The Score at the End of a Hectic Political Week

Another NJ political week down the drain, and this time, the DOJ case against New Jersey’s oversight of  veterans’ living in veterans’ homes had battleground Democrats in a cold sweat.

Even a panic.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Veterans’ homes.

These are the guys that bled for the country.

By way of review:

“The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey announced today that they have concluded an investigation into whether New Jersey subjected residents of two veterans’ homes to conditions that violate the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

“The department found reasonable cause to believe the residents of the New Jersey Veterans Memorial Homes at Menlo Park and Paramus face unreasonable harm and risk due to inadequate infection control practices and inadequate medical care, in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs operates the homes, which provide long-term nursing care to veterans and their families.”

Rightly so, the GOP pounced.

Now, nothing gets done around here without politics supposedly at the root of it, and one veteran (of politics, not the military) opined that was President Joe Biden’s way of slapping Governor Phil Murphy – hard.

“Stop running around the country waiting for an opening to take my job,” said the Democratic Party source, in reference to Murphy, and looking for a motivation by the DOJ to drop this case a few weeks in front of battleground legislative elections.

“Biden wants to embarrass him,” the source opined.

In true Jersey fashion, the vet took pride in ascribing that kind of Machiavellian gleam to the aged president.

“I got to give the old coot credit,” said the source.

The conversation occurred against the backdrop of other expectations, namely the long-awaited departure of Murphy Chief-of-Staff George Helmy.

People have been saying for two years that he’s on the bubble to go, but this time it sounded real: Helmy gone by the end of the year and Transportation Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti moved over to chief in his absence.

A rumor.

But it had the ring of truth.

Murphy – a lame duck governor – needed Helmy, and if Helmy left, the governor would need someone with good governance grounding.

That’s Gutierrez-Scaccetti.

By acclimation.

But would she have the chops to fend off the Biden Administration if the salvos kept coming?

It was certainly volatile.

Especially for those battleground incumbents (11, 16, 38, to name a few), who probably only wanted one thing: the assurance that Murphy – Biden’s sinister coded entreaties notwithstanding – would continue to stay out of the state, or at least out of their districts.

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