2 min read November 2023 — On Wednesday, New Jersey’s first lady Tammy Murphy announced she’ll be running for U.S. Senate in next year’s election, citing infant and maternal health and climate change education as priorities.
The announcement also puts Murphy in the running to become the first woman elected for the upper house from the Garden State. To date, only 60 women have served in the U.S. Senate, with 25 currently serving.
So far, the Democratic primary includes U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, but current Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez — who has been embattled by a recent corruption indictment — may still run in 2024.
In a nearly four-minute YouTube video posted by the first lady’s account, she highlighted her work in improving maternal health and focused on putting climate issues in school curriculums across the state.
“I’m really proud that New Jersey is now a safer place to give birth to a child. But we’ve also worked nonstop to make it a great place to raise a child. That’s why combating climate change has been a focus of mine for decades,” said Murphy, also referencing her work to add climate change-related topics into coursework at different levels of primary and secondary schooling.
Murphy’s announcement came within a week of Rep. Kim’s official senate campaign launch in South Jersey’s Pennsauken Township, which placed a focus on “being a decent human being.”
“It doesn’t have to be this broken politics where you just have people putting their own personal ambition ahead of what’s good for this country,” he said. “It’s about being a decent human being — a decent human being that treats other people with respect,” Kim said, as cited by Politico.
In addition to Kim and Murphy, community activist Larry Hamm, who ran against Sen. Cory Booker in the 2020 Democratic primary, is the only other declared Democratic candidate, labor leader Patricia Campos-Medina is expected to announce her bid later this year and U.S. Rep Donald Norcross expressed interest in running, according to the New York Times.
