James J. Florio, a 1967 graduate of Rutgers Law School in Camden who served eight terms in Congress before becoming New Jersey’s 49th governor in 1990, died Sunday at the age of 85. He had been a Senior Fellow for Public Policy and Administration at the Edward J. Bloustein Graduate School of Public Policy at Rutgers, where he taught for decades, and was cofounder of the school’s National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment. He was inducted in the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 1995.
In 2018, Rutgers University Press published his political memoir Standing on Principle: Lessons Learned in Public Life. Read more about his first foray into politics when he was a student at Rutgers Law School and an excerpt from his book about an early meeting he had with former Gov. Bill Cahill, also an alumnus of Rutgers Law School in Camden.