Raymond J. Lesniak (born May 7, 1946) is an American Democratic Party politician, who served in the New Jersey State Senate from 1983 to 2018, where he represented the 20th Legislative District.
[citation needed] Subsequently, Dunn orchestrated Lesniak's removal from the 'party line' -- a preferred ballot position aligned with almost all other incumbents—when it was time for the lawmaker to seek re-election to the General Assembly in 1981.
[5] In a June 1983 special election, Lesniak won the Senate seat of John T. Gregorio who was forced to vacate his office after being convicted of hiding his ownership of a pair of Linden go-go bars.
[7] Lesniak has championed the abolition of the death penalty in New Jersey (after having voted for its reinstatement in 1982[8]); the Marriage Equality Act; and environmental initiatives to clean up one of the most heavily industrialized regions in the nation.
[11] After the Supreme Court refused the NJ appeal toward PASPA overturn in 2013,[12] Ray Lesniak made revisions to his sports betting bill and got them approved by the US Department of Justice.
[citation needed] In October 2016, Lesniak introduced a bill dubbed "Pedals' Law" that would ban black bear hunting in New Jersey for five years.
He then switched to saying he would no longer seek the Democratic nomination in October, after Phil Murphy gathered early support from county leaders around the state.
In April 2022, Lesniak published his memoir, Cultivating Justice in the Garden State: My Life in the Colorful World of New Jersey Politics (with a foreword by Bill Clinton).
A highly critical report by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.(FDIC) also found the institution had engaged in unsafe or unsound banking practices, including "operating without adequate supervision by its board of directors", an excessive level of delinquent or bad loans, inadequate earnings and insufficient coverage of its assets.
[22] In 2009, Lesniak won the Mémorial de Caen International Human Rights Award in Normandy, France; one of only two Americans to ever do so, with the speech "The Road To Justice and Peace.