William Kohm

William J. Kohm, a public relations expert, lobbyist, and political consultant in the highest levels of New Jersey politics for decades, died December 31. He was 92.
A one-time reporter for the Hudson Dispatch as well as head of the North Jersey office of the Newark Evening News in the 1950s, Kohm went from writing front-page news to being front page news when he left journalism for a statewide position as Clerk of the Assembly in 1956. At 25, he was the youngest person ever to hold the job. A Bergen Evening Record article described Kohm's $7,000-a-year job in the Assembly as "the largest single piece of patronage at the disposal of the Assembly " and that its duties would include work for the Bergen Republican party when his Assembly duties allowed.
That position served as a launchpad to a decades-long career that included pivotal positions as press secretary and advisor in Republican campaigns for county, statewide and even national offices as well as founder and leader of one of the state's most successful public relations/marketing/advertising agencies, William J. Kohm Associates, created in 1961.
Among the more high-profile roles held by Kohm was Public Relations and Marketing Director of the Meadowlands Sports Complex for several decades "under the terms of Governor (William T.) Cahill, Governor (Brendan) Byrne, Governor (James) Florio, Governor (Christine Todd) Whitman, Governor everybody," as he described his tenure during an Eagleton Institute roundtable discussion in September 2009. Titled, the "The Meadowlands and Jersey Sports Complex: Looking Back and Ahead," it included two dozen instrumental leaders: two former governors, former chiefs of staff to governors, former state legislative leaders and executives of the NJ Sports & Exposition Authority, some dating back three to four decades.
In the 1960s, development of the meadow-lands already had political and business buzz by leaders who hoped to woo professional sports away from New York, but it would take another decade before a consensus coalesced and any concrete political action was taken.
In that decade, Kohm's profile and business grew.
By 1966 Kohm was the GOP Public Information Officer for the 1966 New Jersey Constitutional Convention at Rutgers University, as well as editorial director of "Bergen" a monthly magazine for the business community covering the rapidly developing county just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan.
The following year, 1967, the Herald-News had an item about Kohm being elected a director of the Englewood National Bank & Trust Co. and in 1968 The (Bergen) Record reported on potential Republican presidential candidates and quoted Kohm as executive director of the Rockefeller for President Committee in New Jersey.
In the last year of the 1960s, a Herald News article about notable lobbyists in the state capital, Trenton, described Kohm as "a compact, well-tailored man who is almost never seen without his briefcase. widely respected as political campaign consultant." In November of that year, the (Paterson) Evening News had a front-page article "GOP Names 12 to Transfer Team" that included Kohm among the dozen men overseeing the transition of William T. Cahill, then newly elected to the governor's office. In a January 1970 press conference, Cahill described Kohm as "one of his most valuable and trusted advisers and thanked him for his assistance" as his communications director.
Kohm's public relations firm won a state contract to promote New Jersey's horse breeding industry and was active in the Meadows Racing Association Inc., which in 1970, filed an application for a harness-racing track in the Meadowlands. In April of the same year, the Asbury Park Press reported that Kohm was officially the "busiest lobbyist" - besting his friendly rival, lobbyist Joe Katz, also a former newspaperman - in Trenton with a roster of clients that included "an auto club, a manufacturing concern, an association of general contractors, a Newark bank, a funeral directors' group, a society of opticians, a committee of insurance companies, a water company, and a trading stamp company."
In November 1972, Kohm Associates had branched out and included Attitude Analysis Research Services Inc. of Paramus, a polling firm. Before the national election, an Attitude Analysis poll predicted that incumbent Republican president Richard Nixon would trounce Democrat George McGovern, with 61.2 percent of the vote to McGovern's 38.8. On election day, Nixon polled 61.6% and McGovern 37% in New Jersey.
A month later, in December 1972, the NJ Sports and Exposition Authority broke ground for the Meadowlands project with a lavish party attended by some 500 people and featuring helicopter tours of the site. The Asbury Park Press quoted Kohm, whose firm organized the event, as saying: "You don't launch the Queen Mary with Coca-Cola."
In the autumn of 1976, the Meadowlands Sports Complex officially opened as home to the one-time New York Giants football team and one of the premier horseracing tracks in the country. A half dozen years later, those facilities were joined by an arena for basketball (the NJ Nets), hockey (the NJ Devils) and concerts and, in 1984, the New York Jets moved to the Meadowlands.
In the mid-1970s April 1975, a front-page article in The (Bergen) Record on Trenton lobbyists led with a photo of Kohm at the capital, captioned: "One of Bergen's best-known men-about-Trenton is not elected or appointed: He's lobbyist William Kohm." The article spotlighted Kohm as one of about a dozen lobbyists meeting with New Jersey legislature and state officials and said he had "developed a reputation as a persuasive, smooth and well-connected lobbyist with an ability to get the right people to listen to the views of his clients."
About a decade later in 1986, Kohm formed Public Strategies, a Trenton-based government relations firm, with Harold L. Hodes, former chief of staff to Gov. Brendan Byrne. The clients included First Fidelity Bank, Rutgers University, AAA Auto Clubs of New Jersey, the Sports Authority, the New Jersey Casino Association, and the NJ Retail Merchants Association.
After three decades in the public arena, in 1990, Kohm stepped back but not out of the spotlight when he became chairman of his agency, ceding the role of president to James McQueeny. He retired in 1993 and spent the remaining decades traveling and golfing with his wife Norma and family.
On occasion, Kohm could be drawn into occasional conversations about his career and he frequently deflected the conversation away from himself to those he had met or interacted with including US Air Force fighter ace David Schilling, Nobel prize winning scientists Albert Einstein, Cuban leaders Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, businessman Donald Trump, politician Nelson Rockefeller, Jets quarterback Joe Namath, actor Carroll O'Connor, actress-heiress-socialite Dina Merrill and poet Dylan Thomas, with whom he recalled drinking in New York's Greenwich Village.
A veteran of the Korean conflict having served with the 31st Fighter Bomber Wing of the Air Force, Kohm wrote an account of the first jet fighter crossing the Pacific which was published by the Strategic Air Command. He attended Rutgers and New York universities.
Kohm is survived by his daughter Susan Kohm and son-in-law Phil Nimtz, of Annapolis, Md., and granddaughter Morgan Nimtz of San Francisco, as well as his sister Agnes McAndrew of Long Island and Florida and many nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his wife of 63 years, Norma E. Kohm, in 2020.
A Memorial Mass will be held at Sacred Heart Church 102 Park Street, Haworth, NJ on Saturday January 14, 2023.
As an expression of sympathy, memorial contributions in William's memory may be made to World Central Kitchen 200 Massachusetts Ave NW, 7th Floor Washington, DC 20001 or to The Wendt Center For Loss and Healing 4201 Connecticut Ave NW #300, Washington, DC 20008