New Jersey Republicans are trying to make political hay with the recent news that former Gov. Phil Murphy’s official portrait has a $135,000 price tag. That’s “the most expensive in state history,” some of the reports explain. And to think that only eight years ago people were upset about the $85,000 spent on former Gov. Chris Christie’s portrait.
The GOP caucus in the state Assembly wrote on social media that Mr. Murphy’s painting will cost “enough to fund a teacher’s salary for two years in many districts.” They are not wrong. A teacher’s salary for two years is a precise measure of what a statehouse painting should be weighed against — and what Governor Murphy’s tax and spending record actually delivered for working families. The real portrait of Governor Murphy is his record of asking the wealthy to pay their share and investing the proceeds in the public services the donor class has starved.
Over two terms in office, from 2018 to 2026, Mr. Murphy did little to slow the accumulation of wealth at the top and a great deal to spread some of it around. New Jersey is ranked No. 49 on the Tax Foundation’s index of state competitiveness — a state that asks the most of those who can most afford to pay, and ranks accordingly on a metric designed to penalize that. Mr. Murphy increased the top income-tax rate to 10.75% — a modest and overdue step toward fairness — while spending on his watch went up 60%. New Jersey’s business and property taxes are high, and that is what it costs to run a state that actually works for the people who live in it.
The Garden State deeply needs a revolution to expand public investment, fairly tax the wealth that benefits most from it, and stop letting the donor class write the rules that have hollowed out the state’s working towns. Going after Mr. Murphy’s portrait to discredit his record is fighting the last war. Of all the public investments from the Phil Murphy years, a statehouse painting is among the smallest.
