In his inaugural address a year ago, Gov. Phil Murphy summoned the unbridled optimism and New Pioneer spirit of his childhood hero, John F. Kennedy.

"The public is tired of pessimistic and shortsighted thinking,'' Murphy said. "They have rejected the politics of division, of 'us' versus 'them,' and asked us to focus on 'we' — all 9 million who call this great state home."

Yet as he prepares to take to the well of the Assembly chamber in Trenton on Tuesday to deliver his first State of the State address, Murphy finds himself stymied by the politics of division — within his own Democratic Party. One year in, Murphy is no longer a governor of limitless possibilities.

Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive and U.S. ambassador to Germany, has undergone a crash course in the transactional and feudal politics of Trenton. He had appeared ready to bowl everybody over with his Happy Warrior style and talk of a progressive "mandate" stemming from his 13-point victory in November 2017.

Instead, Murphy made powerful enemies, namely Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, who is still smarting over a failed attempt by Murphy allies to oust him from the Senate president post in 2017 and over Murphy's refusal to intercede on his behalf with the New Jersey Education Association. The state's largest teachers' union waged a $5 million attempt to defeat Sweeney that year.

Murphy's progressive push — his goal to remake New Jersey's economy as "stronger and fairer" — is also confronting the reality of the political calendar. All 80 seats in the Assembly are up for re-election in November, which means it is unlikely that the cautious Assembly speaker, Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, will schedule votes on Murphy's progressive priorities, such as driver's licenses for some 466,000 undocumented immigrants.

And there's a good chance that legalizing marijuana for adult use — which Murphy promised to have passed in his first 100 days in office — may have to wait until after the election.

Murphy suffered a humiliating setback in last June's budget negotiations when he was forced to kill or scale back proposed tax increases. He has hinted recently that he may try again to do that later this year. That idea has been greeted as dead-on-arrival by Coughlin, who doesn't want his 54 members voting on tax hikes during an election season. And Sweeney has vowed to halt future tax increases until the state deals with its systemic spending problems.

Another challenge for Murphy is that a sizable swath of the voting public still knows little about him. A Rutgers University/Eagleton poll in November found that 42 percent of the public had yet to form an opinion about him. That is, in part, because much of his agenda has stalled in his first year, said Brigid Harrison, a political analyst at Montclair State University.

"He has been unable to define his persona to voters,'' she said. And legislative resistance looming on the horizon may make it equally difficult in 2019.

The combination of the feud and campaign season politics has brought Trenton to the brink of gridlock.

Complicating Murphy's near horizon is the Legislature's probe into his administration's handling of allegations by a housing official who claims she was sexually assaulted during the 2017 campaign.

Testimony from top officials has painted a picture of an administration failing to act on troubling allegations and relying on bureaucratic rationales for not alerting the governor, a self-styled champion of women's issues. His chief of staff, Peter Cammarano, is leaving this month, and Murphy has yet to line up a successor.

Meanwhile, some of the liberal activist groups who were shunted to the margins during Republican Chris Christie's era are expressing frustration with the intraparty squabbling.

"It’s time for elected leaders to put personal gripes and politics aside and get to work passing quality legislation that will benefit New Jersey’s middle class and low-paid families,” said Brandon McKoy, public affairs director for New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal think tank.

"Legislators have to stop pretending eight years of austerity and disinvestment didn’t just happen and show a sense of urgency in passing legislation they have promised for years,'' McKoy said.

A coalition of groups are staging a demonstration at the Statehouse Tuesday morning to press a raft of long-delayed legislation.

Another challenge for Murphy this year is the looming 2020 presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. Murphy may lose attention to Booker, with his celebrity star power and progressive messaging.

"There is no competing with Cory Booker, partly because he is such a charismatic media magnet,'' Harrison said.

Murphy may try to reset his agenda Tuesday. But 2019 will be Booker's turn to decry "the politics of division, of 'us' versus 'them.' " Murphy may have already had his best and only chance.

First year:NJ Gov. Phil Murphy's first year: Early successes but no legal weed, no $15 minimum wage

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