By Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) announced Tuesday that he plans to resign effective Aug. 20, creating a Senate vacancy in the wake of his federal bribery conviction.
Gov. Phil Murphy (D-N.J.) subsequently said he plans to exercise his duty as the state’s governor to make a temporary appointment to fill the Senate vacancy “to ensure the people of New Jersey have the representation they deserve.”
At a news conference on Wednesday, the governor called Menendez’s resignation “a sad end to what was a very productive career in public service.”
Senate resignations stemming from ethical scandals are rare. Only four other senators left the chamber in the post-World War II era under corruption clouds, the most recent being Al Franken (D-Minn.) in 2017.
Now, Murphy must pick an appointee to fill the position until Jan. 3 — the end of Menendez’s Senate term. Here are some of the prospective candidates who have been floated to temporarily replace Menendez in the Senate.
Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.)
In June, Kim won the New Jersey Senate Democratic primary for Menendez’s seat. If Kim wins in November, he will replace Menendez in the Senate for a full term beginning in 2025.
Kim, a former State Department official who joined the House in 2018, has indicated that he would accept the temporary appointment to the Senate if the governor asks. But the Republican candidate running against Kim in the Senate race, Curtis Bashaw, has urged Murphy to “appoint a caretaker to this seat, as is the long-standing New Jersey tradition, and not give either [Senate] candidate the advantage of incumbency in this election.”
Kim’s potential appointment is also complicated by the fact that he ran in the competitive Senate Democratic primary against the governor’s wife, Tammy Murphy.
Tammy Murphy, who dropped out of the Senate race before primary votes were cast, has also taken herself out of consideration for the temporary Senate appointment.
Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way
Way was appointed by Murphy to be the state’s lieutenant governor in 2023, one month after the death of the then-lieutenant governor, Sheila Oliver. She is also New Jersey’s Secretary of State.
She previously was an administrative law judge for the state of New Jersey. Among her other local New Jersey government roles, in 2006 Way was elected to the Passaic County Board of Chosen Freeholders — a term in the state that was a precursor to what’s now referred to as county commissioners.
Patricia Campos-Medina
Campos-Medina is a labor activist who serves as executive director of The Worker Institute at Cornell University. She told Politico that she would be willing to serve if the governor asked.
As one of the Democratic candidates who ran in the Senate primary in New Jersey. she came in second in the race, after Kim, with 16 percent of the vote.
U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas
Salas, who was appointed to her current role in 2011, was floated as a potential Senate contender last year. She’s a former Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey president and federal magistrate judge.
In 2020, Salas and her family were the target of an attack at their home by a self-declared men’s rights activist who had filed a case before Salas. Her son was killed and her husband was critically wounded in an attack. Following the incident, Salas called for tighter restrictions on the personal information of judges.
Nina Mitchell Wells
Wells was New Jersey’s Secretary of State from 2006 to 2010 under then-Gov. Jon Corzine (D). She’s married to Ted Wells, a prominent defense attorney who has mentored House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.)
Watson Coleman has been in Congress since 2015 and, before that, she served in the New Jersey General Assembly.
When asked about the prospect of the Senate appointment, Watson Coleman’s spokesperson, Mike Shanahan, told the New York Times that she “would gladly continue to serve New Jersey in whatever capacity is asked of her.” But Shanahan conceded that the congresswoman “doesn’t expect that call.”
