Download Insider NJ’s 2022 Insider 100: Policymakers Power List or view it below

Welcome to our annual list of InsiderNJ’s Policymakers, those Statehouse urchins of statecraft, who preoccupy themselves less with punishing political power and more with the intellect – or power expressed as intellect.

These are not merely ivory tower occupants, but movers and mechanics of more than lower primate functions, who engineer issues and ideas into laws, and the public province of vigorous discussion about the law.

This list is subjective, and changes from year to year, mostly based on the concentration of those particular issues examined by the Legislature. At its most vital, we like to see it as a collective of serious-minded and substantive individuals dedicated, finally, to people’s happiness.

This is important, especially in New Jersey, where we routinely fall prey to accepting only the Machiavellian definition of politics, which posits nothing more than the raw wielding of power.

If we extol and practice power for its own sake and fail to consider its use for some good, namely the community and those binding forces of a common destiny, we cheapen our institutions and make them continually vulnerable to ever worse expressions of corruption.

Download Insider NJ’s 2022 Insider 100: Policymakers Power List or view it below