A spat between judges in Essex County over a promotion has been settled, with an ally of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka getting the job.
Avion Benjamin was named earlier this month to replace retiring Judge Thomas M. Moore as the new presiding judge of the civil division. She was picked after a miniaturized version of a political campaign for the post emerged between two civil court judges, Mayra Tarantino and Grace Spencer.
Chief Justice Stuart Rabner named the appointment after a recommendation from the Essex assignment judge, Sheila Venable.
The New Jersey Globe first reported last year that another judge, Robert Gardner, had become Tarantino’s de facto campaign manager and had sought endorsements for his candidates from other judges.
The Trinidad-born Benjamin spent sixteen years in the Newark Law Department, becoming the city’s first assistant corporation counsel in 2015 and then a Superior Court judge in 2020. Initially assigned to family court in 2020, and became involved in juvenile criminal cases in 2021 after an argument between Baraka and Superior Court Judge Carolyn E. Wright led to Wright’s reassignment.
She moved to the criminal court in 2022.
The presiding judge post represents a meteoric rise in the state judiciary for Benjamin, who has served on the bench for less than four years and doesn’t come up for tenure until 2027. The 48-year-old Middlesex County resident still has 22 years left as a judge before reaching the mandatory retirement age.
Spencer was elected to the State Assembly five times before she was nominated for a judgeship in 2016. She had served as an assistant corporation counsel under Mayor Cory Booker. Tarantino also joined the bench in 2016.
Benjamin’s appointment marks another setback for David Katz, a former Livingston mayor who has been the presiding judge of the Family Division in Essex since 2015. He has spent nearly a decade aggressively, but unsuccessfully, campaigning for an assignment judge post, willing to commute long distances to get that job.
Katz was Benjamin’s boss for 22 months, but now she has overtaken him.