The New Jersey Globe is continuing its series of legislator Q&As this week with Cody Miller. Prior installments include Luanne Peterpaul, Dave Bailey Jr., Doug Steinhardt, Al Abdelaziz, Andrew Zwicker, and Mike Inganamort.
Assemblyman Cody Miller (D-Monroe) is an official at Rowan College of South Jersey and was first elected to represent the 4th legislative district, which includes parts of Atlantic, Camden, and Gloucester counties, in 2023. Miller won competitive legislative races in 2023 and 2025.
He had previously served on Monroe Township’s council and school board. He was a Rowan College of South Jersey Trustee for four years, and is an exempt volunteer firefighter at Williamstown Fire Company #1.
Miller is a vice chair of the Oversight, Reform, and Federal Relations Committee and a member of the Higher Education and State & Local Government committees.
A list of Miller’s floor and committee votes can be found here.
Click here to view a list of bills that Miller has sponsored.
The following phone interview has been edited for clarity and length.
New Jersey Globe: You were the first ‘90s-born legislator to serve in the New Jersey Legislature, is that right?
Cody Miller: That is exactly right. It’s pretty exciting. I am accustomed to breaking some records. When I got on the council in Monroe Township, I was elected as the youngest Democratic councilperson in the town’s history at 23. So being able to represent different age groups, especially young people who are trying to figure out how they’re going to afford home ownership, how they’re going to pay their student loan bills, and what it’s going to be like to start a family, those are challenges that I uniquely understand because I’m in the same boat.
I bought my first home, have to pay my student loans, have to pay a lot of other things, and it sometimes is tough. And I know it’s tough for families, because I didn’t grow up in a household with a lot of money. My mom was a single mom. She raised the four of us, and my grandparents helped to raise us. So my perspective in the Legislature is different than most, because I’ve seen some pretty significant challenges.
And how did you find yourself on a path into politics at a young age?
Well, I’m going to give credit to my school teachers. There’s a history teacher, Mr. Kofoed. I was in seventh grade, and I was going to become a music teacher. I did choir, acting; I thought I was going to be on Broadway, a famous singer somewhere, and my teacher basically told me and said, “What do you mean you want to be a music teacher? What do you mean you want to be a singer? You have a real talent for this in classes. When you talk about current policy and issues, you’re a great speaker. Don’t waste your talent.” And I kind of laughed at him, because at that time, nobody really thinks about going into politics.
And when I got into college, I had a really great professor, Mr. Schoener, and I started in history and political science. And he said, “You should run for office. You have a lot of great ideas. You’re energetic. Your perspective, based on the challenges that you faced growing up, would be an asset.”
I was in high school when Barack Obama first ran and became president. He was raised by his grandparents, like I was, and a single mom, like I was, and I never thought someone like me could have a path into politics and government. And then fast forward to college, when a professor said, “You should run for council.”
The first time I ran, I ran against incumbents, so I was not a party-backed or supported candidate. I was 19 at the time. I raised my own money, I got my own signs, and I knocked on doors, and I got about 500 votes, and when I lost, let’s just say the local organization really didn’t welcome me. And there’s this person that everybody knows in Gloucester County: Steve Sweeney. Steve saw that I ran, and I started volunteering with the Gloucester County Democratic Party, and Steve kind of became a mentor of mine. And [former state Sen.] Fred Madden did, and [state Sen.] Paul Moriarty too, who I now serve with in the Legislature.
And then I ran again, outside of the local organization, with someone who was on the council, and we won. It was a shocking victory. We won the mayorship and three council at-large seats in a primary where we weren’t the local-backed candidates, and we knocked on thousands of doors. It was exciting for me because I got to experience the local government and see how it worked.
I would have never gotten into the Legislature if I weren’t the type of person who said I’m ready to sit down, I’m ready to solve problems, and our government should be representative of the people that we serve. And the fact that there are not enough younger members in the Legislature was concerning to me, and I wanted to change that.
You are also the executive director of advancement and foundation at Rowan College of South Jersey. Could you describe what that job is?
My primary job is to raise money to help students afford their college education. I run the 501 (c) (3) nonprofit, I do the budgeting, I do the donor outreach, I do the marketing and communication aspect stuff, and I also deal with the advancement side of the house, meaning some of the external partnerships that we have with our business partners, raising funds to help support our students when they decide to go on different career pathways — like going towards getting a certificate or not necessarily going on to college — because our institution also serves adult learners who maybe don’t want to go on and earn a bachelor’s degree.
What’s crazy is I started as a student at the college, and it was a full-circle moment for me, because I now oversee the same foundation that helped me to pay for my education.
I’m so blessed to be working here because I know what it’s like to be a student who comes to a college that’s a first-gen and doesn’t know what they’re going to do, what their pathway is, or how they’re going to be able to afford it. And I bring those experiences to the work that I do every single day.
Speaking of education, one of your larger priorities is a bill that addresses what you call “AI surveillance” at schools. What does that bill do, and why is it necessary moving forward?
It’s a really simple bill. Artificial intelligence is here to stay, but we want to make sure we have safeguards for our students, and some of these AI-enabled surveillance systems have the ability to capture information and data on students’ habits and behaviors. It becomes more than just identifying if somebody has a weapon. And when we talk about people’s constitutional rights and privacy, I have a concern with that, because students should feel comfortable in an educational environment and shouldn’t have to worry about being constantly patrolled. This bill would essentially allow those local boards of education to have to adopt a policy that explicitly states what it’s being used for and who has access to the information, in addition to clearly established policies and guidelines regarding records retention.
It’s important because AI is a huge thing. It’s going to be one of the biggest things of our time, because there are job implications and workforce impact, there are security and privacy concerns, and generally, I think the Legislature now is starting to see the impacts, including the negative impacts, of some of these systems, and we need to provide some guardrails on this.
It seems like the AI surveillance bill and the K-12 phone policy bill that you also sponsored are sort of in conversation with each other in terms of limiting the pervasiveness of technology with students — do you see it that way?
Well, I think technology is important, and the way that we use it is important. But my concern again is that they become distractions. They’re distractions in the classroom. They’re distractions amongst people. I mean, you go to a supermarket, and there used to be a time when people would talk and have conversations with one another, and I’m not seeing that anymore. And even in the classroom environment, trying to remove those distractions allows people to have basic human conversations with one another.
That’s my biggest fear with the polarization we’re seeing in the political climate, where we’re not engaging with our neighbors or our colleagues, but we are constantly online on social media. The attacks are personal. There’s no basic humanity. And my concern with some of this technology is we’re taking the basic humanity out of things, and that’s what we sought to address with the cell phone bill.
And I want to give credit to my senator, Paul Moriarty, because we work as a team in the fourth legislative district, and this was a priority of his, and Assemblywoman Rosy Bagolie, who works in the higher education space.
Generally speaking, we’ve got to get back to communicating with one another, and I try to do that. I try to be nonpartisan. I know we all have political parties that we associate ourselves with, but there are some great legislators who I’ve worked with, like Assemblyman Michael Inganamort, who are just generally good people, and I think we tend to forget that.
We see that with this president, who has completely blown everything up, and, without sounding too overly political, I think he’s destroyed the ability for us to communicate with one another, where it’s almost as if every moment is a gotcha moment.
While I associate with the Democratic Party, I don’t think we have to view this as if we can’t agree on certain basic concepts, like nobody wants to be taxed into oblivion. I certainly don’t want to be. Everyone wants their own personal freedom and liberty to make the decisions about who they love and what they want to support. Those are basic things we can agree on, and we have to get back to that.
Building off of that, you’ve won your seat in some pretty competitive elections. Do you think that gives you a special drive or special perspective, compared to safe-seat legislators throughout the state?
It does, and I don’t want to knock anybody in a safe district. I mean, I’d like to be in a safe district, but quite honestly, I like being in a competitive district. I get a diverse viewpoint from other people, and you have to work harder. You have to work for it. Knocking on doors — I know that Assemblyman Anthony Angelozzi and Assemblywoman Andrea Katz were doing it in the 8th, and that was the mentality that I adopted. The only way I’m going to know the issues in my district is if I’m knocking on doors and connecting with the voters of my district. So yeah, being in a competitive district makes you work harder, it makes you have an appreciation for what you do, but it also makes me, personally, more grounded.
We’ve talked about a few of your policy goals; what’s something else you want to get done in Trenton this year?
So I think the big issue I’m aligned with the governor on is streamlining government processes and the online permitting portal for people to submit permit licenses.
The second would be the energy and the utility affordability costs. I was one of the first Democrats in the new legislative cycle to come out in support of nuclear, passed a bill that dealt with an advanced nuclear feasibility study for the [Board of Public Utilities] to conduct, and recently, the governor signed a bill that her staff worked on. That was the CAFRA bill that essentially ended the 50-year moratorium on nuclear in New Jersey because of outdated language.
And then the last one is I recently got a bill moved, which is the higher education task force. This bill brings everybody together in the higher education space to look at our governance, funding, and structure. Unfortunately, I just don’t think [the system] works for the environment that we’re in. And it’s going to take a methodical approach to bring everybody to the table to figure out what our structure would look like, how we fund this system, and how we can collaborate better.
Final topic: How did you get into volunteer firefighting, and what’s that like?
I love it. I got my state exemption a few years ago, so as much as I would love to say I’m still riding in a fire truck, I’m not as active as I’d like to be, but I absolutely love it. When I first got into the fire service, it was more, “This is exciting to me.” It was something that I always wanted to do. I joined the fire department when I was 22, and I had a blast. I had a blast responding to emergencies, fighting working fires, and responding to motor vehicle accidents.
But the biggest part of it is brotherhood and sisterhood. I became a part of a family. Like everywhere I’ve gone, the community helped raise me, and the fire department helped raise me, too. And the greatest part of it is that when I walk into a room, I get more heat from my brethren of the fire service than I do from politicos of the other party. [Laughs] They have no idea the extent of the attacks that I face when I walk into the firehouse at our monthly meeting.