Do we like them?

Do we like Phil Murphy?

Our score: 8 out of 10. He signed real protections for trans people and showed no harmful words of his own, but his office's handling of a staffer scandal leaves a mark.

Phil Murphy ended his run as New Jersey governor with a final State of the State on 13 January 2026. He framed his legacy as a state that is “stronger and fairer”, and said his administration fought back when President Trump went after its communities. That's the pitch, anyway, and a fair bit of it holds up.

The big stain is the Al Alvarez saga. A state employee alleged in a lawsuit that Alvarez, a worker on Murphy's 2017 campaign, raped her. Alvarez denied it and was never criminally charged. The state and Murphy's campaign settled for $1 million in 2020 with no admission of wrongdoing, and a legislative probe found his administration seemed more worried about “avoiding negative publicity” than following procedure. Murphy himself wasn't accused, and he called the settlement “fair and reasonable”.

Immigration gave him a messier moment in early 2025. At a progressive forum he said of someone with a shaky immigration status, “Let's have her live at our house above our garage”, and dared the feds to come and get her. Republicans pounced, and Elon Musk posted “Wow.” His spokesperson said the offer was never actually made and nobody moved in. Where you land depends on whether you read it as bravado or as a bloke being careless with words.

On the day job, he lists a higher minimum wage, a tax on millionaires, restored Planned Parenthood funding, abortion rights written into state law and nine straight credit rating upgrades. He also fell short on his own jobs goal, with unemployment rising from 4.9 per cent to 5.4 per cent by November 2025. That's a mixed scorecard rather than a clean sweep, but it leans the way this page would.

Nothing new has turned up on him since he left office. The record we could verify is thin on his climate and wider public-health calls, and the fact-checkers we looked for gave us nothing on him. So this is a confident lean yes rather than a gushing one.