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These are Gov. Phil Murphy's handpicked choices to police elections in NJ
By
Nancy Solomon
Published Jun 15, 2023
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Office of the New Jersey Governor
By
Nancy Solomon
Published Jun 15, 2023
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New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced his appointments for a new Election Law Enforcement Commission lineup on Thursday following the mass resignation of its former members in March.
The four appointments include a gay man and the first Black woman ever to serve on the commission. Under a measure passed earlier this year, the appointments don’t require state Senate confirmation.
The resignations came after a public fight over ELEC Executive Director Jeffrey Brindle, who reports to the commission. The governor had sought Brindle’s resignation over an internal email that was dismissive of National Coming Out Day. Others provided to Gothamist by a transparency advocate also included several negative comments about transgender issues.
After the state Legislature passed the Elections Transparency Act, which granted the governor the power to fire and reappoint the commission, the then-commissioners resigned.
The governor appointed Democrats Tom Prol and Norma Evans, as well as Republicans Ryan Peters and Jon-Henry Barr. Prol, who was the first openly gay president of the New Jersey State Bar Association, was selected to serve as the commission's chair.
“The integrity of elections is a vital and sacrosanct component of a free and fair democracy,” Prol said in a written statement provided by the governor’s office. “Our representative government requires adherence to the rule of law and due process and I look forward to implementing the commission’s mandate with the guidance of those bedrock democratic principles.”
"Ask Governor Murphy" returns on Tuesday
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy delivers remarks at an event in Paramus on May 2.
Kyle Mazza/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
"Ask Governor Murphy” — your chance to present questions to New Jersey’s governor live, on-air — returns Tuesday, June 20 at 7 p.m. Listen live on WNYC.org or on the radio at 93.9 FM.
Send us your questions:
- Using this Google form before the show.
- Tweet at us by using #AskGovMurphy.
- Call 844-745-TALK (844-745-8255) to join us on the air.
Prol is a partner at the law firm Sills Cummis & Gross. He co-drafted New Jersey’s marriage equality legislation and is a board member of LGBTQ rights group Garden State Equality, according to the governor’s office. He lives in Asbury Park.
Peters is a former member of the state Assembly who represented a district that includes parts of Burlington, Camden and Atlantic counties. He is also a former member of the Burlington County Board of Chosen Freeholders and an attorney at Pepper Hamilton.
Evans works in media relations for the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor in the state attorney general’s office. She served for nearly 20 years as a deputy attorney general in the Division of Criminal Justice in the Department of Law and Public Safety, and before that she was an assistant prosecutor in the Camden County prosecutor’s office. She is the former president of the Association of Black Women Lawyers of New Jersey, which she led from 2019 to 2020, and will be the first Black woman to serve as an ELEC commissioner. Evans lives in Marlton.
Jon-Henry Barr is the chief municipal prosecutor in Clark Township and has his own firm, Barr & Gulyas, and served as vice president of the Board of Education of Union County Vocational-Technical Schools for the past five years. Barr lives in Clark.
The Election Transparency Act passed in March. It also raised political contribution limits and invalidated local pay-to-play restrictions in favor of uniform policies under state law. It shortened the amount of time ELEC has to conduct investigations about campaign finance violations, which critics say will weaken the agency.
“I did not like the Election Transparency Act,” said CJ Griffin, director of the Stein Public Interest Center at the Pashman Stein law firm. Griffin, a government transparency advocate, said that even though she opposed the new law, she approves of the new commission appointments, especially Prol.
“I’ve known him through the bar association since I’ve been a lawyer,” Griffin said. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a lawyer in New Jersey who doesn’t think highly of him.”
Griffin’s public records requests also unearthed many of Brindle’s emails commenting on LGBTQ issues. In one, he wrote “give me a break” in response to a suggestion about including pronouns on email signatures. In another, he sent a message to a staff member with a link to an article about a trans woman who impregnated fellow inmates in a New Jersey women’s prison, writing “We truly are living through insane times.”
The new commissioners could potentially replace Brindle, something the former commission was unwilling to do. Before their resignations, the three serving commissioners were appointed in 2017 by former Gov. Chris Christie. A fourth position on the commission had been vacant.
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Nancy Solomon
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