BRENDAN GILL, ULTIMATE INSIDER, WILL BRING JERSEY’S ‘BOSS’ POLITICS TO D.C.

But Gill’s baggage as businessman and lobbyist, along with reported outbursts of temper and alleged misogyny, could undermine his coronation in CD-11

Brendan Gill, working the crowd at NJ 11th for Change.

UPDATE After the publication of our story on Brendan Gill, his campaign responded with comments and requests for “corrections,” on background, to be included in the story. We are happy to include them here, in italics below, and indeed we had reached out to Gill and his staff in advance of publishing the story. We add that The New Jersey Democrat offered instead to publish in full a response from Gill, rather than the additions included below.

Since he announced his intention to run for Congress in November to succeed Governor-Elect Mikie Sherrill as the representative from New Jersey’s 11th congressional district, Brendan Gill has been on cruise control. He’s racked up a lengthy list of endorsements by top politicos in the long-entrenched Essex County political machine run by LeRoy Jones, the chairman of the Essex County Democratic Committee (ECDC), and Joseph “Joey D” DiVincenzo, the county executive. And Gill has emerged as a front-runner in a field of more than a dozen or so candidates competing in the special election primary scheduled for Thursday – yes, Thursday! – February 5.

But Gill is dragging a ton of baggage into the race. Despite his endorsements, which include official backing of the ECDC, and his own record as an Essex County commissioner and chairman of the Montclair Democratic Committee, his victory on February 5 is not a sure thing. Not only does Gill face a raft of formidable opponents, led by former Representative Tom Malinowski and Analilia Mejia, a union organizer and former director of the NJ Working Families Alliance, but Gill is shadowed by potential conflicts of interest, questionable business dealings, a history that includes a 2000 assault, and charges that he created a “toxic” environment for women in the past.

Gill cites decades of involvement in local politics and community service going back to the 1990s as having prepared him to go to Congress, along with a record of accomplishments listed on his campaign website. Over the years, he says, he’s become expert in building coalitions to get things done, including through his office as an Essex County commissioner since 2012. He’s managed electoral campaigns for Senator Cory Booker and Governor Phil Murphy, among others. “I’ve been an organizer,” he told the Morris County screening committee, in advance of its December 14 county convention. “I’ve worked for two members of Congress, I’ve worked for two United States senators, so I understand the federal process,” he said. “I’ve also been firmly planted, and rooted, in my home community.”

But Gill is the embodiment of New Jersey’s stale machine politics, the very people that progressives and reformers have long campaigned against. Indeed, Senator Andy Kim, who led the fight to reform New Jersey’s ballot system, and Representative Jamie Raskin are backing Malinowski against Gill, while Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders are behind Mejia. “I’m going to be stepping up to get involved across this state and make sure we’re taking on elected officials who have been standing up and protecting the machine politics,” said Kim.

This article is based on interviews by The New Jersey Democrat with people familiar with Gill’s political career over a quarter of a century, a careful review of available documents and news reports, lobbying records at the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC), legal documents – including a 25-year-old police report, a Seton Hall Law School disciplinary report, and a Department of Justice subpoena from an aborted federal investigation involving Gill in 2020 – and two early interviews with Gill.

So far, there’s little indication that any of Gill’s Democratic rivals plan to go negative on Gill, weaponizing past reports from his political or business careers. “They’ll want to stay positive between now and February,” said a leading New Jersey political consultant who isn’t involved in the CD-11 race. But that doesn’t mean that Republican opposition researchers won’t unleash the record against Gill in the general election. “And not only against Gill,” said another person long familiar with New Jersey politics told TNJD. “They’ll try to tar all of the Democrats in the state who’ll be running for Congress in 2026. ‘Just look what the Democratic party is okay with,’ they’ll say.”

The following report is organized roughly chronologically.

Chapter 1: The Seton Hall incident and the Steve Rothman incident

Way back in 2000, Brendan W. Gill, then 25, was a student at Seton Hall Law School. Under “Education” on Gill’s LinkedIn page, it simply says “Seton Hall University,” from which he graduated magna cum laude. But Gill didn’t make it through Seton Hall Law School, following a violent incident on April 15, 2000, when Gill’s law school career came to a screeching halt.

In that incident, according to a police report from the Bloomfield Township Municipal Court, obtained by TNJD, Gill was accused in a citizen’s complaint of “an act of aggravated assault specifically by striking complainant with an aluminum bat in the head, neck, shoulders, and midsection.”

In a six-page letter memorializing the event from a Seton Hall law professor and associate dean written on April 19, 2001, the result of a year-long investigation of the event – also obtained by TNJD – it was reported that the incident unfolded at 3:30 am after a night of drinking at the 2000 Barrister’s Ball, when Gill and two companions confronted another student outside his home. A person familiar with the incident told TNJD that the fight ensued over a woman who’d met the group earlier that night. The Seton Hall report says that, according to the person attacked, the alleged victim was held down by Gill’s companions while “Gill struck [the victim] with an aluminum baseball bat.”

The letter states that Gill would have found himself subject to “an Honor Council charge” under the Seton Hall Law School Code of Student Conduct, which prohibits “physically assaulting a member of the law school community” – a violation punishable by expulsion or suspension – except for the fact that Gill had already withdrawn from the school.

“There was no ‘year-long investigation’ of the Seton Hall events, said the Gill campaign, adding that Gill “left law school to pursue other employment opportunities.” (The six-page letter from the Seton Hall official, published more than one year after the incident, does say: “I am writing to record the results of my investigation into a complex of matters that occurred on April 15, 2000.”)

A report of the incident found its way into a February 17, 2021, news story in NJ.com, which reports that Gill hired a prominent defense attorney, Michael Critchley, who called it “a simple incident that was put on steroids.” While admitting to the assault, Gill has denied using the baseball bat, and the charge was reduced from aggravated assault. Gill pled guilty to simple assault, paid a fine, and ultimately his record was sealed.

The article in NJ.com described Gill as “brilliant but volatile.”

That volatility expressed itself several years later, when Gill was working as an aide to Representative Steve Rothman, who represented New Jersey in Congress from 1997 to 2013. Rothman, who was considering a run for U.S. Senate at the time, was politicking in Ocean County in 2004. At one event, Rothman turned to Gill, handed him a stack of business cards, and asked him to distribute them to people in attendance, despite the opposition of the event’s host to overt campaigning. Gill, seemingly offended at being asked to perform what he considered a menial task and annoyed at the insult to the host, hurled an f-bomb at his boss. “Go fuck yourself!” he said. Gill threw the stack of cards at Rothman and “stormed out,” according to two sources familiar with the incident. Shortly afterwards, Gill left Rothman’s staff.

“It didn’t happen,” said Rothman, when contacted this week by TNJD about the years-old Ocean County event. Rothman, who supports Gill’s campaign for Congress – “I think he’ll make a great congressman,” he told us – said that Gill left his employ in good standing. Said a source: “He was fired.”

“Brendan,” said his campaign, “never used expletives toward Rothman., nor did he throw business cards at him,” and he was “never ‘fired.’”

Chapter 2: The C-Word, F-Bombs, and Gill’s alleged ‘anger issues’

Since 2017, when Phil Murphy was elected governor, numerous stories have circulated about how women were mistreated and harassed during Murphy’s first election campaign, which was managed by Gill. The most prominent of those allegations came in 2018 from Katie Brennan, a campaign volunteer who said that she was sexually assaulted by Al Alvarez, a Murphy campaign adviser. Brennan charged the campaign with covering it up. (She is now an assemblywoman-elect.)

In connection with the 2017 gubernatorial campaign, for which Gill was the campaign manager, he “played no role” in covering up any allegations of misdeeds by staffers, said his 2025-2026 campaign, adding that the “allegations” by Katie Brennan were never brought to the attention of Gill and the campaign in 2017.

In 2021, running for reelection, Murphy made a concerted effort to “turn the page” and not to repeat the mistakes and lack of oversight that led to the “toxic” environment that prevailed under Gill, the 2017 campaign manager, according to a lengthy piece in NJ.com. Gill, the story reported, was told by Murphy’s staff that he would not have a role in the reelection effort as “questions linger about the first campaign and its manager, Gill, who remains an adviser to the governor and wields immense influence in New Jersey politics.”

“I am very happy there is a new campaign manager, hopefully with her own campaign team and senior leadership which will not replicate the issues around the last campaign,” Loretta Weinberg told NJ.com at the time. Weinberg, then the Senate majority leader, led a task force that released a 76-page report on “harassment, sexual assault, and misogyny in New Jersey politics” in January 2021.

That story, by reporter Brent Johnson, one of a number of pieces examining misogyny on Murphy’s team, included interviews with a number of women who worked on the 2017 campaign. One said that “Gill showed a sometimes explosive or ‘unhinged’ temper,” another said that Gill adopted an excessively harsh attitude toward women working on the campaign, and a third reported that the campaign had “harassment issues” and that Gill had what she called “anger issues.” According to yet another woman, Gill told one female staffer to “wipe that smug look off your face, or I will do it for you.” (Gill denied saying that.)

In the course of reporting this story, The New Jersey Democrat learned about an incident involving Gill that, as far we know, has not been previously reported. It occurred at the a League of Municipalities conference in Atlantic City. According to accounts provided independently by three different women, Gill was present when a male campaign aide began aggressively hitting on a much younger female campaign staffer. (The New Jersey Democrat is not naming either of the two individuals involved, and all three women who spoke to TNJD spoke after being granted anonymity, but their accounts matched exactly.) The young woman, who was in a serious relationship at the time, firmly rejected the advances from the aide, who’d not only flirted with her but caressed her leg. The woman, who separately confided to all three of the sources we spoke to, said that Gill encouraged the man to “go for it,” tossed him the keys to the hotel room where the woman was staying, and told him to “let yourself in.” The woman in this incident was said to be terrified, and quickly found another place to stay. “I saw Brendan egging [the man] on,” said one source who’d worked closely with the woman involved. Said another source, who the woman spoke to afterwards, “Brendan’s attitude was, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter what happens here,’ you know, wink-wink.” Two of the women that TNJD interviewed said that they stayed close to the woman for the rest of the conference.

The story about what happened at the League of Municipalities meeting “has never been raised in any complaints or previous reporting,” and Gill has never been aware that these claims were being made, said Gill’s campaign. “He affirms that this never happened,” the campaign added.

Incidents like this often stay hidden because people are afraid of retaliation if they say anything. “People know how New Jersey works,” said one source. “You would never get a job again. What happens to people who speak up is, they get fired, they get pushed out.”

Perhaps the most explosive allegation is the one from Julie Roginsky, a veteran New Jersey political consultant who at that time had been friends with Gill for two decades. Earlier in 2017, Roginsky, who’d appeared frequently on Fox News as a lone Democrat in a sea of rightwing voices, stunned Fox by filing a lawsuit charging that her tenure on Fox was “contingent on having a sexual relationship with [Fox News boss Roger] Ailes.” Other Fox News women, notably Gretchen Carlson, made parallel allegations. The women’s lawsuits exploded into international news, and eventually led to a hit movie, “Bombshell,” in which actress Ahna O’Reilly played Roginsky. Carlson and Roginsky went on to establish Lift Our Voices, a nonprofit group aimed at combatting the silencing of women in the workplace.

In an interview with NJ.com’s Tom Moran in 2020, Roginsky said that the 2017 Murphy campaign was “the most toxic work environment I have ever seen in 25 years of working on political campaigns.”

The prominence of Roginsky’s involvement in the Fox News case gave women who worked on Murphy’s campaign the idea of approaching her. “After the Ailes case became known, women on the campaign started coming to me to tell me about what they were experiencing,” Roginsky told TNJD. Some of them later talked to various journalists in New Jersey, too, to bring attention to what they saw as a campaign that devalued women, and worse.

The 20-year friendship between Gill and Roginsky blew apart over the course of a few weeks in the summer of 2017, ending in a shouting match in which, Roginsky said, “Gill used explicit, misogynistic language to refer to me that would have automatically gotten him fired from any other organization.” That language included the c-word, she said.

Gill has denied using the c-word, though he’s admitted that the conversation that ended his friendship with Roginsky got very heated and that he dropped a number of variants of the f-bomb. In a July 13, 2017, email to Roginsky – one of many later released by the campaign to the Bergen Record and reviewed by TNJD – Gill wrote, “I apologize for the language that I used in a conversation a few Saturdays ago.” The blowup led to Roginsky’s departure from the Murphy campaign. (Roginsky is currently running a super PAC backing the Malinowski campaign.)

What ended the friendship between Gill and Roginsky, however, was only tangentially related to the issue of mistreatment of women and the nasty call that led to Gill’s belated apology. What’s gotten far less attention is the report that Roginsky had earlier learned of improper or unethical actions by Gill and another campaign staffer, Adam Alonso, who Roginsky accused of “shaking down” lobbyists. And therein lies a tale.

Chapter 3: The alleged ‘shakedown’

Several lobbyists in contact with Murphy’s campaign had, separately, approached Roginsky in 2017 to inform her about what they believed was wrongdoing by Gill and Alonso. (Both Gill and Alonso operated for-profit lobbying and public affairs corporations, and worked together. Gill’s was The BGill Group, which also employed his wife, Alixon Collazos-Gill. Alonso’s was The Cratos Group, a policy and “political intelligence” firm, about which we’ll hear more below.)

At least four lobbyists came to Roginsky, then a senior strategist for the campaign, to tell her that Gill and Alonso were using their influence with Murphy’s team in an effort to persuade the lobbyists to hire them as paid consultants or public affairs experts, and that if they did so they’d gain ready access to the Murphy administration. According to the emails released by the campaign, that’s what triggered Gill’s hostility, said Roginsky.

In a July 4, 2017 email to other campaign staffers, Roginsky wrote:

If Brendan is lashing out because I raised the issue several months ago of how Adam Alonso is making money off his relationship with Phil, that is unacceptable and will only lead to massive problems for Phil down the road.

“I have had to deal with complaints from multiple people (Gail Gordon, Lori Grifa, David Pascrell, Eric Shuffler – all people Phil knows and respects) about the profiteering by staff going on,” according to a July 11, 2017, email sent by Roginsky to a campaign attorney. “Nothing to date has been done to stop it.”

An article in the New Jersey Globe reported in 2020 that “Roginsky … claimed that Gill retaliated against her because she reported attempts to monetize his relationship with Murphy.” She confronted Gill. Roginsky told the Globe’s David Wildstein in 2020:

After that conversation, my relationship with Brendan was never the same, although it was not clear to me at the time that that was the case. It culminated in a disagreement we had about a relatively minor campaign issue on June 23, 2017. Brendan shouted at me, berated me, told me that he was the boss of the campaign and I wasn’t and culminated in him calling me, yes, ‘the C word.’ I told several people about that conversation, including the governor, and how offended I was by Brendan’s use of that term to describe me.

“There is no evidence or support for” the report “that Mr. Gill improperly traded on his influence or role in the 2017 campaign with clients seeking ‘access to the Murphy administration,’” said his campaign, calling it a “biased and partisan attack.” They added that the allegations were reviewed back then and found to be “entirely without merit.” (The campaign did not provide evidence of that review.)

Gill, for his part, has consistently denied any wrongdoing dating to the 2017 campaign. Contacted for this article, Gill first agreed to an interview and then, hours before it was scheduled, cancelled it, with his press aide emailing to say that he had a “scheduling conflict.” Later, TNJD encountered Gill at a candidates’ night sponsored by NJ 11th for Change, and Gill told us that he’d make himself available for an interview to discuss this article. He never did.

Three years after leaving the Murphy campaign, and having served as Murphy’s deputy chief of staff, Alonso got himself fired from a job in Wisconsin in a tangle of workplace offenses and accusations of business shenanigans, including “double dipping.” The Host Committee for the upcoming Democratic National Convention scheduled for Milwaukee ousted Alonso “amid allegations of a toxic work culture” and “claims of bullying and workplace harassment.” Senior women staffers at the committee alleged that Alonso “bullied and intimidated” co-workers. And, in an echo of what Gill and Alonso were accused of during the 2017 Murphy campaign – namely, using their positions to shake down companies for contracts – in Wisconsin Alonso and a colleague, Liz Gilbert, were accused of improperly “giving contracts to their friends in New Jersey.”

Sometime in the aftermath of the 2017 Murphy campaign, and after Roginsky’s claim that Gill and Alonso were shaking down lobbyists, the feds may have gotten involved, at least according to a copy of a subpoena from a pair of assistant U.S. attorneys, Rahul Agarwal and Sean Farrell, issued in 2020, and obtained by The New Jersey Democrat. In it, they demand:

For the period January 1, 2017 to the present, any and all records and documents, including, but not limited to emails and text messages to, or from, or pertaining to (1) Adam Alonso; (2) Brendan Gill; (3) the Cratos Group; (4) BGill Group LLC; (5) Vision Media Marketing; (6) Public Strategies Impact.

Whatever the subject of that inquiry was, it apparently led nowhere. Attorneys for both Gill and Alonso said that neither man was the target of any investigation and both men denied any wrongdoing, according to Politico.

“There is no basis” for the contention that federal investigators were “involved in reviewing the propriety of Brendan’s campaign activities,” and he and his business “were not the target or subject of any investigation,” said Gill’s campaign.

And Public Strategies Impact (PSI), the firm mentioned in the subpoena? In 2017, as we’ll see in Chapter 4, PSI began a close partnership with the BGill Group.

Chapter 4: The BGill Group dossier

In New Jersey, what in other places might be seen as glaring conflicts of interest is just business-as-usual. Key political players, including LeRoy Jones and Kevin McCabe, are both politicians and lobbyists. In Gill’s case, besides being a county commissioner and a candidate for Congress, Gill owns and operates the BGill Group, which advertises itself as a “government affairs, public affairs, and public relations” company.

And while Gill is technically not registered as a lobbyist in Trenton, the BGill Group partners with the second-largest lobbying firm in the state, Public Strategies Impact (PSI). On the BGill Group website, one of PSI’s top players, Bill Maer, is listed as an “associate.”

A press release from 2017 on the website of the BGill Group says:

“My relationship with Brendan, both personally and professionally, has spanned over two decades. I am confident that PSI’s partnership with Brendan will be a major benefit to our current and future clients,” said Bill Maer, senior partner, PSI. “This new strategic agreement will bolster our capabilities and delivery of services.”

PSI, make no mistake, is a gargantuan company. Its voluminous records, and its list of clients, are available to the public at the website of the Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC). According to data from 2024, PSI and at least ten of its lobbyists – including Maer, the BGill Group associate – represented more than 150 clients in Trenton that year, including Apple, which paid PSI $50,000 in 2024; Exxon Mobil ($99,000); Hackensack Meridian Health ($63,375); Lyft ($99,000); Netflix ($180,256); Oracle ($50,000); Pfizer ($52,250); PSE&G ($75,000); United Airlines ($104,000); Verizon Wireless ($120,000); and in a line right out of “The Graduate,” the 1967 film starring Dustin Hoffman, the Plastics Industry Association ($65,000).

Whether, and how extensively, Brendan Gill’s BGill Group was involved with any of these clients, and whether Bill Maer was involved, is impossible to tell.

Finding out who the BGill Group represents isn’t easy. Gill, when asked, is notoriously opposed to releasing details about who his clients are, but according to his LinkedIn page they apparently include multinational corporations: “Our clients include labor unions, health care networks, non-profit organizations, Fortune 500 companies, trade associations, political candidates and tech start ups.”

The partnership between BGill Group and PSI began in January 2017, according to a story in NorthJersey.com – in other words, it started during the time that Gill was campaign manager for Murphy’s first gubernatorial campaign. But the BGill-PSI alliance wasn’t formally announced until after the election, in December 2017. The article, written by Dustin Racioppi, reported that Gill “strongly objected” to any questions about the BGill-PSI arrangement, and refused to release his client list. And because the BGill Group is not registered as a lobbying organization, there are no records for it at ELEC, and what it does for PSI is at best murky. “They open doors in Trenton for PSI,” said one veteran of New Jersey politics.

But the arrangement with PSI has brought Gill, a Democrat, into partnership with a heavyweight Republican, Roger Bodman. Bodman, the “founder and managing partner” at PSI, has been a Republican insider for decades, and his PSI bio says this:

Most recently, Roger has co-chaired a super PAC to help Tom Kean, Jr. win a congressional seat in New Jersey’s 7th district. He formed the Perfect Together PAC based on Kean’s catchphrase “New Jersey and You: Perfect Together” to promote tourism in the state.

In other words, Gill, who’s running as a Democrat for Congress in CD-11, is a partner with a man who’s backed the GOP’s Representative Kean, Jr., who’s running for reelection to Congress next door in CD-7.

On the BGill Group website, under the heading “News” – which oddly, starts in 2014 but ends in 2021 – there is a self-promotional listing of the firm’s highlights. (Remember, at the time Gill founded the firm, and since, he’s been a freeholder or commissioner in Essex County.) Weirdly, the website touts a 2017 article from InsiderNJ that lists Gill as New Jersey’s No. 2 “most influential official,” and goes on to call him a “ruthless political operative” and someone who might “settle into the role of … silver-tongued behind-the-scenes pit viper.”

Pit viper or not, via his own firm and through his connections to PSI, Brendan Gill is clearly part and parcel of New Jersey’s “old politics,” in which insiders play the game with established political machines, county bosses, and the legislators that they support, finance, and lobby.

Chapter 5: Brendan and ‘The Machine’

Speaking at a candidates’ event on December 11 in Montclair with 11 other candidates for the Democratic nomination in CD-11 – that’s a lot of 11’s! – Gill took note of the fact that he’s been endorsed in the race by virtually the entire party machine in Essex County, and he said: “I’m proud of those endorsements, by the way.”

By the way. That was the tipoff. In saying “by the way,” Gill was backhandedly acknowledging that he’s taken some grief from activists and from some of his rivals for having compiled a list of scores of endorsements from the machine. On his campaign website, they’re all listed, including four senators, four assembly members, six Essex County commissioners, and a bunch of mayors. He’s been endorsed by DiVincenzo, the Essex County executive, and by Governor Murphy, whose campaign he managed in 2017. He won the backing of the Essex County Democratic Committee at an online “convention” on December 1, a meeting that was roundly criticized by scores of district leaders and whose deck was stacked even before the convention was scheduled.

Getting machine backing in the CD-11 race could help – or it could hurt. “This sort of thing will annoy more people than it persuades,” Malinowski told TNJD.

Tom Moran, the veteran political reporter and analyst for the Newark Star-Ledger and NJ.com, wrote in a December 3 column:

Will the establishment win? They have rallied behind a candidate who carries loads of baggage, Brendan Gill, a county legislator and senior strategist for Gov. Phil Murphy. Or will the grassroots voters beat the machine again?...

Gill is the Andrew Cuomo of this race, the flawed candidate with the longer list of endorsements — from the governor, party leaders, local officials and some activists. He’s an average speaker at best, and sometimes mumbles, even in front of a microphone. His biggest accomplishment, he says, was rallying support for a green walkway in his home county, along an abandoned rail line. … I’ll be watching to see if the party bosses get their way. My guess is that they are headed for another big loss.

In a phone call to The New Jersey Democrat just before Thanksgiving, after TNJD had published a piece about the Essex County convention, Gill said that he did not consider himself part of any machine and that the endorsements he’d gotten were the result of years of patient political work developing relationships with county and municipal officials and ordinary voters. “I’m filing with over 1,500 signatures not because I have some machine,” he said. “I have volunteers because I’ve done a lot of work.”

And Gill said that he’s comfortable with the idea that county party organizations can make their own decisions about who to support. Getting the ECDC endorsement, and using its slogan – “Essex County Democratic Committee, Inc.” – under his name on the ballot is how democracy works, he said.

“There are people who think that somehow this process was set up by the
governor, set up to favor me,” he said. “But I do really believe that it is up to the leadership, which is ultimately the chairs of these organizations, to make party endorsements. Having the party slogan be attached to a candidate’s name does make some sense to me. It’s one of the reasons that you have a party organization.”

Others disagree, noting that the Democratic National Committee does not make endorsements at all during the presidential primary vote. And though the Morris County Democrats do make endorsements, the county organization’s leaders decided early on that the chosen candidate wouldn’t get the county slogan on the ballot under his or her name.

“Brendan is an example of things that should be corrected in the New Jersey political establishment,” Weinberg, the former Senate majority leader, told TNJD, referring to the incestuous relationship between politics and lobbying. And she expressed concern that so many politicians and officials had rushed to back Gill so quickly. Why did everyone fall out to support Brendan right away, before the rest of the field was settled, she asked. “It indicates the Old Boy network at work. Poof! You’re it.”