In 27th District, Democrats are up to the Gills

 

In 27th District, Democrats are up to the Gills

Good Monday morning!

It looks like the Essex County ticket is settled following state Sen. Richard Codey’s retirement announcement. In an arrangement ironed out in the backrooms, presumably to be ratified at the end of the month by a room full of of the 27th District’s Democratic committee members, Assemblymember John McKeon will get the party nomination for Codey’s seat, while Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill will run for the Assembly seat his wife had won the nomination for, and Livingston Councilmember Rosaura Bagolie will seek the Assembly seat McKeon has long held.

I have something to report this morning that relates to this. If you’ve followed New Jersey politics for the last few years, you’ll recall the huge fight between Gill and Democratic operative Julie Roginsky during Gov. Phil Murphy’s first campaign. In public, the fight centered largely around Roginsky’s allegations of misogyny by Gill and others on the campaign, which Gill denied and the campaign characterized as a power struggle.

But bubbling just beneath that fight was something else. Roginsky accused Gill and Murphy campaign aide Adam Alonso of leveraging their positions on the campaign for their private consulting businesses. This spilled out in public with internal 2017 emails the Murphy campaign released to counter Roginsky’s allegations.