It was a gaffe, but it was telling.
Hours after a well-orchestrated push to pass a legal-weed bill died in the Trenton statehouse, Gov. Phil Murphy announced to the clicking of cameras that a “postmortem” would be done.
The men standing next to him at the lectern — Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin — chuckled and quietly corrected him.
“Or post-op,” Murphy amended. In the coming days, he said, the three Democrats and their staff would surgically analyze why the legalization vote had to be abruptly canceled March 25 and they would swiftly get the bill back on the agenda.
But six weeks later, the governor’s reference to a “postmortem” seems like a prescient slip. There still are not enough votes in the Senate to support legalization.