During the early stages of his administration, Governor Phil Murphy shows every indication of being a total political and policy failure. He is a complete puppet of the NJEA, the leading state teachers’ union and the major engine for spending increases and higher property taxes in New Jersey.  His millionaire’s tax proposal will only add to the preference of the wealthy to leave the Garden State.    Murphy spends, but he does not reform.

In the middle of the Republican response to Murphy’s budget message, however, I heard something that was politically most ill-advised.  Specifically, I listened to Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick compare Phil Murphy to former Governor Jim Florio, noting that Florio’s original income and sales tax increase proposals amounted to 2.8 billion dollars, while Murphy’s proposed increase amounted to 2.7 billion.

Forget it, Jon.  That old anti-Jim Florio dog won’t hunt.  Worse, it may come back to bite New Jersey Republicans in their collective behinds.

To begin with, the GOP attacks on Florio resonate with a sharply declining percentage of New Jersey voters.  A growing share of the present New Jersey electorate consists of voters unborn at the time of the 1990 enactment of the Florio sales and income tax hikes.

To put this in even more clear perspective, let us fast forward to the next gubernatorial election in November, 2021.  As of that date, all the voters 31 years of age and under will have been unborn at the time of the 1990 enactment of the Florio tax increases.  All voters then between the ages of 32 and 40 will have been 9 years of age or less in 1990.  Translated: Roughly 40% of the voters at the time of the 2021 election will have no independent memory of the 1990 Florio tax hikes.  So the Republican anti-Florio tax hike rhetoric would be received by voters for whom this message has declining relevancy.

Furthermore, there is another factor that makes any Florio -Murphy comparison odious.  While Murphy displays slavish obeisance towards the NJEA, Florio courageously fought them during his administration, enacting cost control measures regarding pension funding responsibility that the NJEA bitterly opposed.

Yet there is another factor that makes any GOP anti-Florio massage counter-productive.  As public awareness of Jim Florio grows among millennials, he may well become the past governor they most admire.  The growth of public awareness of Florio will begin with the publishing of his biography on May 7, Standing on Principle: Lessons Learned in Public Life.

There are two issues that are of prime importance to millennials: 1) protection of the environment; and 2) the banning of assault weapons.  And no contemporary political figure, not only in New Jersey but in all America has a stronger record on these issues than Jim Florio.

With America’s leading environmental ravager, Scott Pruitt acting as Administrator of the Trump EPA, Republican stature on environmental issues has never been lower.  By contrast, Jim Florio has been the leading American political figure in the movement to protect and enhance the environment over the past half century.  The Superfund program, the most vital tool in the federal government’s environmental portfolio exists due to Jim Florio.  It would never have been enacted without his sponsorship and Congressional leadership.

In the wake of the Parkland, Florida school mass murder, the effort to ban assault weapons has become perhaps the leading priority among millennials.  As with the environment, Jim Florio has been the leading political figure in America over the last half century in the effort to ban these weapons of death.

In 1990, under Florio’s gubernatorial leadership, New Jersey enacted the toughest statewide assault weapons ban in the nation. Due to his success in enacting the ban against the forces of the NRA, Florio received from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Boston in 1993 their annual award for political courage and leadership.  It was an honor richly deserved.

Within three decades after leaving office in 1982 as one of New Jersey’s most unpopular governors, Brendan Byrne emerged as the favorite governor of Generation X New Jerseyans – those Garden State voters born between 1960 and 1980.  Similarly, I have no doubt that Jim Florio, who also left office as a most unpopular governor in 1994, will soon attain the status as the favorite governor of New Jersey millennials – those voters born between 1980 and 2000.  His leadership and record on the environmental and assault weapons issues guarantees him that status.

Let me emphasize that there are serious differences between Jim Florio and me on fiscal and economic issues.  I vigorously opposed his 1990 sales and income tax increases, and I will always believe that my opposition was well-founded and correct.  I will always be most proud of my service on the Assembly Republican staff of former Speaker Garabed “Chuck” Haytaian who vigorously fought against the enactment of these increases and as an official in the administration of former Governor Christie Whitman, who largely rescinded them.  None of this, however, in any way detracts from my admiration for Jim Florio, both for his character and courage and his supreme accomplishments in the environmental and gun violence realms.

In order to regain the governorship in the 2021 election, the NJGOP will have to drastically increase its standing among millennials, which is at an all-time low in the era of Donald Trump, the most despised political figure in this demographic.  Attacks on Jim Florio by leading New Jersey Republicans will be most counter-productive in this regard.

Alan J. Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission under former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman.