After ten years, Zachary McCue has left U.S. Senator Cory Booker’s staff to become the chief of intergovernmental affairs at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
He replaces Jenny Davis Toth, who departed last month to become the chief of staff to Hudson County Executive Craig Guy.
McCue joined Booker’s Senate staff as a projects specialist in 2014 after more than two years with Clean Ocean Action. He’s been Booker’s deputy state director since 2019.
After Joe Biden became president, McCue had been a finalist for the post of Region 2 Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and won endorsements from most of the state’s environmental leaders, but the post was claimed by a New York candidate.
At the Port Authority, McCue will serve as a liaison to local, county, state, and federal officials at the byzantine bi-state transportation agency, which operates five airports – the largest aviation system in the U.S. – six bridges and tunnels, a bus terminal, the PATH rail system, and shipping ports in New Jersey and New York.
McCue started his new job today. The new post reunites him with George Helmy, a Port Authority commissioner who was McCue’s boss when Helmy was Booker’s state director.