Opinion: Murphy Has Issued the Most Exec Orders in Recent History

Just in case there was any doubt in your mind that Governor Murphy thinks he’s king, a quick study of the state government website at nj.gov will show you that he is a huge fan of using his powers to issue executive orders.

An executive order is a scary thing because it actually shows you the power of government and in the hands of someone like Murphy who believes in big powerful government, can be dangerous. It takes the power out of the hands of the citizens and put it squarely into the hands of one person.

In short, an executive order is something that you should fear.

To illustrate, Governor Murphy enacted his first executive order on January 16, 2018. A few days ago, on 31st of January, he issued executive order number 218. To contrast, Governor Christie in his eight years of governing only issued 241 executive orders. And even that was pretty high. Two years in, Governor Murphy is set to double Christie’s numbers.

That should scare you.

It’s hard to quantify the governors before Christie because most of them didn’t hang around long enough for us to really get a good idea of how powerful they thought they were. Corzine, of course, was a one termer and barely did anything anyway. McGreevy resigned, early which left did Cody to sprinkle a few orders in here and there, but nothing out of order.

Christie Whitman, who left early to join the EPA under George Bush, issued only 123 executive orders in her seven years. Tom Kean, who was governor from 1982 to 1990, issued the same amount of executive orders in the eight years of his governance as Murphy has done in two.

Now this is a man who craves power and is not willing to relinquish it. And if his excuse is that we are in the midst of a pandemic, please note that that is NOT an excuse. His COVID-19 executive orders are mostly unwarranted and unnecessary daddy rules designed to elevate his importance and political sway, not to protect us.