Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo Jr., a notorious Democrat in name only, whose name is synonymous with power brokering, has endorsed County Commissioner Brendan Gill for Congress.
To the casual observer, it is a routine political announcement. To those who have watched New Jersey politics for decades, it is another transaction in a perpetual economy of favors — a master class in survival and a reminder that for the working men and women of the state, the government operating in the shadows is too often useless.
The announcement, filled with familiar praise for parks and stabilized taxes, would be unremarkable if not for the man making it. DiVincenzo is no ordinary executive.
He is an architect of the modern political betrayal — a Democrat who crossed the aisle in 2013 to endorse Republican Gov. Chris Christie for re-election.
That endorsement was not, as it was later framed, an act of conscience or bipartisan goodwill. According to sworn testimony in the Bridgegate scandal, it was bought with public money.
GOP dirty trickster David Wildstein, Christie’s enforcer at the Port Authority, testified that over a million dollars from the Hudson-Raritan Estuary Resources Program was steered to an Essex County park project for one explicit purpose: to “build on the relationship with the Essex County executive” and secure his endorsement.
The county executive got park money. Wildstein claimed it was a payoff for the endorsement. The governor got his headline-grabbing Democratic support. The public got a lesson in how the game is played.
This is the tangled web Gill, long recognized as one of New Jersey’s most notorious political insiders, now steps into as DiVincenzo’s choice as successor to Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill, the Blue Dog Democrat who resigned from Congress after winning the general election.
Gill is the principal in a consulting firm, The BGill Group, that exists to navigate the levers of power for clients, who can be any special interest or corporation with enough cash to grease palms.
He is presented as a dedicated public servant, yet his résumé reads as a guide to converting public service into private influence and then turning that into cash.
He is an Essex County commissioner, but also the president of the BGill Group, a consulting firm that appears to lobby the same government halls he helps oversee.
He managed Gov. Phil Murphy’s campaign while drawing a public salary and health benefits — a feat of political multitasking difficult to reconcile with the experience of any citizen who must choose a single employer.
“When the private company running the lottery’s sales and marketing wanted a meeting with the governor’s office to discuss a bill that could raise its profits, it turned to the firm with one of the closest connections to Gov. Phil Murphy himself,” wrote Dustin Racioppi, in a 2019 Record article describing Gill as ‘Phil Murphy’s inside man.’ “The company, Northstar New Jersey, followed a similar strategy several years earlier to win the long-term lottery contract under Republican Gov. Chris Christie.”
Public Strategies Impact (PSI), one of the top lobbying firms in New Jersey, announced a strategic partnership with Gill and his firm, less than a month after the Goldman Sachs millionaire won the gubernatorial election. It looked like an arrangement that allowed a firm that gets paid to influence policy to purchase assistance from a guy who controlled access to the Governor’s Office, without stuffing cash in the pockets of a government employee.
He is not a break from the system but its logical evolution: a strategist who mastered the game, now seeking to become one of its principal players.
The endorsement from DiVincenzo should be seen less as a recommendation and more as a handoff within a closed circuit.
This is the same county executive whose relationship with power has consistently blurred the line between public resources and political tools.
Emails revealed that Christie’s top aides used the taxpayer-funded Office of Intergovernmental Affairs to “put a Democratic mayor in the end zone” as a favor to DiVincenzo ahead of a key endorsement.
This is the same executive who spent years fighting allegations that he misused campaign funds for personal expenses — trips to Puerto Rico, luxury meals, even a tuxedo rental. Those charges were initially dismissed when the election commission, hobbled by vacancies, could not form a quorum.
They were later revived by an appellate court and ultimately settled with a fine and no admission of guilt. The pattern is not one of criminal conviction, but of constant proximity to the ethical breach, always skirting just inside the shadow of the law.
And now, a political boss with a history of transactional endorsements backs a political operative who embodies the merger of government and influence peddling.
They speak of revitalized parks and modernized infrastructure — noble goals — while public trust erodes like a neglected Newark sidewalk.
What does this mean for the resident of Belleville, who watched their mayor endorse Christie after a meeting arranged by DiVincenzo’s office, only to later see millions in Hurricane Sandy funds directed to a town largely untouched by the storm?
What does it mean for the Essex County voter who reads of “feeble oversight” in the county’s multimillion-dollar vaccination program?
It means the political machine is efficient, but only at sustaining itself.
This endorsement is a story New Jersey has seen before — one where public funds buy political support, campaign fines are settled as a cost of doing business, and the line between public service and personal gain has all but vanished.
Gill may well go to Congress. But if he does, he will carry the unmistakable imprint of the system that produced him — a system that has perfected the art of politics while neglecting the purpose of government.
For the working-class families of the 11th District, grappling with real problems untouched by political maneuvering, this latest alliance offers only the stale promise of more of the same.
And in New Jersey, “more of the same” is a luxury they can no longer afford.
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