In Atlantic City, the horror of another Donald Trump presidency turned fast not merely to acquiescence but to the miniaturized imitation of Trump in a setting not only garishly conducive to the exercise but in fact the profane equivalent of a holy birth site. After all, Trump got his start here in the casino trade, an adventure ramrodded by the rubber stamps of NJ politicians not quite persistently affronted by his persistent ascendency. Amid concocted opulence, not too many cocktails transform a drunken middle-aged bureaucrat roaming the halls of Caesar’s Palace, into the second coming of Caligula’s tormented little cousin.

On the barstools and in the reflective dens on the other side of those stools, insiders tried to make sense of what happened this year at the League of Municipalities. Did anyone among those gambling for the office of NJ governor somehow emerge from the crammed interactions with an upper hand?

It was harder this year perhaps to determine but the game had somewhat subtly changed. In the past twenty years, fewer than ten men – Democrats – chose the state’s chief executive, and it went something like this: find the richest guy in sight from Goldman Sachs who could clear the field, speak with grim understanding of the state’s financial troubles, and yet exhibit caring progressive credentials, and ensure, by virtue of everyone getting behind him, that the overlords’ organizations didn’t have to work too hard. It was either that or throw a woman under the bus who threatened to expose the extent of the party’s submission before a certain former U.S. Attorney.

But that was before 2024, and First Lady Tammy Murphy’s decision to run for the U.S. Senate seat left behind by a corruption-eviscerated Bob Menendez. Murphy had a simple strategy: follow the game plan perfected by her husband, which should be even easier, given the stronger suctioning between sitting governor and those chairs cocooned by – among other interests – Trenton lobbying. They depended on the country’s constitutionally strongest governor, and in exchange – tacitly – they would surely have to ascent to the obvious choice of Tammy Murphy to rush to the aid of New Jersey’s bruised – once again – integrity. But we know what happened then, and without going into too much detail right now, the legal challenge to the ballot structure by U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, which favored organization-backed candidates and left everyone else in voter booth Siberia, resulted in a judge ditching what amounted to the very system that produced those boss-backed candidates, not only for U.S. Senate then, but – apparently – Governor – right now, or at least ahead of 2025, the next statewide election.

So, it was difficult to assess exactly who prevailed this week among those jockeying Democrats seeking the governorship (we’ll examine the Republicans in a minute, but the Kim challenge to Murphy most immediately significantly impacted the process). By this time in 2017 when Phil Murphy first ran for governor, he had essentially already won, even before the election, because he had all the critical bosses with him. But this time, even as they strutted from casino to casino trying to project power and energy, the contestants had to be careful, for in a post Andy Kim-Tammy Murphy world, no one wanted to stand overtly with the bosses and end up like Tammy.

For every undecided insider caught in a tortured flamingo pose on the casino floor sooner than choose a dedicated direction toward a single candidate, the contenders themselves had to do a lot of zigzagging to avoid the appearance of solely representing “the (dreaded!) establishment.” For if the past furnished county bosses who “made” a governor, in a post-Tammy Murphy world, those tiny Trumps with the training wheels still on could just as easily prove the undoing of a gubernatorial candidate. Don’t stand too close to the guys who tried to force-feed Tammy went the unspoken logic, even as insiders drunkenly persisted – perhaps out of habit – to play the how many chairs you got parlor game. That pastime probably meant U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill had the edge, on the strength of Essex, Passaic, and Middlesex all apparently behind her, three big counties where the heft of organizational power remains pretty robust and strong (especially in Essex) party pluralities.

But Sherrill had the complication of two other contenders (Ras Baraka and Sean Spiller) coming out of Essex, and the troubling appearance of Passaic going for Trump in the last election over Kamala Harris, thereby projecting a less than ferocious presence in the county party solar system.

Sherrill’s chief rival, U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, had his home county of Bergen, apparently in earnest (although in the new environment the staunch public support of his come county chair didn’t perhaps simply mean totality), but his supposed commanding presence in Hudson (on the strength of support by vote-getting behemoth Senator Brian P. Stack) looked less than convincing in drill-down conversations with other players. Remember, Hudson remains pretty divided, staring with that old classic rivalry between Stack and North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco, not to mention a developing mayoral contest in Jersey City, which has everyone going in different directions, and the fact that the sitting mayor, Steven Fulop, is himself an anti-establishment candidate for governor. But Gottheimer had political savvy, work ethic, and received praise amid bar hoppers for a rollout that included a coherent “I get shit done” message.

Those others seeking the throne – among them Baraka, Spiller, and former Senate President Steve Sweeney – appeared content for the most part to play their tinker, tailor, soldier roles, or something along those lines, in any event each specifically prescribed to an overriding group: in this case, respectively, educator, urbanite, Building Trades worker.

On the GOP side, long a damaged brand in New Jersey statewide, going back to when Bill Clinton turned it into a blue state, with the exception of Republican Chris Christie’s back-to-back wins, one sensed substantial prevailing optimism about 2025. Everybody’s favorite candidate, state Senator Jon Bramnick – who exhibited leadership in consistently criticized Trump, mostly for mocking people – appeared to have the most difficult path to the governorship in a Republican Primary, given the Trump-trajectory of his party. Radio personality Bill Spadea set the establishment’s teeth on edge. Trying to merge those worlds by being simultaneously establishment-friendly, and capable of competently navigating the Wildwood boardwalk during a Trump rally, former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli seemed intent on playing frontrunner. In the words of one insider, “The energy I get from Jack is, ‘I’m the governor.’” His allies refused to get overconfident by the 2021 statewide outcome, when Ciattarelli came within three points of upsetting Phil Murphy, and by the 2024 prez contest – just a five-point loss by Trump in a state with almost a million more registered Democrats. They assessed a flat Democratic Party electorate, which could change, they noted – and spoke to prioritizing protecting those areas where Trump showed GOP gains: young males, Hispanics, trades workers, and among other urban populations. If he could get past Spadea – the all-cylinders-firing MAGA candidate – in the GOP Primary, Ciattarelli trended today as the favorite to succeed Murphy, or so said more than a few veterans of NJ’s political wars. Trump was so volatile, though – the mudslide of Matt Gaetz already prompting jeers in the bars – the situation could change dramatically even prior to his swearing-in ceremony. A lot had changed, certainly, it had to be said, from Reagan’s supposed shining city on a hill, to the strange transformations born nationally out of a vulgar marsh town.

But if the New Jersey bosses lacked teeth in the reemergent Trump era, a condition brought about in part by a combination of grassroots energy in their own party to pay back those accumulated missteps by electeds, for corruption, nepotism, and services undelivered, and fed-up vibes in and among everyone, including Republicans and independents, and everyone’s transferred complacency, the one armed bandit-glowing Atlantic City insulation of a seaside fantasy the president-elect helped cough up, which once, right down the boardwalk from Trump Plaza, in fact, set the scene for newly crowned heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who as a nearly 60-year-old man last week unsuccessfully tried to rekindle glory against a blinged-out Youtuber, for the moment – but only just this moment – made it once again almost okay, almost fashionable, for even the bosses to pretend.

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