Sherrill names Caldwell, Doucette to run transition team

Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill has named Lt. Gov.-elect Dale Caldwell as chair of her transition team, and longtime confidante Kellie Doucette as the executive director.

The selection of Caldwell, the president of Centenary University and a former deputy commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs, signals Sherrill’s intent to place her new lieutenant governor within the proximity of power as she assembles a new administration.

Doucette played a key role in Sherrill’s 2018 campaign to flip the 11th district congressional seat, and then spent nearly six years as her district director.

Sherrill becomes the first governor in 64 years to run an intra-party transition.  That was when Democrat Richard Hughes succeeded another Democratic governor, Robert Meyner.  Hughes retained several members of Meyner’s cabinet.

Meyner had retained Republican Gov. Alfred Driscoll’s Commissioner of Education, Frederick Raubinger, when he took office in 1953; Raubinger remained until after Hughes won re-election.  Meyner’s Commissioner of Health, Roscoe Kandle, served from 1959 until Republican William Cahill took office in 1970.  Commissioner of Institutions and Agencies (now known as Human Services) John Tramburg, was named in 1955 and served through the end of Hughes’ first year in office.  Hughes also kept Meyner’s Commissioner of Labor, Raymond Male, for the entirety of his two terms. Dwight Palmer became State Highway Commissioner (now the Department of Transportation) in 1954 and stayed until 1966.  `

State Treasurer John Kervick served from 1958 to 1970, when Hughes left office.

Major General William Sharp spent sixteen years in the cabinets of Meyner and Hughes, serving as the chief of staff of the New Jersey Department of Defense; that post is now called the Adjutant General of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs – at least until next year when veterans affairs gets its own cabinet position.

After winning the 2017 gubernatorial election, Phil Murphy named Jose Lozano, who had worked for Gov. Jon Corzine, as head of his transition team.  Murphy named over 80 people to chair various transition committees — and over 700 people to transition committees.