McKeon will get Codey’s Senate seat, Brendan Gill will run for Assembly

Democrats have settled on Assemblyman John McKeon (D-West Orange) to replace Richard J. Codey in the State Senate, with Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill (D-Montclair) set to run for the State Assembly, the New Jersey Globe has confirmed.

Gill’s wife, Alixon Collazos-Gill, will drop out of the Assembly race.

Democrats have not yet decided who will get the second Assembly seat, but sources with direct knowledge of the selection process say that having a diverse delegation in the 27th district was essential – in other words, the third member of the slate will be a woman.

The deal averts a floor fight between McKeon and Gill for the Senate seat of Richard J. Codey, a former governor who announced on Monday that he would retire from the Senate at the end of his current term after 50 years in the New Jersey Legislature.

Possible candidates for the second Assembly seat include Essex County Commissioner Pat Sebold; Livingston Councilwoman Rosaura Bagolie; Millburn Mayor Maggee Miggins; Millburn Township Committeewomen Annette Romano, the Democratic municipal chair; former Township Committeewoman Jackie Benjamin Lieberberg; and Carrie Parikh, the chief privacy officer at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey and the state’s former chief data officer.

Democratic county committee members in Clifton, Livingston, Millburn, Montclair, Roseland, and West Orange will meet on August 24 to ratify the new slate.  Passaic County Democratic Chairman John Currie is leaving on vacation, but has given his consent for the meeting to select new legislative candidates to be conducted prior to his return on August 22.

Collazos-Gill won the June primary to replace Thomas P. Giblin (D-Montclair), who decided to retire after eighteen years as an assemblyman.

Party leaders set a limit of one legislative seat for Montclair, forcing a realignment of the ticket.  That also appears to pre-empt another Assembly candidate from West Orange.

Essex County Democrats have not yet decided who will replace Gill as a county commissioner.  They could hold a special meeting before the August 31 deadline, or let Gill run for both and then decline the county post.

In June, Codey had defeated another veteran incumbent, State Sen. Nia Gill (D-Montclair) in the Democratic primary by twenty percentage points, after redistricting put the two in the same district.