NJ governor picks former aide to fill Bob Menendez’s Senate seat

Gov. Phil Murphy is expected to announce his former chief of staff George Helmy will represent the residents of New Jersey in the U.S. Senate for the next few months.
Helmy will fill the vacancy being created with the resignation of Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, according to sources close to the Murphy administration.
Menendez is set to resign his Senate seat on Aug. 20 after being convicted on 16 felony counts earlier this summer in a federal courtroom in New York. He maintains his innocence and has stated he intends to appeal the decision.
Helmy is currently an executive for a hospital system but he served as chief of staff for nearly five years before departing last fall.
“Simply put, you cannot write the history of our administration without recognizing George’s singular role in leading our team for over four and a half years,” Murphy said in a statement at the time.
Before taking the post as chief of staff, Helmy was the state director and deputy chief of staff for Sen. Cory Booker and served in the office of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg. He is a Jersey City native and now lives with his family in Morris County. He has a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers and a master’s from Harvard.
This isn’t the first time Helmy has been mentioned in association with Menendez this year. During the soon to be former senator’s federal trial, former state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal testified that he cut off an inquiry in 2020 from Helmy — although not named specifically — about the investigation of a North Bergen man whose case was complicating the passage of a landmark criminal justice reform.
While Helmy’s name was not mentioned in the testimony, the reference to the governor’s chief of staff aligns with his time in the role. The subject of his inquiry involved the case of Walter Somick, a North Bergen recreation worker who was charged in 2016 — before Grewal took office — with falsifying timesheets to collect pay for work he didn’t perform. It was a serious charge — he was facing a mandatory five years in prison for official misconduct.
Helmy will serve the remainder of Menendez’s term, which ends in early January. Murphy said after Menendez’s conviction he would “exercise my duty to make a temporary appointment to ensure the people of New Jersey have the representation they deserve.” Murphy called for Menendez to resign after the indictment was unsealed last fall and reiterated that last week. He went on to ask the U.S. Senate to expel him if he didn’t resign.
The governor has had a few weeks to consider who to appoint to the post. Though he doesn’t leave office until Aug. 20, Menendez formally submitted his letter of resignation back on July 23.
Rep. Andy Kim, the Democrat on the ballot for the seat in November, had said that if asked to fill the seat, he would accept it though two former Republican governors have called on Murphy to appoint someone else instead. Former Govs. Tom Kean and Chris Christie issued a joint statement calling on Murphy to follow the “New Jersey tradition of letting the voters decide.”
Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey Statehouse. Email: [email protected]