The housing monitor who was appointed to oversee Westchester County’s compliance with a 2009 affordable housing settlement before resigning in August 2016 will run in New Jersey’s Democratic primary this year, seeking the nomination to run for governor in November.
James Johnson, a former federal prosecutor who also served in the U.S. Department of the Treasury under former President Bill Clinton’s administration, announced his candidacy for governor of New Jersey in late 2016. The news came 15 weeks after Johnson sent a letter to U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Denise Cote, resigning from his position as monitor overseeing Westchester’s compliance with a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD. Johnson had served in that role for seven years.
Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican, had battled Johnson as the HUD monitor since taking office in 2010, often accusing him of overreaching on behalf of the federal government. During a press conference on Dec. 27, while announcing that the county had met the terms of its settlement with HUD to build 750 units of affordable housing before 2017, Astorino commented on Johnson’s plans to run for governor as a Democrat. “If that doesn’t tell you he was partisan from the very beginning, I don’t know what will,” he said.
Johnson will challenge at least seven other candidates—including New Jersey state Assemblyman John Wisniewski—for the Democratic nominee in a statewide primary. There are currently three Republican candidates as well. Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who ran in the presidential primary in 2016, cannot run for governor again in 2017 due to the state’s two-term limit.
Astorino, who is in the final year of his second term as county executive, has also hinted at another run of his own for governor of New York state in 2018. He ran in 2014, losing to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, by a 14 percent margin. In New York state, there is no term limit on the governor’s office.
