New Jersey is getting its voice back.
Megan Coyne, one of the innovators of the state government’s nationally acclaimed Twitter account with an attitude, is back at the statehouse in a new communications role with Gov. Mikie Sherrill.
Coyne and her boss at the time, Pearl Gabel, turned a flat, bureaucratic state Twitter account into an energetic platform with a distinct Jersey attitude while working for Gov. Phil Murphy.
“Who lets New Jersey have a Twitter?” tweeted someone with 88 followers.
The reply – “Your mom” – had nearly a half-million likes and 85,000 retweets.
More than 439,000 followers watch the wit and sarcasm of New Jersey’s official Twitter account every day, which has garnered national attention.
Her return to Trenton follows four years in Washington as deputy director of platforms in the White House Office of Digital Strategy. Essentially, she managed President Joe Biden’s social media accounts. Between Washington and Trenton, she made a short pit stop at Mercury, the public affairs firm run by Michael Soliman and Mo Butler.
As the undisputed tone-setter of New Jersey’s social feeds, Coyne has deployed every Jersey cultural weapon in the arsenal — The Sopranos, Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and anything else that makes outsiders blink. She’s mixed it up with other states, especially when defending the honor of New Jersey pizza, and she’s navigated the Taylor Ham–versus–Pork Roll battlefield with diplomatic restraint — despite knowing full well the correct answer is Taylor Ham. (Now she’s working for a governor who has unhesitatingly endorsed Taylor Ham.)
And for all the snark, Coyne wasn’t just firing off jokes — she was running the governor’s official social media machine. Which means she’s fully entitled to flash the championship ring that comes with being part of the crew that made Murphy the first Democrat in 44 years to pull off a re-election win.
Now, Coyne must tackle the Washington jinx: never in New Jersey history has a governor who came directly from the United States Congress won re-election to a second consecutive term. But the history of Bill Cahill, Jim Florio, and Jon Corzine is unlikely to intimidate Coyne, a tough Livingston native.
Coyne served as president of the College Democrats of New Jersey while attending Rutgers University and worked as a communications intern in the governor’s office for fifteen months in 2018 and 2019. Murphy hired her straight out of college to work on his communications staff.
Coyne became the first Livingston High School graduate to take the Statehouse route to the White House since Robert H. Grady, who served as Gov. Thomas Kean’s communications director, became the Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George H.W. Bush in 1989 after a brief stop as a speechwriter and policy advisor for Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign.
In 2016, another Livingston native, Chris Christie, sought the Republican nomination for president, but withdrew after a dismal 7% showing in New Hampshire.
