It was a horrible year.

For Republicans not named Chris Brown.

If you’re a Democrat, you probably thought 2017 was great.

If you’re a whopping 65% of the registered voting population of New Jersey, you don’t care… You’re bored.

You wanted it to look like The Ten Commandments and instead It had the feeling of Exodus: Gods and Kings.

To the extent that the state simply stagnated, or even sank dismally in on itself like the banks of a swamp collapsing and the ensuing chemical reaction produced a gaseous haze that blanketed our condition, we could count 2017 a success. Otherwise, it was another dismal 12 months in New Jersey politics.

We have a state pension system that is underfunded by $50 billion.

Freed from having to worry about how his actions impact New Hampshire, Governor Chris Christie crash landed back in Jersey after his 2016 presidential run and signed – amid train wrecks, commuter bedlam and crumbling infrastructure – a gas tax hike for estate tax disintegration – to infuse the Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) with cash. That sparked a brawl in an already badly damaged and capsized Republican Party. Watching the GOP fight one another was like watching a scuba dive fight in a black and white movie: murky, ugly and finally irrelevant. Despite 101.5 radio shock jock Bill Spadea’s best efforts to turn…

Download the Insider NJ 2017 Retrospective

The Insider NJ 2017 Retrospective

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