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| New Jersey State Senator Joe Kyrillos – NJ.com photo |
Ken Kurson reports for Politicker NJ:
There will be tears overflowing the banks of the Navesink River tomorrow when long-serving State Senator Joe Kyrillos (R-Monmouth) announces he will not be running for re-election. As PolitickerNJ first speculated in August, Senator Kyrillos is hanging up the legislator spikes he’s worn for 28 years.
“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to serve the people of my district and the state of New Jersey in the Legislature,” Kyrillos told the Observer. “Ever since I was a kid growing up in Monmouth County, I’ve always believed that public service is an important and noble profession. I am truly fortunate to have had the ability to serve for so many years in the state Senate, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished on behalf of the people of New Jersey.”
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Kyrillos was elected to the General Assembly when he was 27 years old, making him the second youngest person elected since the 1947 Constitutional Convention. He served two terms in the Assembly and moved to the Senate in 1992, where he was re-elected eight times. He has focused on job creation, economic growth, and shore protection. While never adopting the strident tone of today’s national Republicans, the congenial Kyrillos has notched a solid fiscal conservative record, having voted more than 140 times to reduce taxes and fees.
As the current ranking member of the Economic Growth, Judiciary, and Legislative Oversight committees, Kyrillos has sponsored numerous economic incentives and tax reforms. He was the original sponsor of the state’s landmark Business Employment Incentive Program (BEIP), and was the prime co-sponsor of the “Grow New Jersey” bill, which is the state’s current business incentive program.
For a state senator, Kyrillos has maintained an unusually high national profile. His run for the US Senate in 2012, in which Kyrillos was defeated by incumbent Bob Menendez in a presidential-year election wipeout in which Kyrillos’ base was smacked by Hurricane Sandy, was buoyed by national supporters.
The NRSC, which routinely ignores New Jersey, took a strong interest in the campaign and Kyrillos waged the kind of national campaign that took him from Darryl Issa’s Congressional office in DC to an audience with Sheldon Adelson in the casino magnate’s private office in Las Vegas. Back In the 1980s, Kyrillos served in the Reagan Administration as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Interior Donald Hodel and then worked for Vice President George H. W. Bush on the Reagan-Bush campaign.
