By NYT –
Gov. Philip Murphy has selected George Helmy, his former chief of staff, to finish Senator Robert Menendez’s term, passing over Representative Andy Kim, the Democratic nominee.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey named George Helmy(*), his former chief of staff, to serve out the remainder of the term of Senator Robert Menendez, who was convicted of corruption and is stepping down next week.
Mr. Helmy, one of the governor’s longest-serving inner-circle loyalists, is expected to be sworn in when the Senate returns from its summer recess in September. He will step down after the November election, at which point Mr. Murphy, a Democrat, said he would appoint the winner of the Senate race to complete the term that ends Jan. 3.
If the Republican candidate were to win, that would narrow the Senate’s Democratic majority to 50-50 at least until the term’s end, with a tiebreaking vote being cast by Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also the president of the Senate.
Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, was found guilty last month of taking bribes and acting as an agent of a foreign government after a two-month trial in Manhattan. He plans to appeal the verdict, but has said he intends to leave office on Aug. 20 to avoid becoming a distraction to the Senate’s “important work.”
In tapping Mr. Helmy for the temporary position, Mr. Murphy bypassed several women who were under consideration. He also passed over Representative Andy Kim, a third-term congressman and the Democratic nominee for Senate, who won the primary with 75 percent of the vote.
Mr. Kim, 42, is considered the favorite in the November race against Curtis Bashaw, the Republican nominee. Being appointed to the job immediately after Mr. Menendez’s resignation could have given Mr. Kim a seniority edge and a possible head start toward preferred committee assignments. But Mr. Murphy’s closest advisers had said from the start that the governor was unlikely to select Mr. Kim, who for months was locked in a bruising competition for Mr. Menendez’s seat with the governor’s wife, Tammy Murphy.
The governor said he called Mr. Kim and Mr. Bashaw on Friday to discuss the line of succession.
Mr. Helmy has worked for both Senator Cory Booker and former Senator Frank Lautenberg, experience the governor said was crucial to the selection process.
“He has devoted years of his life to untangling the red tape of government to help New Jerseyans access the benefits and resources they deserve,” Mr. Murphy said of Mr. Helmy, the son of Egyptian immigrants.
Mr. Helmy, 44, was Mr. Murphy’s chief of staff from early 2019 through September 2023, when he resigned to take a job managing lobbyists for a large health care network. He has remained one of the governor’s closest advisers.
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Mr. Kim said Mr. Helmy would be an experienced and steady hand, immediately capable of “delivering services for our state.”
“I look forward to working with him in the Capitol,” he said in a statement.
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In a brief address, Mr. Helmy praised Mr. Menendez’s Senate staff members, describing them as hardworking public servants who remained responsive to the needs of New Jersey residents, and he made only an oblique reference to the senator’s criminal conviction.
“In my short term in office,” Mr. Helmy said, “I look to begin to restore a small measure of faith and belief in the honor of public service.”
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Aides to the governor said the short list of candidates to replace Mr. Menendez included Tahesha Way, the state’s lieutenant governor; Nina Mitchell Wells, a former New Jersey secretary of state; and Jeh C. Johnson, Homeland Security secretary under former President Barack Obama. Some state lawmakers had also urged Mr. Murphy to appoint Patricia Campos-Medina, a labor leader who ran for the Senate nomination against Mr. Kim and garnered 16 percent of the vote.
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Mr. Helmy left his job working for Mr. Murphy in the State House last year to join RWJBarnabas Health as an executive vice president for external affairs and policy. A resident of Morris County, N.J., he also sits on the powerful board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates five airports, six bridges and tunnels, the PATH rail system, a bus terminal and the World Trade Center.
He is one of five board members — four men and one woman — nominated by Mr. Murphy. In 2023, another one of Mr. Murphy’s appointees to the Port Authority, Rob Menendez, the son of Senator Menendez, resigned from the board after he was elected to the House of Representatives.
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Senator Menendez, 70, will be sentenced in the corruption case in late October, and his political career is almost certainly over.
On Friday, hours before the deadline to remove his name from the ballot, he suspended his long-shot bid for re-election as an independent.
“I am advising you that I wish to have my name withdrawn from the ballot,” Mr. Menendez wrote in a one-sentence email to the New Jersey Division of Elections.
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(*) George Samir Helmy, is a Coptic American, born in Jersey City
