Still hobbling from his nearly fatal car accident in April, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine has poached beloved police-beat reporter Lilo H. Stainton from The Brooklyn Paper to be his new press secretary.
The governor’s office made the announcement on Tuesday.
Before joining The Brooklyn Paper staff in 2005, Stainton, 37, worked for six years as a reporter in Gannett’s capital bureau in Trenton. Earlier, she was a staff reporter on central Jersey’s Home News Tribune and the New York Daily News.
While at Gannett, Stainton won two New Jersey Press Association awards and one National Headliner Award for Public Service for individual and team coverage of pay hikes in the executive and legislative branches of the New Jersey government.
She had been working for The Brooklyn Paper for nearly two years when she got a call “out of the blue a couple weeks ago from a friend … in Democratic politics down there,” she said.
Stainton interviewed with Corzine on Saturday at the governor’s beach house in Island Beach State Park on the Jersey Shore.
“He was in a bathing suit,” said Stainton. “I was in a suit in 90-degree weather.
“He’s a very interesting guy, very not at all aloof,” added the governor’s newest loyal employee. “You might think that coming from money [Corzine made millions as an investment banker before winning election to the U.S. Senate and the New Jersey statehouse], he’d act standoffish. That’s not at all the case.”
Stainton said she would find a “crash pad” in or near Trenton, but that Bedford-Stuyvesant will continue to be her primary residence.
“Brooklyn will always be my home,” said Stainton. “My husband and I built our home here. We’re in the middle of renovations, I might add.”
Paper Editor Gersh Kuntzman wished Stainton luck — though with his left hand.
“Of course, we wish Lilo well in her new endeavor, though as journalists, we find it shocking that she would leave such a noble profession as newspaper work to enter the eternal sausage-grinder that is so-called ‘public service,’” Kuntzman said.
Stainton is replacing Anthony Coley, who was promoted to Corzine’s Communications Director. She begins her new gig on June 14.
The Newark Star-Ledger reports:
Ex-Statehouse reporter Corzine’s press secretary
