New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver has died

New Jersey Lieutenant Governor Sheila Oliver, the first Black woman to serve as the state’s Assembly speaker, has died, according to a statement from the governor’s office.

Oliver, 71, had been serving as acting governor while Governor Phil Murphy was in Italy on vacation with his family. She was hospitalized this week for an unspecified illness, leaving Senate President Nick Scutari to fill the role of acting governor.

Oliver, who was born and raised in Newark, became Assembly speaker in 2010, making her the second Black woman in the nation’s history to lead a house of a state legislature, according to a statement from Murphy’s office. She was first elected to the Assembly in 2003. 

While serving as lieutenant governor, Oliver served concurrently as the state’s commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs, working on expanding affordable housing and homelessness prevention.

In a statement, Murphy said that when he selected Oliver as his running mate in 2017, “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.”