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Rick Thigpen is currently the vice president for state governmental affairs for Public Service Enterprise Group (PSE&G). He is an attorney who has been involved in New Jersey politics and government for over 20 years and has extensive experience developing political strategies, mobilizing grassroots constituencies and making public policy at different levels of government. His experience moving public policy agendas forward, as well as negotiating complicated legal and political issues has prepared him to craft and implement successful strategies achieve objectives in the public arena. Most recently, Rick was a principal in 1868 Public Affairs, a Trenton based public affairs consulting group. Before joining 1868, Thigpen served as the executive director of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee where his duties included overseeing the 1996 and 1997 statewide coordinated campaigns. In this capacity, he worked closely with party officials as well as federal and state legislators and local elected officials across the state to organize programs to improve Democratic voter turnout. He has also been active in Essex County politics for years, including serving as a campaign coordinator for Rep. Donald Payne and as the county's 2002 coordinated campaign director. Rick has served in local, state and federal government. He worked as a policy analyst in the Newark City Council, as an aide to minority leader Willie Brown in the New Jersey General Assembly, and as the district director for Rep. Donald Payne for six years. Thigpen's legal experience includes having served as an associate at a Manhattan law firm, Thacher, Proffitt & Wood, in the mortgage-backed securities department. He also served as the attorney for the Zoning and Planning Boards for the City of East Orange. Rick brings a firm grasp of urban politics to go along with his experiences at the senior levels of Democratic Party politics in New Jersey. He has served as a consultant to the Democratic members for the State Legislative and Congressional Redistricting Commissions and is a former public affairs assistant to the president of the New Jersey NAACP State Conference. He is currently an academic associate for PublicMind, the Fairleigh Dickinson University polling and survey research institute, and he serves as a political analyst for New Jersey Network's television news. Thigpen holds a B.A. in political science from Brown University and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law. He has been admitted to the New Jersey Bar and currently resides in Montclair.
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