guns and the environment — issues she highlighted in her campaign announcement. The New York Times reported earlier this month that she voted in a Republican primary as recently as 2014, which was after her husband’s time as Democratic National Committee finance chair and U.S. ambassador to Germany in the Obama administration.

Signs appeared that Tammy Murphy would be more involved in her husband’s administration than most of her predecessors shortly after Phil Murphy was sworn into office in 2018, when the administration transformed a conference room down the hall from the governor’s office into a private office for her.

Tammy Murphy, who has four grown children, made maternal mortality her chief cause, highlighting New Jersey’s relatively high maternal death rate and how Black women were nearly seven times as likely as white women to die from childbirth-related complications. Her campaign noted that New Jersey has moved its national ranking for maternal deaths from 47th to 27th during her “Nurture NJ” initiative.

Murphy focused on that in her campaign video, acknowledging that she didn’t have to worry about surviving childbirth or the level of care for her newborns because of built-in advantages she had.

“The money in our family’s bank account, and frankly, the color of my skin meant I could get the best care available,” she said. “But that’s not the case for a lot of women.”

Murphy also highlighted her work on the environment, specifically making New Jersey the first in the nation to incorporate climate change into school curriculum.

Politically, Tammy Murphy has been one of the New Jersey Democratic Party’s top fundraisers, helping her develop relationships with party bosses who hold sway over county party endorsements. Those endorsements could award Murphy “the line” in most counties — a unique feature of ballot design in New Jersey that allows county party-endorsed candidates to run in primaries in the same column or row as every other country-endorsed candidate, from town council to president.

Murphy’s entry into the race wasn’t greeted with enthusiasm by some progressives, who saw it as nepotism and somewhat ironic, considering that Menendez had paved the way for his own son to be elected to the House of Representatives more than a year before his indictment.

Tammy Murphy has also faced controversy over her role in leading a political nonprofit called Stronger Fairer Forward that promotes her husband’s policies and has refused press requests to publicly release its donors. She and her husband also faced criticism early in the governor’s first term for poor living and playing conditions for the women’s soccer team they co-own, then called Sky Blue. Tammy Murphy pledged to improve conditions for the team, which changed its name to Gotham FC and last week won its league championship.

Kim has already won support from some of the groups on the party’s left flank. But Murphy’s campaign is expected to take advantage of the party infrastructure as well as her policy achievements that appeal to Black voters, who make up a big portion of the Democratic Party’s base.

In addition to Kim, left-wing activist Lawrence Hamm, who unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) in 2020, is also seeking the Democratic nomination. Kyle Jasey, a real estate lender from Jersey City and son of Assemblymember Mila Jasey (D-Essex), had filed to run for Senate but on Monday night announced he would drop out of the race to instead challenge Menendez’s son, U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez (D-N.J.).

On Saturday evening, the White House trashed a proposed House Republican government funding bill as “unserious” and a “recipe” for “chaos and more shutdowns.”

Within 72 hours, Biden officials quietly informed Democratic allies on the Hill that the president would support the measure and it sailed through the House.

The administration’s dramatic about face all but assured that the plan — which funds the government in two tranches into January and February — would make it into law. And, sure enough, on Tuesday night, the bill passed the House with the support of 209 Democrats. The Senate is expected to take up the measure this week and clear it comfortably before Saturday’s shutdown deadline.

“If it passes the Senate, the president will sign this continuing resolution that maintains current funding levels and has no harmful policy riders,” a White House official said shortly after the bill passed the House, 336-95.

The change of tune was driven by an acknowledgement that the House plan was likely to provide the closest thing to a victory for Democrats: averting not only a government shutdown but also steep cuts in funding.

Having entered into their first high-stakes negotiations with a new and untested House speaker, Democrats quietly feared that Republicans would demand a dramatic standoff. Instead, the process seemed likely to end in a relative whimper — and the lights would stay on.

“The initial reaction was: It keeps chaos going. Which it does,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), the No. 3 Democratic leader. “Then we started thinking about it. And what would happen if this didn’t pass.”

That doesn’t mean there weren’t hard compromises for Biden and allied Democrats to swallow. The deal again leaves out the White House’s chief legislative priority: a nearly $106 billion defense supplemental that would fund aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific.

The White House’s chief concern — matching that of congressional Democrats — was a potentially complex system of multiple funding deadlines, which Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) last week called “the craziest, stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

But Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposal, once the text came out Saturday, only had two deadlines. While White House officials and Democrats grumbled that the “goofy” two-tiered system increased the chance of shutdowns in the future because it kicks the can again — with two deadlines, to boot. Yet it wasn’t enough of a reason to oppose the bill now. Stabenow speculated the two deadlines were included “so the speaker could tell his most extreme members that they would have other opportunities to cause problems.”

Biden administration officials acknowledged the bill is not what they would have proposed, but it keeps the government open and averts spending cuts, according to an administration official granted anonymity to discuss strategy. Yet, the White House was also not eager to come out strongly for a bill that didn’t contain its defense supplemental priorities, the official added, saying that a strong show of support from Biden also could have risked passage in the House by galvanizing Republicans against it.

In the end, only two House Democrats opposed the bill, a point of unity that pleased the White House, particularly as the vote sharply divided House Republicans. While 127 Republicans supported, 93 opposed.

After issuing the statement of opposition to the House bill on Saturday evening, the most substantive public comment the White House would make afterward was that it was staying in touch with counterparts on the Hill and eager to avoid a shutdown. The White House did not even issue a Statement of Administration Policy on the bill declaring what action the president would be advised to take on the measure — an unusual move for major legislation.

“To the White House’s credit, they took a look at it, thought about it, and said ‘Okay, yeah, this is what we want to support,’” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Once it became clear that the defense supplemental would not be included on the funding bill, “it was very smart of the White House to recognize the futility of that approach and to pivot to something that is at least possible,” Smith said.

Privately, administration officials, including OMB Director Shalanda Young and those from the Office of Legislative Affairs, were in touch with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer through the weekend.

The first inkling of the White House’s about face came Tuesday morning, when Schumer indicated he’d spoken to top White House officials about their concerns. Schumer said he and the White House agreed “that if this can avoid a shutdown, it’ll be a good thing.”

The fast-moving legislation and lack of clear direction from the White House led to some uncertainty about the bill’s fate.

“My guess is that the White House doesn’t like this. I don’t think that’s changed. But if it ends up getting a bunch of Democratic votes in the House and the Senate, I would imagine the White House is not going to veto it,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Tuesday morning.

Some Senate Democrats were still trying to figure out how they would vote on the measure. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said he was “inclined” to support the bill when it came to the Senate.

“Obviously I would be concerned given where it’s coming from [in the House]. But if it is a clean CR that allows us to get more time to address all these things and we’re not spending the week before Thanksgiving arguing?” Fetterman said. “We should never be in a place where we’re arguing that it’s on the table that you could shut things down.”

The question now facing Democrats and the White House is what they can do to move the president’s foreign aid request forward. The next time partial government funding will run out is on Jan. 19, and there are no legislative deadlines that could prompt action before then.

Republican Ukraine supporters expressed little concern about kicking the can. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate now has “January and into February to get the job done, and that’s what we hope to be able to accomplish.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) expressed even more optimism: “We hope to get it all done by the end of the year.”

A White House official said the administration and Democratic leaders made clear to Republicans how much they prioritize the defense supplemental.

Schumer, for his part, indicated the Senate would address the defense supplemental shortly after the chamber returns from Thanksgiving.

But the bill still faces the same tough politics. Conservative opposition to funding Ukraine has grown deeper and Republicans have inextricably linked border policy with Ukraine — a move that’s setting up tough negotiations.

On Tuesday, Democrats, however, said they felt they were playing the hand they were dealt as best as they could.

“We’re living in a world of crazy,” Murphy said. “At some point, you have to cut weird deals with arsonists. And that’s where we are.”

Speaker Mike Johnson is averting a government shutdown essentially the same way Kevin McCarthy did: by partnering with Democrats to pass a government funding bill with no spending cuts.

Unlike his predecessor, it won’t cost him the job.

Many House conservatives are fuming that Johnson — the most ideologically conservative speaker in decades — refused to take a hard line in his first attempt negotiating with Democrats and instead leaned on them for help. In the end, more Democrats voted for the measure than Republicans, in nearly identical numbers to the September stopgap measure that triggered McCarthy’s firing. Some tore into his strategy in a closed-door meeting Tuesday, arguing that his plan, which would allow funding levels set under Nancy Pelosi to persist for months, is tantamount to surrender.

They’re not looking to oust Johnson over it. But some conservatives are privately entertaining other ways to retaliate.

One tactic under discussion is the same one they used against McCarthy after he struck a debt deal they hated: holding the House floor hostage by tanking procedural votes.

“There is a sentiment that if we can’t fight anything, then let’s just hold up everything,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), one of several frustrated Freedom Caucus members who has huddled with the speaker multiple times this week.

There are a few reasons conservatives won’t push a mutiny 20 days into Johnson’s speakership, an effort Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) characterized as “untenable.” But mainly, Johnson doesn’t have the same stubborn trust issues that plagued his predecessor.

McCarthy and his allies argue he was ousted not for working with Democrats to pass a spending bill, but largely due to personal animus among the eight GOP members who voted against him, particularly the leader of the rebellion, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

The extent of that bad blood between McCarthy and his defectors was on full display Tuesday, when one of the eight, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) accused the former speaker of intentionally elbowing him in the Capitol basement. Burchett even suggested the two men could settle things in “the parking lot.” (McCarthy denied any kind of physical shove.)

Johnson, who the House GOP unanimously supported for speaker last month and has served in Congress less than seven years, doesn’t have the same personal beefs. But conservatives aren’t giving him a pass on this indefinitely, with some signaling Johnson will have a major problem down the line if he doesn’t prove he’ll govern differently than McCarthy.

“There’s always that tension, but I don’t see that happening anytime in the near future,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), a House Freedom Caucus member. “I think most people are willing to give him some time, but we need to see something different.”

There’s another hurdle: Johnson is confronting a GOP conference that’s now even more bitterly divided than when his predecessor was in charge. Besides frustrations from the right flank, the Louisianan is also facing restive groups of Biden-district Republicans and centrists, who have increasingly made clear they’ll push back if leadership tries to force tough votes. After its ugly 22-day speaker battle, the 221-member conference has seemingly lost its ability to maneuver as a team. Instead, it’s every man for himself.

“You’ve got everybody acting as an independent agent rather than acting in a uniform way,” said Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio). “And they’re not necessarily in one line or the other. I think because of the tactics that have been taken by certain folks, [it’s] encouraged other folks.”

If those divisions worsen — like if conservatives make good on their threat to start blocking bills from coming to the floor — some centrist Republicans pointed out that would just increase their incentive to join forces with Democrats. Republicans openly shifting to that strategy would amount to a historic shift in House power dynamics.

“It just forces us to work with Democrats — these guys play checkers, they don’t play chess,” said centrist Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.).

Johnson, meanwhile, is attempting to steady a seesaw of competing demands from the various corners of his conference, all while getting acquainted with a job that is six ladder rungs above where he previously served in GOP leadership. It’s a nearly impossible role, even in normal circumstances, as McCarthy, Paul Ryan and John Boehner all demonstrated before him. Johnson likened it to drinking from “Niagara Falls for the last three weeks.”

One sign of success: Johnson staved off disaster on the floor on Tuesday in real time, talking down a group of conservatives who wanted to block a massive health, labor and education spending bill. The speaker’s pitch, according to Norman: He had a plan to jam the Democratic Senate and cut spending in the full-year funding legislation Congress now has to pass in January and February.

But House Freedom Caucus members, in a meeting attended by Johnson and another ultraconservative ally, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), said that they had their own strategy to make the Senate swallow spending cuts now rather than later. Johnson, clearly, chose to go another route.

“We were going to fight. We had a well-laid-out plan yesterday, had a senator there, who had it worked out where as Bill Posey said, ‘the hot potato was with the Senate,’” Norman said about the meeting. “If you are scared of getting wet, you might not swim.”

The next morning, speaking to his full GOP conference, Johnson privately made the case that this was simply the card he was dealt. He presented the stopgap spending bill as his only real option, given the House’s slim margins as well as the amount of time they lost in the three-week long speaker’s race, according to a House Republican who attended the closed-door meeting.

Publicly, Johnson shared a similar message, pushing back on conservative assertions that he was surrendering: “I can’t turn an aircraft carrier overnight.”

And asked whether he fears the funding fight makes his speakership any less secure, Johnson brushed it off: “I’m not concerned about it at all.”

He argued that he’s in a “different situation” than his predecessor, largely thanks to his spending strategy — which includes two funding deadlines intended to force Congress to consider individual spending bills, rather than a mammoth spending package. Johnson said Democrats first feared the idea, but he insisted it will change the way they approach funding. (The Freedom Caucus, which initially supported the two-step approach, later formally opposed it because it contained “no spending reductions, no border security, and not a single meaningful win for the American People.”)

“Kevin should take no blame for that. Kevin was in a very difficult situation that happened,” Johnson added.

Still, the right flank remains mostly unconvinced by the Louisiana Republican’s pitch. Many worry that Johnson’s decisions on the stopgap bill are an early signal that he is less likely to fight for their priorities heading into January and February.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), who was in the Freedom Caucus meeting with Johnson, acknowledged that he’s in a “tough position” but warned that his honeymoon period is effectively over. And now, the speaker needs a strategy pivot, or he’ll fall into the same trap as previous GOP speakers who “flamed out one after another.”

“He’s got to find an opportunity to change the dynamics,” Bishop said. “If he can’t, he’s going to follow the same path of not just the immediately previous speaker but a series of them who have not really proved successful.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

McCarthy denies elbowing Burchett on purpose

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Several Senate Republicans have made a public show of grousing about Tommy Tuberville’s blanket holds on military nominations. They’re still not ready to sideline “Coach.”

On Tuesday, not a single Republican sided with Democrats as the Senate Rules Committee advanced a resolution that would allow mass confirmations of those nominees for the rest of the Congress, an effort that would effectively end Tuberville’s holds. Instead, Republicans sought more time to end the quarrel internally — after eight months of failing to do so.

The GOP reluctance Tuesday illustrates the tough spot the former college football coach put his party in: Republicans are loath to side with Democrats in a fight that’s wedged them between the military and anti-abortion activists. And despite the unenviable position he’s put GOP senators in, they are still hesitant to throw the Alabamian overboard due to his friendly, back-slapping persona.

Republicans had the opportunity to stick it to Tuberville in committee and didn’t — though they’re likely to soon have another chance on the floor, where it really counts.

The Senate GOP is really hoping it doesn’t come to that.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) added that “nobody wants to go down that path.” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said “everybody’s torn on the thing” and that she’d rather see the GOP “keep proceeding to try to find a solution.” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) echoed that he’d “like a better option” than to support the temporary rules change.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been among the most outspoken GOP opponents of Tuberville’s tactics. But he opposed the measure in committee “at this particular moment,” though he thanked those who worked on it and reiterated the other ways for Republicans to register their disapproval of Pentagon policy.

With hundreds of military officer nominations in the backlog, though, Republicans acknowledge a breaking point is coming. Even Tuberville has signaled he’s looking for an off-ramp, as it becomes clear that he’s testing the bounds of affability with his colleagues — and their patience.

That Tuberville’s roadblock lasted so long speaks to both the outsize power that individual senators wield and the clubby and deferential culture of the Senate. Tuberville has won over fellow Republicans with his down-home charm, and they’ve responded by giving him tremendous latitude.

“He’s very well-liked. If he was an asshole, no one would want to help him,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “Accommodating kind of a guy. And that’s why all of us are trying to find a way that’s good for him and us.”

“His own colleagues have given him a lot of leeway,” added Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who called Tuberville a friend. “But he knows it’s running thin.”

Tuberville has put a hold on every single military officer promotion until the Pentagon changes its policy of reimbursing travel costs for service members seeking an abortion. That would force Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to use copious floor time for what are normally routine nominations.

Those tactics surprised colleagues who wouldn’t expect a neophyte to grasp the Senate’s arcane rules in such a manner. But Tuberville says his playbook wasn’t some coincidence.

“I went to a lot of meetings at [the Conservative Partnership Institute] and took a lot of classes,” Tuberville said. “The thing about up here, you need to know the rules. Like playing a football game.”

Still, there is no evidence that Tuberville’s tactics are going to change the Biden administration policy. Schumer has repeatedly said he’s prepared to put the resolution to confirm nominees en masse on the floor, which would squeeze Republicans between military leaders and anti-abortion activists.

For his part, Tuberville rejects that his position puts his colleagues in a bind.

“Democrats would love to pit it against military and abortion. It’s really not,” Tuberville said. “It’s about the rule of law. And I don’t think military people are gonna look and say ‘Oh, well they voted for abortion over this.’ That’s so far from the truth.”

He hasn’t convinced all of his colleagues, some of whom tried to force confirmation of 61 individual nominees on the floor earlier this month, leading to a nasty confrontation as Tuberville blocked every single one. Then the party had an unusual closed-door conference meeting about how to get Tuberville to end his holds. Both were evident attempts from Republicans to find some way out that didn’t involve siding with Democrats.

“We’re on the same team,” Tuberville said. “They’re just mad at me. I’ve had fans mad at me all my life.”

As a first-term senator from an uncompetitive state, he’s not the sort of lawmaker that generally would ascend to political notoriety so fast. But he’s made a name for himself by wreaking havoc, grasping onto Senate rules as his cudgel in a manner more intense than even Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) or former Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who also weaponized the Senate holds to try and get policy changes.

All along, his aw-shucks Coach persona has insulated him — perhaps only moderately — from a full-on blitz from his colleagues.

“He’s got a winsome personality, and I think people think he’s approaching this out of a deep sense of deep conviction,” Thune said. “Which I think gives him more latitude.”

“He’s a really nice guy,” echoed Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who disagrees with Tuberville’s tactics. “I imagine he’s used to people yelling from the stands telling him they’re doing something wrong. I don’t think [coaches are] terribly influenced by what people might yell from the seats.”

Still, Tuberville may have overestimated how far his geniality could get him. Graham said “Coach was under the assumption that they’d be able to work it out.” Manchin, too, argued that “this thing got away and got ahead of him.”

“Tommy needs a way to get back off of this,” the West Virginia Democrat added.

Tuberville seems to be in agreement, repeatedly stressing that he wants to get this over with and that it’s been “frustrating” that this has gone on for so long. For months, he’s criticized the Pentagon for being unwilling to negotiate with him directly as GOP leadership left him to fend on his own.

However, he says his search for a resolution is starting to yield progress, just as Democrats get closer to forcing Republicans’ hand on the floor. But he wouldn’t give any specifics.

“I’ve got something that’s really working well,” Tuberville said. He declined to share any details, however: “Better not. I don’t want to jinx it.”