Menendez’s Senate replacement has been a Democrat for just five months
When George Helmy is sworn in next month as Bob Menendez’s temporary replacement in the Senate, he will join a chamber where Democrats hold a razor-thin majority, outnumbering Republicans by a single seat, 50-49.
Helmy was selected last week by Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat, to fill a seat held for three terms by Menendez, who, before being convicted of trading his political influence for bribes of cash, gold and a Mercedes, was widely viewed as one of the country’s most powerful Democrats.
Helmy, however, is new to the Democratic Party.
He registered as a Democrat in March, six days before the candidate he was supporting in the Democratic Senate primary, Tammy Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady, dropped out of the race, according to Board of Elections records in Morris County, New Jersey. Before then, he was registered as an independent – or “unaffiliated” – voter.
Helmy will serve in Washington only through November. He said he will caucus with the Democratic Party after he is sworn in the week of Sept. 9, and will be a reliable vote for legislation supported by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and President Joe Biden. His appointment will return the Democratic majority to 51 members, as it was before Menendez resigned Tuesday. That includes four independents who caucus with the Democrats.
“I’ve worked my entire career to advance Democratic priorities,” Helmy said Friday in an email, “and that’s what I’ll continue to do during my short tenure as a U.S. Senator.”
In selecting Helmy, Murphy passed over Rep. Andy Kim, who ran a bruising Senate race against the governor’s wife and went on to win the Democratic primary with 75% of the vote. Supporters of Kim, including Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, had urged the governor to immediately appoint the three-term member of Congress to Menendez’s seat, giving him a slight seniority edge in the Senate and a possible head start toward preferred committee assignments.
Murphy said he had decided to appoint Helmy in part because of what he called a state “tradition” to name a temporary caretaker until voters have a chance to elect a permanent replacement. He said any suggestion of “middle school drama” between him and Kim was foolish.
A spokesperson for Kim declined to comment on Helmy’s political affiliation.
Helmy, 44, was a Republican until late 2011, when he switched his registration to unaffiliated – a status he has maintained for most of the past 13 years, according to his voter profile. More than 2.4 million voters in New Jersey are unaffiliated, the second-largest voting bloc behind Democrats.
Helmy, Murphy’s former chief of staff, said his decision to remain politically independent while working for the governor and two Democratic U.S. senators, Booker and Frank Lautenberg, did not interfere with his job.
“I am not a candidate running for office. The work of my career in public service has been to enact the agendas of three statewide Democratic elected officials,” he said, adding, “All three cared deeply about delivering meaningful results for working and middle-class families, which is why I worked for them.”
Helmy joined the Democratic Party once before, in 2018, to vote in the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, where Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, was running. Sherrill won the race, becoming one of four New Jersey Democrats to flip Republican seats that year during former President Donald Trump’s term.
Helmy, who lives in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, with his wife and two sons, renewed his registration as an unaffiliated voter soon after the November 2018 election.
Helmy has agreed to step down from the Senate after the general election is certified Nov. 27, at which point Murphy said he would appoint the winner of the race between Kim and Curtis Bashaw, a Republican, one month early. It has been more than 50 years since New Jersey elected a Republican to the Senate, and Kim is the heavy favorite in November.
A spokesperson for the governor said Murphy would have no comment beyond remarks he gave last Friday strongly in support of Helmy, who he said would be “ready to run this office from Day One.”
“George is the ideal leader to take on this role,” the governor said last week, “and he has more relevant experience under his belt than perhaps anybody in New Jersey.”
This is the second time this year that the governor, a self-described progressive, has worked to boost the political careers of people close to him with roots outside of the Democratic Party.
Tammy Murphy, 59, was a registered Republican until 10 years ago and regularly voted in Republican primaries while her husband, a former Democratic National Committee finance chair, served as ambassador to Germany during the administration of former President Barack Obama.
While running for Senate, she was criticized on social media by supporters of Kim, who missed no opportunity to highlight her arc from Republican to Democrat.
A month before Tammy Murphy dropped out of the race, Kim’s campaign noted that she had had dinner at a New Jersey restaurant with Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner. The campaign questioned how she could be expected to take on Trump if he is re-elected in November.
According to a photo shared by the restaurant on social media, Helmy and his wife attended the same dinner.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.