Murphy's $135,000 portrait should hang at the MVC
By: Charles Stile
Political Stile
USA Today Network
..... Like his predecessors, former Governor Phil Murphy will have his eight-year reign in Trenton memorized in a portrait., painted at the unprecedented price tag of $135,000.
.....
That cost, according to POLITICO, which first reported the portrait plans, is more than Murphy's there predecessors in the post combined. The closest was his immediate predecessor Governor Chris Christie, who raised some eyebrows nationally in 2018 when he spent $85,000 for his portrait, or about $113,000 in today's dollars when adjusted for inflation.
..... I'm just wondering if a Statehouse wall will be the proper place for the painting to hang.
..... If Governor Mikie Sherrill's administration had its druthers, the Murphy portrait might hang over the entrance to the Motor Vehicle Commission, which is being probed for improperly allowing some 6,600 non-citizens to remain on the state voter rolls a year after an apparent software glitch was identified and fixed. As many as 400 may have voted.
..... Sherrill was quick to point the finger at the Murphy administration's management of the MVC, although she never mentioned her predecessor by name. but she was clearly annoyed at having to deal with this Murphy-era debacle and having to listen to the conspiratorial howls of President Donald Trump's administration, and other Republicans trying to score political points.
..... So ahivng the million - I'm assuming the portrait will pay tribute to the former governor;s signature toothy smile and his second-term fluffed hear - Murphy peering over the lobby of the MVC's main office on East State Street in Trenton will serve as a fisting, ironic reminder of his administration's failed oversight of the struggling agency.
..... Murphy, thorough a statement for his former communications director, said he had no knowledge of any glitch at the MVC and applauds Sherrill for initiating a review and "looks forward to its findings."
..... Predictably, Gardner State Republicans are squawking form the sidelines about the lavish waste of a taxpayer-funded protract at a time when average New Jerseyans are struggling with higher taxes and utility bills.
.....
"Trenton's priorities couldn't be more out of touch," the Senate Republicans posted in a tweet.
..... No surprises there. But while they're at it, they might want to vent their disgust at the lavish, no-bid spending spree of their party's standard-bearer, The Emperor-in-Chief who is disfiguring the nation's capitol with a $400 billion White House ballroom, an "upgrade" of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that turned the water form flag blue to algae green in the hands of a politically connected contractor and with plans for a 250-foot triumphal arch that would make Napoleon blanch.
..... In some ways, Murphy's eye-popping portrait cost is not that entirely surprising.
.....
Despite all the attempts by Murphy to brand himself as a Jersey guy, the ex-Goldman Sachs millionaire, with a part ownership of a women's soccer team and a 23-room mansion in Unbria, Italy, has always lived in a rarefied world separate form the Jersey hoi poilloi. He's never tried to hid it. Before his first run for governor, Murphy mailed out holiday cards where he proudly boasted of his children's attendance at some of the finest boarding schools on the East coast. There's nothing wrong with that, but it seemed tone deaf for a new Democrat who planned to restore the middle class.
..... This image of elitism also hounded his 4500,000 spending on furnishing the newly renovated Statehouse in 2018, including $217,000 for rugs, $24,400 on sofas and $31,000 for two antique lamps. The people's
house - now entombed in near silence because of new security precautions - was appointed as a workspace for an earl: The Earl of Navesink.
..... Murphy still had the thin skin of a newcomer and lashed out at NJ.com reports, dutifully detailed buy my late friend reporter Matt Arco. He complained that the furnishing budget was three-tenths of 1% of the cost of the total project, which by the way, was completed under the budgeted $300 million. And besides, he argued that it was necessary to invest in quality furnishings to endure the long-term future of the Statehouse. (I remember writing a story about the $50,000 Governor Christie Whitman had to spend to replace the carpets in 1994; critics carped, mostly under their breath, that it was an exercise in elitism, but the old carpets were pretty ratty.)
.....
"We want to do this with some amount of majesty," Murphy said at the time. "This is New Jersey, for Crista' sake. This is the second-oldest in-use Statehouse in America. and you want this thing to reek of pride. We said, 'Let's do all of this in a first-class way,' "
How will New Jersey remember Phil Murphy?
..... That rationale guides his expensive protract, paid for by the state's transition account. but it's what people will remember about Murphy when they gaze up at the distinguished pose. To some, they'll remember the reassuring presence during the coronavirus pandemic and the governor who put the state pension system back on the path to stability, plumped up finances with a $6 billion surplus and restored the state's credit rating. he also signed a raft of liberal and social justice legislation and raised taxes on millionaires.
..... Others will recall a tinear3ed Murphy, whose administration failed to respond to an ex-aide's accusations of rape, who was slow-footed to respond to a sexual abuse crisis at the state's prison for women and who tried unsuccessfully to muscle his wife, Tammy, into a Senate seat with the help of a sclerotic party machine.
..... The contract for the portrait was awarded to Alabama-based Portraits Incorporated, and the artist chosen to do the work is Michael Shane Neal, described by POLITICO as one of the nation's cost prominent prostration, who has painted Presidents George H.W. Bush and Joe Biden. Murphy, who had designs of being president someday, will have to settle for the painter of presidents and sit on an wall in Trenton - whether at the Statehouse or at the MVC.