Lieutenant Governor – and current Acting Governor – Tahesha Way will be headed to Chicago tomorrow for the final day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), giving control of the governor’s office to Senate President Nick Scutari (D-Linden).
Gov. Phil Murphy is already in Chicago for the DNC, alongside most other top New Jersey Democrats. Last night, he, New Jersey Democratic state chairman LeRoy Jones, and former Cumberland County commissioner candidate Joeigh Perella announced that New Jersey had delivered 142 delegate votes to Kamala Harris during the DNC’s celebratory roll call vote.
In Murphy’s absence, Way has served as acting governor, but she’ll be in attendance at the DNC tomorrow in order to see Harris officially become the first-ever Black woman nominated for president by a major political party. Way herself is the second Black woman to hold statewide office in New Jersey – the first was her predecessor, the late Lieutenant Gov. Sheila Oliver – and she and Harris are also both members of the historically Black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
Scutari has served as acting governor several times since becoming Senate President in 2022, including one spell last year when Oliver died and Murphy was out of state.
If Scutari, too, was unable to take the reins as governor, the post would fall to Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Woodbridge); after him in the line of succession are Attorney General Matt Platkin, Transportation Commissioner Francis O’Connor, and Senate President Pro Tempore Shirley Turner (D-Lawrence).