Sen. George Helmy, a New Jersey Democrat, is making his brief tenure at the Capitol a busy one.
Last Monday, Helmy was on the Senate floor to give a complex speech about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The remarks were based on a trip to the Middle East he took during the roughly 12 weeks he’ll be in office after Gov. Phil Murphy picked him to fill disgraced Sen. Bob Menendez’s vacant seat.
The next day, a day after walking the tightrope of Middle Eastern politics, Helmy was back to make joint remarks with Sen. Katie Britt, the Alabama Republican. They are both backing bills to rein in social media companies because of their effects on children’s mental health.
While the two may not agree on much else, she praised the Democrat.
“You hit the ground running, I hope the people of New Jersey and America know that,” Britt said. “This man got to work before Day 1.”
Helmy was sworn in on Sept. 9 and he’s expected to step down soon after election results are certified so Rep. Andy Kim, who won a full term, can fill the remaining days of Menendez’s. It will be one of the shortest-ever tenures in the upper chamber since senators started being directly elected 1913 — with about two dozen former senators sitting less than the roughly 90 days Helmy likely will have, according to the Senate Historical Office.
But Helmy’s hardly been a placeholder or seat warmer.
During his nearly three months in office, Helmy has sat down with 30 or so of his Senate colleagues; sponsored or cosponsored more than 30 pieces of legislation; drawn attention to issues as far-flung as refugees in Gaza and public housing in Atlantic City, New Jersey; and done the constituent casework that remains the bread and butter of a well-run Senate office. And he took an official trip to Jordan, where he saw warehouses stocked with pallets of food and supplies just miles away from starving families, an absurd outcome among other conditions that he said “should appall every one of us.”
“Being one of 100 requires you to raise your voice,” he said in an interview shortly after his floor speech on Gaza.
Other short-term senators have left a mark too. Former Sen. Carte Goodwin, the West Virginia Democrat who was appointed to fill the remainder of Sen. Robert Byrd’s seat in 2010, voted to extend unemployment benefits for more than 2 million Americans and helped confirm Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
The last senator named to fill a New Jersey seat, Republican Jeffrey Chiesa, voted to confirm Samantha Power as UN ambassador and unsuccessfully sought to build about 350 miles of fencing along the border with Mexico. Chiesa served about two months longer than Helmy will have but, partly because of previous commitments, missed an above-average 15 percent of votes in that time — including one to confirm James Comey as FBI director.
Helmy aims to leave a legislative record that compares to people who have served a full term, or at least get the ball rolling on things that, like the legislation with Britt, may pass in future sessions.
Helmy is also the sole Arab-American in the Senate right now. He said his Gaza speech, indignant over manifold tragedies, aimed to acknowledge complexity by supporting Israel’s existence and self-defense prerogatives, but he condemned blockades that have kept aid from innocent people at death’s door.
“You can say all that because that is true,” he said.
Within minutes of the speech, he said he was getting texts from other senators thanking him.
“That’s what you do, is you raise your voice, you speak the truth and you spur and stir conversation,” he said. “These things matter to people. It’s the old RFK saying — you create these ripples of energy that little by little create massive waves of change.”
His plan from the beginning was to sprint through his time in office with a staff drawn from Menendez’s team, former Sen. Harry Reid’s office and Murphy’s front office, which he once oversaw as the governor’s chief of staff. Back in New Jersey, he was known as Murphy’s hyper-competent top aide and, before that, was state director for Sen. Cory Booker, now New Jersey’s senior senator.
Helmy says he still prefers to be “the guy behind the guy or gal.” So with “senator” in front of his name, he’s acting like a “super staffer” on the hill.
“There’s nobody I’m not willing to talk to,” he said. “I’ll go find senator staffs off the floor and talk to them about what we’re trying to do.”
