New Jersey
Appointed Sen. George Helmy boasts good relations with New Jersey Jewish community
Sen. George Helmy (D-NJ), the placeholder senator picked to replace former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) in the Senate until a winner of the New Jersey Senate race is certified, won’t be in Congress for much longer. But, given the close margins in the Senate, his vote could prove important in his final weeks in the upper chamber.
Helmy, 44, is the former chief of staff to Gov. Phil Murphy and served as a staffer for Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and the late Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), both strong supporters of Israel. He’s the son of immigrants from Egypt, and the first Coptic Christian and the sixth Arab American to serve in the Senate.
Jewish leaders in New Jersey said he’s maintained positive relationships with the community in his career in state politics. Jason Shames, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, told Jewish Insider that Helmy, was supportive of Jewish and pro-Israel priorities, and was consistently willing to listen to and understand Jewish community perspectives and concerns.
“We’re hoping that as long as he sits in that seat, he’ll continue to partner with us, especially during a very challenging couple of months,” Shames said.
“In the governor’s office, he worked to make sure that everybody’s voice was heard… from the Orthodox to the Reform,” Karin Elkis, a co-chair of the New Jersey-Israel Commission and a former congressional staffer, said. “He always made sure to cover it all… I know he has respect from the community.”
A Helmy spokesperson said in a statement that, in New Jersey, the senator was “involved in advancing the work of the New Jersey-Israel Commission,” helping to grow foreign direct investment from Israel in New Jersey by hundreds of millions of dollars under the Murphy administration.
“Through the years, Senator Helmy has been involved in many meetings with community, faith, education, and business leaders to discuss the prosperity and protection of the Jewish and Israeli American population in the state,” the spokesperson said. “And with the concerning rise in antisemitism over the past few years, Senator Helmy has supported the Governor, Attorney General, and other law enforcement agencies in their efforts to protect those within the Jewish and Israeli American population in their homes, schools, places of worship, and beyond.”
The spokesperson said Helmy’s work with New Jersey’s Jewish and Israeli populations goes back to his early years as a Senate staffer.
Helmy’s tenure in the Senate will be among the shortest in U.S. history — he plans to step down in November to allow the winner of the U.S. Senate race, likely Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), to finish out the remaining weeks of the term.
In an interview with Politico near the start of his term, Helmy was clear-eyed about the brevity of his tenure and indicated that he doesn’t expect to make waves legislatively during his short time in the Senate, planning to serve as a reliable vote in support of Democratic priorities.
Helmy’s spokesperson said that the senator will “use his voice to uplift and stand up for some of the most vulnerable civilians in the region and to support ongoing efforts to restore regional stability.”
“The senator believes Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself in accordance with international law to combat Hamas and safely retrieve all hostages,” the spokesperson continued. “At the same time, he also believes that it is time for a cessation of hostilities as concerns of further escalations in the conflict grow. Sen. Helmy finds the current state of relief and access to humanitarian assistance unacceptable, and is of the vehement opinion that immediate humanitarian aid should be guaranteed and provided to civilians in Gaza.”
In his first Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Helmy questioned Stephanie Hallett, the nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, about U.S. military cooperation with Bahrain, efforts to build a regional security architecture and Bahrain’s diplomatic overtures to Iran, making reference to his experiences in the Middle East.
He also asked Julie Smith, the nominee to be under secretary of state for political affairs, about the Ukraine war.
Booker, Helmy’s former boss, introduced Helmy during that same hearing. He said that Helmy had been a “great advisor” to him and to Murphy on foreign policy issues. “He is thoughtful, he is knowledgeable, he is an extraordinary addition to this committee.”
Helmy said that he’s taken guidance from Booker, a consistent pro-Israel voice, on foreign policy.
3-minute read
Charter schools explained. What is a Charter School?
What exactly is a Charter School? Let’s break down the basics: what they are, where they came from and how they work.
Paul Wood Jr, NorthJersey.com
New K-12 bills aimed at curbing inflated salaries and nepotism by improving transparency in the state’s public charter schools are headed to Gov. Phil Murphy for signing, coinciding with a state comptroller’s report that accuses a prominent South Jersey charter school of violating state laws.
The school installed a private vendor to oversee its management without due process, with the school superintendent appointing herself as the vendor’s CEO and naming other family members to key leadership positions, the report said.
The new proposals address transparency, governance, athletics, budgets and salaries for top leadership, said Harry Lee, head of the state’s charter school lobby, the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association.
They also reward high-performing charter schools by making it easier for schools to consolidate, and introduces a 10-year-renewal clause, up from a five-year renewal, through the state Department of Education.
Story continues below photo gallery.
“These bipartisan bills modernize New Jersey’s 30-year-old charter school law by strengthening transparency, accountability and oversight, while continuing to support high-performing charter schools,” said the bills’ sponsor, state Sen. Vin Gopal, D-Monmouth. “Public dollars deserve public accountability, and New Jersey’s students and families deserve nothing less.”
The comptroller’s report targeted CAPS Greater Asbury Park Charter School. News reports detailed the charter school executive director’s husband renting out school property and receiving cash for uniform sales that were not documented.
School staff members called attention to corrupt practices for three years, ending in the board of trustees firing the executive director and her husband in 2024, the comptroller’s report said.
The state has also identified other murky practices, such as school authorities installing CAPS Inc. as its charter management association through a contract process that bypassed competitors and gave it “sweeping authority.”
Several high-performing charter schools in the state, including in Plainfield and Paterson, operate under the umbrella of CAPS, or College Achieve Public Schools.
While many charter schools in the state have been compliant with the law, there were outliers that made it necessary for legislators to act and update the state’s charter schools law, which dates back to 1995, Lee said.
“This bill provides consistency and will require more transparency around school leader contracts,” Lee told NorthJersey.com. “We had issues of a couple of school leader salaries that were out of control. This will absolutely clamp down on that.
“This also improves governance,” Lee said. “So there’s now new requirements for governance around qualifications, residency, where one-third of school trustees have to live or work in the district or region in which the charter school is located, as well as new training requirements.”
Prevents athletic ‘super teams’
The bills will also prevent the creation of “super teams” in high school athletics, after CAPS Greater Asbury Park faced allegations that it built a winning basketball team that won a state title with players recruited from all over the state, including Trenton and Irvington, who were motivated to transfer to CAPS to train under a reputed coach.
If the bills become law, every charter school will also have to post all board of trustees meeting notices, meeting dates and the minutes of each meeting on the charter school’s website in accordance with the provisions of the Open Public Meetings Act. A second bill prohibits charter schools from imposing further criteria that would narrow the pool of students already selected by lottery, bars them from advising or counseling enrolled students to leave the school, and lays out rules for interscholastic athletics participation.
The proposals have the support of two parties that have historically opposed each other — the powerful public school teachers’ union, the New Jersey Education Association, and the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association.
Critics and many public school advocates have long accused charters of siphoning off public funds from public districts, while serving selective populations. The NJEA, which opposed them for years on the grounds that they adhered to fewer accountability measures, views the new bills as a step toward addressing this.
Public charters, on the other hand, are viewed by many as a solution for underserved students, as evidenced in improved test scores and student performance in the state’s six urban districts where most of the 85 schools are. An analysis of 2025 test scores on the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment showed that 71% of charter school students in six urban districts, Camden, Jersey City, Plainfield, Trenton, Paterson and Newark, were more likely to read at grade level and 65% more likely to do math at grade level compared with their district peers, the state charter association said.
Charter schools enroll students through a free lottery entered by parents. The schools’ chargers, or “contracts,” can be revoked at any time by the governor’s office if they do not meet key benchmarks of student performance and fiscal and organizational sustainability. However, like public schools, charters are free of cost and are run primarily using taxpayer money from sending school districts, based on the number of students the districts send.
The Garden State is turning up the heat on parents to help prevent unruly behavior by teenagers.
It’s been an ongoing problem that has played out in the past few years in several beach towns and other communities.
Two bills were signed into law this week by Gov. Phil Murphy that build on prior efforts to crack down on the type of disruptive and violent antics seen in towns throughout the state.
“I think it’s smart to try and, like, kind of corral this issue a little bit, because it’s definitely gotten worse as I’ve gotten older,” Ocean City resident Madelyn Adamson said. “Making sure the parents kind of control their kids a little more is probably the way to go.”
One of the laws aims to hold parents and guardians more accountable by imposing consequences on them.
Any adults who have shown neglect or disregard for supervising their kids who incite public brawls could be charged with a disorderly persons offense.
The grown-ups could also get fined $1,000 for unruly behavior by teens that leads to property damage.
A second law requires the state Attorney General to create a crowd management training program for police in areas hit by more than one pop-up party or flash mob in the past year.
While public safety is at the heart of the new laws, officials say there’s an economic aspect to all of this as well, especially in shore towns that are highly dependent on tourism.
“A Memorial Day weekend public brawl that’s all over the news? People don’t want to come down the shore the next weekend and that hurts all kinds of small business, large business,” NJ Senator Paul Moriarty said.
From Camden and Cherry Hill to Trenton and the Jersey Shore, what about life in New Jersey do you want WHYY News to cover? Let us know.
On Monday, the final day of the current New Jersey legislative session, lawmakers in the General Assembly and state Senate passed three bills designed to strengthen public trust and safety in immigrant communities across the Garden State, and to protect them from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and roundups.
To become law, the legislation must be signed by outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy before he leaves office Jan. 20. New Jersey has the second-largest immigrant population in the country after California.
The Safe Communities Act requires the state attorney general to develop a plan for how sensitive locations such as public schools, health care facilities and houses of worship would interact with federal immigration authorities without deterring community members from seeking services or engaging with them.
The act mandates that the commissioners of Community Affairs, Children and Families, Health, Human Services, Education and Corrections, as well as the administrative director of the courts, adopt the attorney general’s model policies, or policies to provide greater protection for community members, and to prominently display them in public-facing areas.
The Privacy Protection Act limits the collection and sharing of data by federal government and health care entities to ensure that Jersey residents are not discouraged from seeking necessary services.
The third measure codifies the attorney general’s Immigrant Trust Directive, which draws a clear distinction between state, county and local law enforcement officers — who are responsible for enforcing state criminal law — and federal immigration authorities, including ICE, who enforce federal civil immigration law. The bill limits the voluntary assistance that state law enforcement officers may provide to federal authorities. The directive, which is designed to foster trust between police and community members, has withstood legal challenges by state and federal courts since it was issued in 2018.
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