The late Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark), who spent close to two decades representing Newark at all levels of government, could find himself memorialized in his home city’s iconic train station.
Under a new House bill introduced yesterday by Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), Payne’s successor in Congress, Newark Penn Station would be renamed as the Donald M. Payne, Jr. Transit Center at Newark Penn Station. All ten of McIver’s New Jersey House colleagues from both parties have signed onto the bill as co-sponsors.
“Newark Penn is where so many workers start their mornings; where families reunite; where students, seniors, and commuters pass through every day,” McIver said on the House floor yesterday. “When people walk into their station, they should know the name of the man whose work helped keep it moving.”
“Happy birthday, Congressman Payne – we miss you,” she added. (Payne would have turned 67 yesterday.)
Payne, the son of the late Rep. Donald Payne Sr. (D-Newark), was elected to the Essex County Board of Freeholders in 2005 and to the Newark City Council in 2006 (before the state’s ban on dual office-holding went into effect). When his father died in 2012, the younger Payne won his congressional seat, serving for close to seven terms and holding a seat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee before dying in April 2024.
This isn’t the first time New Jersey’s congressional delegation has teamed up to rename a state landmark in a late congressman’s honor. Earlier this year, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill to rename parts of Paterson’s Great Falls National Historical Park after the late Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), who died a few months after Payne, though the bill hasn’t yet moved in the Senate.
And Payne’s father, too, has gotten a Newark institution named after him: the brand-new Essex County Donald M. Payne, Sr. School of Technology.
