The Nepo State

Tammy Murphy, the First Lady of New Jersey, is leveraging her husband’s power to lock up the democratic nomination for senate. She appears unstoppable.

- By Simon van Zuylen-Wood. Photograph by Bobby Doherty

ON SEPTEMBER 22, federal prosecutors filed an indictment against New Jersey senator Robert Menendez and his wife, Nadine, that read like a caricature of graft. The two were accused of accepting bribes from a stupefying cast of characters, including a halal-meat exporter and a Bergen County condo magnate, in exchange for political favors. According to the government, the scheme involved envelopes stuffed with cash, a no-show job for Nadine, and a sitting U.S. senator Googling “How much is one kilo of gold worth.”

The day after the indictment, Andy Kim, a Democratic congressman from the state, announced he was running for Menendez’s seat. Aaron Sorkin and the writers of The West Wing could not have crafted a character as menschy and public-service oriented. Kim is a Rhodes scholar who ran point on isis counterterrorism in the Obama White House and flipped a pro-Trump congressional district in 2018. After the January 6 riots, he literally cleaned up the Capitol Rotunda, garbage bag in hand. And yet in the weeks following his announcement, Kim wasn’t endorsed by a single major Democrat in New Jersey. This wasn’t out of loyalty to Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty and is refusing to step down. Rather, everyone was waiting for a different candidate to declare, someone whose interest in the seat was an open secret: the First Lady of New Jersey.