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As the front office staff of Phil Murphy departed with their boss and a new regime entered alongside Governor Mikie Sherrill, so too the lobbying landscape changed in Trenton.

Murphy placed considerable emphasis on wind energy and data center production, suffering a political cost certainly in the case of the former as offshore wind crumbled on his watch. In her first year in office, Sherrill has shifted more to solar and nuclear. Lobbying priorities reflect that change in executive energy direction as the new governor steps gingerly on the politically sensitive subject of data centers.

The political disintegration of Donald Trump and corrosion to some minor degree of the establishment in New Jersey contribute to the emergence in Trenton of “new left causes.” While the Make Polluters Pay movement earlier this year (and they would describe the movement as not “left” but “smart”) failed to produce a bill signing, the issue remains unsettled, with nervous lawmakers eyeballing next year’s lineless Democratic Primaries.

The entrenchment of A-I also has lawmakers scrambling to figure out how to preserve a core of human priorities, working alongside lobbyists and labor organizations to formulate a state action plan.

On paper, lawmakers will want to look concerned enough to avoid primaries while not doing anything sufficiently radical to provoke backlash from powerful corporate and labor entities. But the public may be wise to that kind of soulless needle-threading.

In short, the late fall season should prove interesting or at least appear interesting.

Also, don’t forget the urgency of the School Employees’ Health Benefits Program, which requires the system’s governing commission to approve a 34% rate increase for active workers.

Or else…

--Max Pizarro

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