Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill will announce that Brigadier Gen. Yvonne Mays will remain as the state Adjutant General and Commissioner of the Department of Military Affairs, and that Vincent Solomeno will serve as Commissioner of the newly-created Department of Veterans Affairs.
Sherrill will make the cabinet announcements this afternoon at the Paramus Veterans Memorial Home. Legislation establishing the new veterans’ department was approved in September.
Solomeno, a young political prodigy in the early 2000s, has served as the deputy commissioner of veterans affairs since January 2023.
Mays becomes the first of what is likely to be the retention of several members of Gov. Phil Murphy’s cabinet by Sherrill. The Murphy to Sherrill transition is the first time a single political party has won three consecutive gubernatorial elections in New Jersey since Richard Hughes replaced Robert Meyner in 1961.
He served as the superintendent of the National Guard Training Center and is a major in the New Jersey Army National Guard.
In 2021, he ran against State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Little Silver) in the 13th legislative district, covering Republican-leaning towns in Monmouth County. Solomeno lost that race 61%-39%; had he won, he would have been New Jersey’s first-ever openly gay state senator.
In 2001, at age 15, he became the executive director of Union Beach Democratic Organization and ran a campaign that elected two Democrats to the Borough Council that year. As a college student in 2004, he spent a few months working as a full-time volunteer in New Hampshire on retired Army General Wesley Clark’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
He has run for office a couple of times, but without success. Solomeno lost a 2016 bid for Monmouth County Surrogate and a 2017 campaign for Hazlet Township Committee against incumbent Sue Kiley.
Solomeno graduated with honors from the University of Scranton and, as a Fulbright Scholar, earned his postgraduate degree from the University of Amsterdam. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army Engineer School at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
Mays was named Adjutant General by Murphy in June 2024. She had served as Major General Lisa Hou’s principal advisor and was a former chief of staff of the New Jersey Air National Guard. Mays served in the U.S. Air Force since 1983, and provided active duty support in Operation Desert Shield/Storm and Operations Noble Eagle and Enduring Freedom after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
