Former Senate President Steve Sweeney will announce on Monday that he will seek the Democratic nomination for governor, becoming the second candidate in the race to replace term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy in 2025.
Sweeney would not confirm the Monday announcement.
“I’m leaning toward an announcement shortly,” he told the New Jersey Globe.
Sweeney has been widely expected to run. He spent months in 2021 meeting with county political leaders, but then unexpectedly lost his own Senate to Republican Ed Durr. Still, weeks later, he told the New Jersey State Association of Pipe Trades convention in Atlantic City that he intended to run anyway.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop is the lone Democrat who has formally entered the race. Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) and Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) are actively pursuing party support, but must first run for re-election to their congressional seats next year. Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and former Deputy U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jim Johnson are also mulling bids, along with Senate President Nicholas Scutari and Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee Chairman Paul Sarlo.
Sweeney was preparing to run in 2017 but wound up changing his mind.
If he wins, Sweeney will follow the model of Democrat Robert B. Meyner, who lost re-election to his Warren County State Senate seat in 1951 and was elected governor in 1953.