Essex County Commissioner gets early show of force for NJ-11 campaign

Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill (D-Montclair) is running for Congress – and he’s already got a vast array of prominent Essex County Democrats already aligned behind his campaign.

After months of speculation and planning, Gill officially announced this morning that he’ll compete in the special election to succeed Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, who will soon be departing her 11th congressional district seat. Gill, a longtime Democratic Party operative, said that as New Jersey Democrats look for ways to push back against President Donald Trump’s administration, he’d be fighter for them in Congress.

“I’m running for Congress because our president, enabled by bootlickers in Congress and Wall Street, is wreaking havoc on our streets, hollowing out our economy, tearing down our American values,” Gill said in his launch video. “I’m running to fight back against Donald Trump and his crooked buddies, and to make sure that everyone has a place at the table.”

Gill’s campaign launch comes with more than 60 endorsements from Essex County Democrats, among them seven local state legislators and dozens of other elected officials and party leaders. It’s a show of force so far unmatched by any of Gill’s opponents in the increasingly crowded Democratic primary – but it’s less clear to what extent it will sway voters who have grown more accustomed in recent years to voting against party-backed candidates.

A lifelong resident of Montclair, the famously progressive suburb home to Sherrill and many other leading Democrats, Gill said in his launch video that his political career was inspired by his father, a middle school teacher whom Gill said “would always make room for others, no matter what.”

Over the course of his career as a political operative, Gill has worked with and for Senators Cory Booker and Frank Lautenberg, the late Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), former Rep. Steve Rothman (D-Englewood), and outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy; Gill managed Murphy’s 2017 campaign, which catapulted the former Goldman Sachs executive from a political unknown into New Jersey’s most powerful man. Gill has run his own firm, the BGill Group, since 2017.

In 2011, Gill was elected to the 5th district seat on the Essex County Board of Freeholders, and moved into an at-large seat in 2014; he’s been re-elected to the board three times since then. As an at-large commissioner, Gill already represents nearly two-fifths of the 11th district’s voters – and an even greater share of its Democratic voters. […]

Read the entire article here.