New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver passed away last Tuesday after being hospitalized just a day prior with an undisclosed condition. At the time, Oliver was serving as acting governor due to Gov. Phil Murphy being on vacation in Italy.
It’s now been nearly a week since her passing, but New Jerseyans have yet to hear a word about what caused the 71-year-old to die. Gov. Murphy was asked about it on Friday, but offered nothing, calling it a “private matter.”
In truth, Oliver had been unwell for years, battling numerous health problems, any of which may have killed her. However, the silence over how the second highest-ranking elected official in the state passed has raised eyebrows.
One conservative blogger, Matt Rooney, compared the lack of information about Oliver’s condition to Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke during his campaign and was ultimately elected despite being obviously cognitively affected.
“Shouldn’t the Media take the lead? Sadly, it’s unsurprising that they haven’t,” Rooney wrote on SaveJersey.com. “Joe Biden’s health (and Kamala Harris’s competence) are regular topics of conversation in the political discourse. Still, there’s been quite a bit of pushback and, in some cases, outright lack of concern on the part of the legacy Media when the time arises to ask hard questions.”
“Another glaring recent example of journalists failing to do their job can be found directly across the Delaware River: John Fetterman. Details of his true condition were deliberately kept from the public throughout the 2022 cycle, and now that we’ve seen him in action during Senate hearings, it’s not hard to figure out why they did it.”
Rooney separately pointed out that Murphy came back to the state after Oliver’s death, then quickly flew right back to Italy.
“So [Phil Murphy] flew in Thursday (three days after Sheila Oliver’s hospitalization & after she was already dead), did his press conference on Friday, and then immediately flew back to his Italian villa for ritzy wine and hard cheese. But they were really close. Best buds! Clearly!” he wrote on Twitter.
