All politics may be local, but in Jersey, all local politics happen at the diner - especially for those who want to be governor.
HACKENSACK -- On a still-summery October afternoon, a seemingly endless stream of Democratic county chairs introduced, endorsed and then re-introduced gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy.
Even before the former U.S. Ambassador stepped forward to speak on Thursday, it was clear that a remarkable feat had been achieved by Team Murphy: Party leaders in 11 of 21 counties had endorsed or agreed to endorse him, something that could sew up a Democratic nomination that seemed up for grabs just a few weeks ago.
"Typical Thursday for me," deadpanned Murphy, to great laughter from assembled 100-strong crowd packed into the airless Bergen County Democratic headquarters shortly after noontime.
Just how did Murphy, a political outsider, elbow past Democratic savvies like Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop and Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester), who had been preparing gubernatorial runs for years?
By romancing a raft of northern and central Jersey county chairs in their natural habitats: The Jersey diner and the Italian restaurant.
"Everything's done in diners, and every chairman's got their place," explained Julie Roginsky, a top Murphy adviser and former press secretary to Gov. Jon Corzine during his time in the U.S. Senate.
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Murphy, whose personal wealth allowed him to kick off and finance a campaign earlier than anyone else, had actually conducted a near-constant courtship of local Democratic leaders at their favorite greasy spoons for the better part of a year and a half.
But his diner and restaurant tour kicked into high gear less than two weeks ago, after Fulop shocked Jersey's political world by announcing he wouldn't run for governor.
Campaign insiders say Fulop broke the news to Murphy personally at his Newark campaign offices on Monday, Sept. 26, two days before the mayor formally announced it.
After a stunned Murphy and his campaign aides thanked Fulop for giving them the news in person, Murphy's campaign manager, Essex County freeholder Brendan Gill, quickly set up a meeting with state Democratic Party chairman John Currie for the next day, Sept. 27.
Gill said he told Currie he wanted to immediately and aggressively seek out the support of northern Democratic county chairmen. That included Currie himself, who is also chair of Passaic County.
The support of county Democratic leaders cannot be overstated in New Jersey politics. When a candidate is listed on the top of the "line" on a county's ballot, they almost always win there. And wrapping up support from the north, once seen as a battleground between Murphy and Fulop, could doom south Jersey's Sweeney.
Another meeting was quickly set for Wednesday, at the Hawthorne Chevrolet dealership in which Currie is a partner.
In attendance were Currie, his staffers, and the chairman of the Democratic Party in Bergen County, Lou Stellato, Jr., a Fulop fan still reeling from the mayor's sudden exit.
The meeting went well, but no endorsements were promised.
Immediately afterwards, Murphy sped to see the powerful North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco, who is also a state Senator and the operator of one of New Jersey's most powerful political machines.
"Sacco can drum up 10,000 votes at the drop of a dime," explained one Murphy insider.
The sit down with Sacco went well, but the mayor declined to attend the Fulop press conference, where Fulop threw his support behind Murphy, according to a Murphy insider. Sacco also made it clear the Jersey City mayor did not speak for all of Hudson County.
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Immediately after the Fulop press conference and endorsement, Murphy made the first of several crucial diner politics visits: To see Newark Mayor Ras Baraka at the Central Restaurant diner, where a broiled sirloin steak won't even set you back $11.
But the red meat of any 2017 governor candidate is caffeine, and so Murphy and Baraka ordered coffee. (Gill, his campaign manager, stuck to his omnipresent diet Coke, according to an insider familiar with the sit-down.)
It went well, but again, no endorsement.
That night, while Murphy went to a campaign event, Currie and Stellato sat with other Democratic chairman of northern counties gathered at an East Brunswick Hilton for drinks and to discuss the expected scrap for the nomination between Murphy and Sweeney.
At the Hilton, Currie made the case that Murphy was a better candidate for northern voters than south Jersey's Sweeney, and noted that Sacco was leaning towards him, too.
The next day, Essex chairman LeRoy Jones and Essex County Executive Joe D'Vincenzo both agreed to meet Murphy for lunch at McCloon's Boathouse in West Orange.
As swan boats pedaled lazily around the man-made lake, no endorsement came, but both men wished Murphy good luck and seemed receptive to the idea.
On Friday, with Murphy at a long-scheduled Red Bank fundraiser with Bon Jovi at the Count Basie Theater, and Gill at his grandfather's funeral, it wasn't possible to meet with Stellato, the Bergen chairman who hadn't quite committed yet.
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Eager to cement support from New Jersey's most populous Democratic county, Murphy proposed a Saturday meeting with Stellato at his frequent breakfast spot: The Schulyer Diner in Lyndhurst.
An undertaker by profession, Stellato understandably eats healthy.
"I eat oatmeal with blueberries every day," said Stellato. "And green tea."
Following his lead, Murphy also ordered oatmeal -- with bananas, as Stellato recalls.
Their talk centered mostly on how Murphy would take an "all-inclusive" approach to getting advice from both business leaders and labor to rehab New Jersey's stagnant economy.
The two men had broken bread together often over the past two years, but this Schuyler diner breakfast would just about clinch the deal: Stellato didn't explicitly agree to endorse, but hinted that if he did, he wanted to do it by hosting Murphy next Thursday at his Democratic headquarters.
"The diner is the political capital of all of New Jersey," laughed Stellato.
Sure enough, the following Monday, Murphy was sipping coffee with Assemblyman Dan Benson (D-Mercer) the Mercer County chair, at the Broad Street Diner in Trenton.
By late Monday, Murphy and Gill received some welcome news: Both Currie's Passaic and Prieto's Hudson County were willing to endorse. And Mercer was leaning their way, too.
Late on Tuesday afternoon, Sussex County's Democratic chairwoman Leslie Huhn got a call from Currie.
"John said that Hudson, Bergen and Passaic [chairs] would all be endorsing Phil, and would I like to be a part of it?" she recalled.
The answer was easy: Yes, because Murphy had already done a sit-down with Huhn on June 6 -- at the Park West Diner in Little Falls.
Huhn, a school nurse at Mohawk Avenue School in Sparta, had met with Murphy two years earlier, and came away heartened by his "red-to-blue" election strategy, in which he argued for campaigning hard even in heavily Republican areas to win as many Democratic votes as possible.
Sussex has twice as many registered Republicans than Democrats.
As Huhn nibbled on an English muffin and Murphy sipped coffee, she said she was impressed by how familiar Murphy seemed about the negative effects of teaching to standardized tests.
"PARCC has no impact on my job, but I take care of 8 and 9 year olds, and I see the impact it has on their stress levels," Huhn said. "When Phil said 'We need to totally revisit this PARCC thing,' it captured my attention."
By the time she'd finished her muffin, Huhn said she was also convinced Murphy, the top Democratic fundraiser might also help Democrats secure a congressional seat for Josh Gottheimer, a former Bill Clinton speechwriter running against U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett in a district that covers 19 Sussex county municipalities.
That same red-to-blue strategy had Murphy seeking out Morris County Democratic chairman Chip Robinson last February. Their meeting in Republican-dominated Morris County was way back in February, before Murphy had declared his candidacy.
"I ate meatballs with him at Millie's Old World Meatballs & Pizza in Morristown," said Robinson in a text message to NJ Advance Media. "I liked his progressive politics, and just how much of a genuine good guy with the best interests of the state at heart."
In mid-September, with the governor's race set to begin in earnest, Robinson phoned Murphy privately to offer his endorsement whenever he wanted it.
Now came the answer: Thursday, please.
By Wednesday, Murphy's diner marathon was suddenly paying dividends. The Essex chairman called to commit to endorsing Murphy in the morning, and even agreeing to host its own endorsement rally on Friday, where both Essex county executive Joseph DiVincenzo and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka would call him "our next governor."
That afternoon, he met Prieto at La Reggia in Secaucus, conveniently located in Hudson County's Meadowlands Plaza Hotel -- and quiet and discreet.
"We talked policy for a good long while," said Prieto. Once he was comfortable Murphy was "on the same page," on policy he said he knew he was right to endorse.
By late Wednesday, it had become clear to Currie, Stellato and Prieto that Murphy had achieved critical mass. Middlesex had agreed that afternoon to endorse him. Mercer, later that evening.
Just hours before Murphy's big Thursday news conference, Sweeney sent out a news release saying he was throwing in the towel on a run for governor.
"I'm a realist," he told NJ Advance Media. "The party is coalescing around Phil."
On Friday afternoon, North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco hosted Murphy at his annual mayor's ball at the Venetian catering hall. Those coveted words "our next governor" were spoken aloud by Sacco.
Early Friday evening, Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes, and Mercer
chairman Richard McClellan declared their support at the Statehouse.
But Stellato stressed it was far more than Murphy's willingness to travel around the state, or his vast Wall Street wealth, that allowed him to succeed in winning them all over.
"If we learned anything in the last 15 months, it's that outside candidates, no matter how inept they are, become very attractive," said Stellato, taking a clear shot at Republican GOP candidate Donald Trump. "There is definitely an advantage to being an insurgent. And there are a number of people out there who will vote only for insurgents. They figure everybody who's in office is a bum, so vote for the insurgent."
Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.