Democrat Phil Murphy wins New Jersey governor's race to replace Chris Christie

Source: Washington Examiner | November 7, 2017 | Al Weaver

Democrat Phil Murphy, the former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, won the New Jersey gubernatorial election Tuesday, defeating Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno in the contest to replace Gov. Chris Christie after his two roller coaster in office.

Murphy led in the polls and never looked back after winning the Democratic nomination in early June. A former Goldman Sachs executive, Murphy ran on a liberal agenda, pledging to increase spending for public schools and to fund teacher pensions in the state despite fiscal woes across the board.

Heading into Election Day, Murphy led by 14.4 points, according to the final RealClearPolitics average of polls. The race really heated up in the final weeks when Murphy brought out many of the big guns in the Democratic Party to the Garden State to stump for him, including former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Attorney General Eric Holder.

Meanwhile, Guadagno had difficulty breaking through with the electorate, largely due to Christie, who has seen his approval rating plummet to around 15 percent. His image in New Jersey was tarnished by the Bridgegate scandal, in which he is said to have punished a political opponent by closing down lanes of traffic, and his 2016 Republican presidential campaign, which caused him to spend most of his time out of the state. The final straw may have been images that surfaced of him sitting on a public beach that was closed to everyone else over the July 4th weekend.

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