Gov. Phil Murphy strode to the Statehouse bully pulpit Wednesday as an angry reformer vowing to tighten controls on corporate tax incentives that his predecessor, Chris Christie, handed out like candy.

"That money flowed from taxpayers' pockets into a black hole," Murphy said in response to an audit of the incentives doled out primarily during Christie's tenure.

Yet, for much of his first year, Murphy's missteps and lax management of his own agenda have shaped the reform agenda in Trenton.

Murphy could very well emerge as the governor whose administration established groundbreaking policies on sexual assault complaints and campaign finance. Not, however, as the result of a shrewd, carefully executed political strategy, but out of a desire to save face and survive. If anything, he could become the accidental reformer.

First is campaign finance reform, an issue given scant attention during his campaign. Yet the issue was pulled off the back burner after a "dark money" group operated by close Murphy allies announced last month that it was not going to disclose its donors, as originally promised when it was created in November 2017.

So much for the promised good-government spirit of transparency, critics fumed. The decision to withhold the names was proof that Murphy, the progressive, was being swallowed up in the Trenton swamp he vowed to change.

Murphy, who has no direct role in New Direction New Jersey but admitted to raising money for it, moved to tamp down the furor last week, publicly urging the group to reveal its donors and issuing a call to strengthen the state's disclosure laws.

But the uproar has also turned out to be a teachable moment for Trenton. It has led to a wide examination of the dark money accounts, which can raise and spend unlimited sums. They are under no obligation to reveal the names of their donors as long as they abide by squishy, rarely enforced Internal Revenue Service rules.

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New Direction is hardly the lone practitioner raising money under the radar. Lawmakers have failed for years to rein in similar "issue advocacy" groups that have bypassed state campaign laws. Reform bills have gone nowhere.

And POLITICO New Jersey reported last week that the state's largest power utility, Public Service Enterprise Group, intended last September to donate $55,000 to General Growth Fund, a non-profit group with close ties to South Jersey Democratic Party power broker George E. Norcross III.

Instead, the utility cut the check to General Majority PAC, a related super PAC that does disclose its donors. Murphy administration officials, who have been clashing with Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, a longtime Norcross ally, reportedly referred the matter to Attorney General Gurbir Grewal's office for review.

Sweeney, meanwhile, also took steps to quell the uproar by vowing to back disclosure legislation authored by one of his South Jersey allies, Sen. Troy Singleton, D-Burlington. “While there have been areas of disagreement between the governor and me of late, this is one area where we agree,'' said Sweeney, suddenly infused with the spirit of reform.

Given Trenton's empty track record of campaign finance reform, there is plenty of reason to doubt that the spirit will last. Sweeney, who was infuriated with the pro-Murphy ads that New Direction aired during last year's budget battles, says he wants dark money groups to disclose all donations the received as of Jan. 1, 2018, which would force New Direction to reveal its fundraising.

And while Murphy has called on New Direction to disclose its donors, he has no intention of using his clout with his close media consultants or his former campaign manager — who serves as New Direction's senior adviser — to go public without having a new disclosure law in place.

"The argument he is making is that everybody should be operating by the same set of rules,'' said Dan Bryan, Murphy's spokesman. Still, the campaign finance reform is now on the agenda.

Meanwhile, the Legislature's probe into Murphy officials' see-no-evil, hear-no-evil handling of housing official Katie Brennan's allegation of rape has shed an unflattering spotlight on his 2017 campaign and his year-old administration.

Three hearings so far, including Brennan's own testimony, have revealed an inner circle that had little appetite or curiosity to investigate Brennan's claim that she was raped by Murphy campaign operative Al Alvarez after a social gathering of campaign aides and volunteers in April 2017.

Multiple top administration officials who became aware of the matter — several informed directly by Brennan herself — failed to notify the governor, despite his image as a champion of women's issues. The lack of alarm about a woman's allegation of rape startled startled some lawmakers on the special committee.

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"This was a young woman that came forward and said that she was raped, and to have it treated lightly by so-called responsible people was offensive to me,'' said Sen. Sandra Cunningham, D-Hudson.

"Nobody seemed to have responsibility for anything," an exasperated Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg said at one point.

Murphy had little to say when asked about the hearings on Wednesday.

"We respect the legislative process,'' he said. "As long as that process doesn't get political, as long as it's a whole-government approach, as long as it's survivor-centric, we are going to continue to cooperate. I'll leave it there."

Murphy may very well sign on to recommendations advanced by the Legislature. They could also reflect some findings from Murphy's own internal report, expected some time this year. It's a road to reform. It's just not the one he expected to be on.