Here are five takeaways from Gov. Phil Murphy's State of the State address | Stile

Here are five takeaways from Gov. Phil Murphy’s State of the State address, which he delivered to a joint session of the Legislature at the Statehouse in Trenton on Tuesday.

Affordability: Trenton’s new mantra

The governor wove affordability through the speech as often as the “Stronger Fairer” slogan he has used since taking office in 2017. In 2021, stung by unexpected losses in the legislative election, Murphy and Democrats made a sharp pivot to pocketbook issues and affordability. Now it’s the party mantra. “By cutting taxes, raising wages, and putting more money back in people’s pockets. Each one of these instills confidence that you can not only live comfortably in New Jersey — but that you could not imagine living anywhere else,” Murphy said. It is virtually the same rhetoric used by the Republicans when they ruled the Statehouse in the 1990s.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature gathered in the Assembly Chamber at the Statehouse in Trenton Tuesday, january 9, 2024. Behind him are Senate President Nick Scutari (right) and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

 Hooked on phonics

Murphy pledged to focus on boosting literacy by putting a new emphasis on phonics, the “sounding out of letters and combining them into words.” It is a back-to-the-future initiative that could find wide, bipartisan appeal. It could also serve a way to shift the focus away from culture war issues that have dogged the Murphy agenda — such as his revising LGBTQ curriculum and the battle over “parental rights” — and into less-inflammatory policy territory.

More from Trenton: Murphy sets goals to boost NJ literacy in 2024, expand pre-K options

AI: The new Central Jersey frontier

The governor also used the speech to promote an artificial intelligence initiative that could see state government collaborate with the brightest minds of Princeton University. He dubbed it “AI Moonshot,” a title that evokes the promise of his childhood hero, President John F. Kennedy, who pledged to send an astronaut to the moon by the end of the 1960s. The pledge also evoked a similar plan during Gov. Tom Kean’s administration to convert the U.S. Route 1 corridor between New Brunswick and Trenton into the “Silicon Valley of the East.” It never happened. That segment of Route 1 — then and now — is choked with rush-hour traffic.

Abortion

Murphy reminded the audience of the Legislature’s codification of abortion into state law, which he signed into law in early 2022. He vowed to follow up by calling for legislation that would cover out-of-pocket expenses for abortion procedures. Democrats are hoping that the backlash over the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, which dismantled the constitutional right to abortion, will remain a politically powerful issue in this year’s presidential race. If “lawmakers in states like Florida and Texas think they can rip away rights from our fellow citizens, we’ve got news for them: not in the Garden State,” Murphy said. Also, his highlighting the issue is a less-than-subtle attempt to benefit his wife, Tammy Murphy, who is running for the U.S. Senate in a bid to unseat indicted Sen. Bob Menendez.

Statehouse: Gov. Phil Murphy’s State of the State vision: NJ as ‘best place’ for families

Christie, the permanent foil, and silence on NJ Transit

Murphy again cited his predecessor Gov. Chris Christie’s decision to cancel the Hudson River tunnel project as a long-term harm to commuters. “One of the biggest policy failures in our state’s history was when the last administration abandoned this project,” he said, a reference to Christie’s decision in 2010 to pull the plug on the Access to the Region’s Core tunnel project.

But mentioning Christie — although not by name — is one of his favorite talking points. Christie’s enduring unpopularity has been a useful point of contrast. Murphy then cheered the successor project, the Gateway tunnel project at the Hudson River, which is currently under construction. “We are moving full speed ahead in completing the Hudson Tunnel Rail Project.”

But despite Murphy’s self-congratulatory fizz on the Gateway project, the governor also oversold the scope of the project by declaring that the day of deliverance of train commuters on the Raritan Valley Line will soon be at hand. Peak-hour commuters will no longer have to get off the train at Newark Penn Station and hop on a Manhattan-bound train coming up the coast or the Northeast Corridor once Gateway is completed, he said.

“And, once these tunnels are built, to give you just one example, commuters on the Raritan Valley Line will be able to catch their one-seat ride in and out of Manhattan during rush hour,” he said.

But the current tunnel project does not have the additional funding necessary to build infrastructure to accommodate the one-seat ride plan for the Raritan Valley Line. And Murphy also omitted any reference to NJ Transit, whose spotty service and chronic funding woes have dogged the governor since he took office.

The agency is facing a $120 million operating deficit in the coming budget cycle, and in 2025 the deficit balloons to nearly $1 billion, officials have said. Fare hikes and service cuts may be in the offing.

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: [email protected]

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Here are five takeaways from Gov. Phil Murphy’s State of the State address | Stile