Murphy names two new BPU picks to replace Gordon and Solomon

Gov. Phil Murphy will not reappoint  Bob Gordon and Dianne Solomon to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, instead nominating a member of his senior staff and a lawyer from Basking Ridge to replace them, the New Jersey Globe has confirmed.

Christine Guhl Sadovy, the governor’s cabinet secretary, will replace Gordon.   She served as chief of staff at the BPU and as legislative and political director at Planned Parenthood before joining the governor’s office.   She previously worked at the Sierra Club as their representative on the Beyond Coal Campaign.

To replace Solomon, the wife of New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Lee Solomon, Murphy has picked Marian Abdou.

Gordon resigned from the State Senate in 2018 after Murphy appointed him to the BPU.

“I feel privileged to have helped the governor advance groundbreaking policies in clean energy, and I look forward to continuing to shape policy in the next chapter of my career,” Gordon told the New Jersey Globe.

Abdou is the managing senior counsel at NRG Energy and a former attorney at Hess Corporation.   She practiced law at several New York firms.

Murphy had nominated former Assemblywoman Maria Rodriguez-Gregg (R-Medford) to replace Solomon in April 2022, but State Sen. Jean Stanfield (R-Westampton) has refused to sign off on her nomination.  He is withdrawing his nomination of Rodriguez-Gregg.

Last year, Murphy also dropped BPU Commissioner Upendra Chivukula, a former Democratic assemblyman from Somerset County.  His pick, Somerset Democratic vice chair Zenon Christodoulou, was quickly confirmed by the Senate.

Murphy and Senate President Nicholas Scutari are in discussions over a replacement for holdover BPU Commissioner Mary-Anna Holden, a Morris County Republican.