At January’s State Board of Education meeting, two new members, Mary Bennett and Jeanette Pena, were sworn in, the first time Gov. Phil Murphy’s State Board nominees have made it through the Senate confirmation process.

Various onlookers have commented at Murphy’s slow progress, given that five members of the Board were appointed by Gov. Chris Christie and some have sat in their seats far longer: Ronald Butcher was appointed in 1990. Now, this lassitude is partly due to the unofficial constitutional convention called “senatorial courtesy” that allows the representative from a nominee’s district to nix that nomination. That’s why Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan is “Acting,” not permanent: she moved from Montclair to Cedar Grove—a different electoral district— right before her hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican Sen. Kristin Corrado gave her a thumbs-down. Allen-McMillan still gets to be Commissioner (with that qualification at the beginning of her title) but you can’t be an “acting” State Board of Education member. If your representative doesn’t like you, you’re toast.

Yet maybe we’re selling our current Governor short.

State Board of Education members serve six-year terms. By waiting until his two final years in office, Murphy will lock in his own picks for the first term of the next governor because most of the remaining Christie-nominees are slated to be replaced this year.

Is that paranoid?

I asked NJ Ed Report columnist Dr, Marc Gaswirth, a long-time NJ school administrator who observes and writes about the state’s education policies and politics. “Murphy,” Gaswirth said, “has the opportunity now to foreclose the next governor from making any appointments at all to the State Board. Murphy can now pack the Board with his choices, lock in his policy priorities for the next six years, and effectively block the next governor—and future Education Commissioners—from changing the prerogatives of the Department of Education.”

As Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”