Three weeks after former Sen. Bob Menendez’s resignation, New Jersey officially has a new senator.
Sen. George Helmy was sworn in Monday evening in the U.S. Capitol Senate chamber. Helmy is the only Arab American senator in the current Congress.
Sen. Cory Booker, now the state’s senior senator, walked Helmy to the dais and stood at his side while he took the oath. After Helmy was sworn in, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York voiced his congratulations and called Helmy a “great addition” to the Senate, noting he is the first senator to be a member of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
George Helmy
According to his office, Helmy will serve on three committees: Foreign Relations, Finance, and Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. These are the same committees on which Menendez served.
Helmy will hold the post for only about two months, because Gov. Phil Murphy has said he will appoint the winner of this fall’s general election to the role when the results are certified in November.
Earlier: George Helmy to represent NJ, serve the remainder of Bob Menendez’s term in US Senate
Who is George Helmy?
Most recently, Helmy was an executive for a hospital system, but he served as chief of staff for nearly five years before departing the Murphy administration last fall.
Before taking the post of chief of staff, Helmy was the state director and deputy chief of staff for Booker and served in the office of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg. He is a Jersey City native and lives with his family in Morris County. He has a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers and a master’s from Harvard.
This isn’t the first time Helmy has been mentioned in association with Menendez this year. During Menendez’s federal trial, former state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal testified that he cut off an inquiry in 2020 from Helmy — who was not named specifically — about the investigation of a North Bergen man whose case was complicating the passage of landmark criminal justice reform.
Though Helmy’s name was not mentioned in the testimony, the reference to the governor’s chief of staff aligns with his time in the role. The subject of his inquiry involved the case of Walter Somick, a North Bergen recreation worker who was charged in 2016 — before Grewal took office — with falsifying time sheets to collect pay for work he didn’t perform. It was a serious charge: He was facing a mandatory five years in prison for official misconduct.
Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey Statehouse. Email: sobko@northjersey.com
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: George Helmy sworn in as NJ senator after Menendez resignation
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Publish date : 2024-09-09 10:54:00
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