New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, a trailblazing political leader, dies at 71

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, who served as the first Black woman Assembly speaker in state history and the second to lead a legislative chamber in the country, died Tuesday at 71.

Oliver’s death was announced by her family in a statement.

"Sheila Y. Oliver leaves behind a legacy of dedication, service, and inspiration,” the statement read. “We will remember her commitment to the people of New Jersey and her tireless efforts to uplift the community.”

The cause of death was not disclosed, but Oliver had long-term health problems that she had kept private, and in recent months appeared at few public events. On Monday, the governor’s office announced that Oliver was hospitalized and “unable to discharge the duties of Acting Governor” — Gov. Phil Murphy is on vacation in Italy — leaving Senate President Nick Scutari as acting governor.

In addition to her role as lieutenant governor, Oliver led the Department of Community Affairs, a large state agency in charge of housing and community development.

Oliver, who lived in East Orange, an Essex County city of nearly 70,000 residents located just outside of Newark, served in the Assembly from 2004 to 2018 before she ascended to the lieutenant governor’s position. She was Assembly speaker from 2010 to 2014, helping usher through public worker pension and health benefits reform alongside former Gov. Chris Christie and former Senate President Steve Sweeney.

The law, referred to as Chapter 78, was a landmark accomplishment although she later expressed mixed feelings on it, calling it “imperfect” in 2017.

Early civic involvement in Newark

Oliver was born in Newark to a life insurance agent father and mother who worked for RCA and University Hospital located in the city, New Jersey's largest. In a 2011 interview, she traced her earliest civic involvement to a fifth-grade newspaper column she wrote called “Tell it to Sheila.”

But Oliver was surrounded by politics early on, watching her father picket over racial discrimination and growing up on the same block as the late U.S. Rep. Donald Payne.

Oliver earned her bachelor’s degree from Lincoln University, a historically Black school in Pennsylvania, and her master’s in planning and administration from Columbia University. She began her political career on the East Orange School Board in the 1990s, where an elementary school now bears her name, and then was elected as an Essex County freeholder. She also worked as an assistant Essex County administrator.

Oliver wasn’t well-known outside the confines of the Legislature until 2010, when a regional power-sharing deal paved the way for her to become speaker and Sweeney, a Democratic senator from South Jersey, to become Senate president during the first years of Republican Christie’s administration. The arrangement suddenly made Oliver the third most powerful elected official in the state.

But while Oliver’s accession was arranged by political power brokers, she often fought with Sweeney and especially Christie. After boasting that he helped save her speakership as she faced a revolt over the pension and health benefit vote, Oliver accused Christie of lying and called him “mentally deranged.”

Christie called Oliver's death a "sad day for NJ" and for him personally.

"The passing of Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver is a loss for our state," he wrote on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. "I will miss Sheila. She served as Speaker in my first term and we treated each other with kindness and respect. We got things done. She was a great person and partner."

An uncertain political future gets a boost

Tense relations between Oliver and Sweeney helped lead to her ouster from the speakership after two terms in favor of Vincent Prieto, a Democrat from Hudson County who after two terms would be ousted in favor of the current Democratic speaker, Middlesex County's Craig Coughlin.

Oliver ran in a special election for U.S. Senate in 2013 after the death of incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg. She placed last in the four-person field for the Democratic nomination, which ultimately went to then-Newark Mayor — now U.S. Senator — Cory Booker.

She appeared fated to settle into her role as a backbench Assemblymember, but then got the biggest boost of her political career in 2017, when Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phi Murphy chose her as his running mate for lieutenant governor, diversifying the ticket and adding appeal to vote-rich Essex County.

“I knew then that her decades of public service made her the ideal partner for me to lead the State of New Jersey. It was the best decision I ever made,” Murphy said in a statement.

When she was sworn-in in 2018, Oliver became just the second lieutenant governor in state history and, according to Murphy's office, the second Black woman in the country's history to lead a house of a legislature. She also took on the role of commissioner of community affairs. Murphy said in that role she handled “some of the most challenging issues facing our State, including the revitalization of our cities, affordable housing obligations, and homelessness prevention.”

LeRoy Jones Jr., chair of the Democratic State Committee and a fellow resident of East Orange, called Oliver an "exemplary role model for Black women and girls throughout our state."

"Sheila Oliver was a trailblazer and a true icon for representation, diversity and progress," he said in a statement. "As our state's first Black woman to serve as Assembly Speaker and as Lt. Governor, Sheila leaves behind a legacy of breaking barriers that will never be forgotten."

Plans for Oliver’s memorial service have yet to be announced.

Under New Jersey’s constitution, Murphy has 45 days to choose Oliver’s successor as lieutenant governor.