Ex-Byrne chief of staff ran Meadowlands, Rutgers Athletic department
By David Wildstein, New Jersey Globe
Robert E. Mulcahy III, a former Mendham mayor who became one of the most powerful political insiders of his generation as the chief of staff to Gov. Brendan Byrne, died on February 8. He was 85.
He served as the president and CEO of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority for 19 years and as the Rutgers University Athletics Director for a decade. In his later years, Mulcahy was the chairman of the New Jersey Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.
Mulcahy was the top gubernatorial aide to use the title of chief of staff when he assumed the post at the start of Byrne’s second term in 1978. Before that, the job title was typically executive secretary to the governor.
He came from a political family: his father, Robert E. Mulcahy, Jr., was a Millburn school board member who was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for State Assembly in 1938.
At age 27, Mulcahy became a candidate for the Mendham Borough Council in 1963. At the time, Mendham was all-Republican and Mulcahy was the lone Democratic candidate against incumbents Andrew Fletcher and Francis Hewens. Mulcahy defeated Hewens.
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In 1969, he won a three-way seat for Democratic state committeeman. Mulcahy also served as the Morris County chairman for former Gov. Robert Meyner’s unsuccessful bid to return for a third term, and on the County College of Morris Board of Trustees from 1966 to 1970.
Mulcahy endorsed Assemblywoman Ann Klein (D-Morris Township) for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1973. After the primary, Mulcahy took an active role in Byrne’s campaign against Republican Charles Sandman.
He resigned as mayor in 1974 to join the Byrne administration as deputy commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Institutions and Agencies, now known as Human Services. Byrne had named Klein, who gave up her Assembly seat to run for governor, as commissioner.
Byrne later assigned Mulcahy to take an active leadership role at the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) as the governor began to increasingly rely on him as a troubleshooter for his administration.
After the creation of a new state Department of Corrections to run the prison system – the role had formerly been part of Institutions and Agencies, Mulcahy was nominated as the first commissioner. At age 40, he became the youngest member of the cabinet.
Byrne was re-elected to a second term after tough primary and general election battles. His top aide, former Parsippany Mayor Henry Luther III, had left to run the re-election campaign, and after a brief return to state government, he decided to return to his law practice.
Just before Christmas 1977, Byrne announced that his chief counsel, John Degnan, would become attorney general and that Mulcahy would be chief of staff.
In 1979, Mulchay left the Byrne administration to take over the Sports Authority. He succeeded Robert Harter at a time when the Meadowland Arena (it was the Brendan Byrne arena for a while until Gov. Christine Todd Whitman approved a sale of the naming rights to Continental Airlines) and the Pegasus Racetrack were under construction.
