Wally Edge's blog

Robert Meyner appointed eight men to the New Jersey Supreme Court during his two terms as Governor, many of them relatively young.  As a result, Richard Hughes, who followed Meyner, made no Supreme Court appointments during his eight years in office.  By the time William Cahill was elected Governor in 1969, the court began to turnover as several Justices reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy.  During his four years as Governor, Cahill made six appointments to five seats on the top court.

In early 1971, Cahill replaced retiring Justice Vincent Haneman with Worrall Mountain, a 62-year-old Appellate Court Judge from Morris County.  Both were Republicans.

Two other Justices, John Francis and Thomas Schettino, both Democrats, retired in September 1972.  At the time, the front runners for the two Supreme Court seats were Attorney General George Kugler and Robert Clifford, the Commissioner of Institutions and Agencies (now Human Services).  But Kugler became involved in one of several scandals that rocked the Cahill administraton: he was accused of helping to cover up charges that Secretary of State Paul Sherwin delivered a highway contract in exchange for a $10,000 contribution to the Republican State Committee.  While Sherwin went to prison, Kugler was cleared of any wrong doing by the State Commission of Investigation - although his hopes of going to the Supreme Court ended rather quickly.

There was considerable speculation at in 1972 that one of the Democratic candidates for Associate Justice was a young, politically-connected Superior Court Judge named Brendan Byrne.  Byrne received some attention when an organized crime wiretap called him the "judge that couldn't be bought," but Byrne was well known in the statehouse as Meyner's former Executive Secretary (now Chief of Staff), and as a former President of the Board of Public Utilities and Essex County Prosecutor.

It wasn't until six months later that Cahill, facing a hotly contested Republican primary against U.S. Rep. Charles Sandman, announced his picks for the two open Supreme Court seats: Republican Pierre Garven, his 47-year-old Chief Counsel, and Democrat Mark Sullivan, 62, an Appellate Court Judge.    Both came from prominent Hudson County political families: Garven's father was Mayor of Bayonne from 1906 to 1910 and again from 1915 to 1919; Sullivan's father was a Judge who once ran for Mayor of Jersey City, and his father-in-law was a five-term Democratic Congressman from Jersey City.

Two weeks after Cahill named Garven and Sullivan, Chief Justice Joseph Weintraub announced that he would retire at the end of the year - a move that would later be moved up to September 1.  The 65-year-old Weintraub decided sixteen years was enough and that he wanted to travel.   Read More >

Guy Catrillo, a Jersey City Republican who has found his way onto Mayor Jerramiah Healy's 2009 ticket, is probably hoping he turns out to be a better candidate than he was as an advance man.   

Catrillo was the organizer of Jersey City's 9/11 Memorial Committee back in 2002, when he planned a ceremony on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks.  The New York Times' Richard Lenzin Jones explained it best:

Read More >

Gov. Jon Corzine has a potential problem in South Jersey, where a new Quinnipiac University poll shows him trailing former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie by five points, 42%-37%. The poll defines the South Jersey region as Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties.  In 2005, Corzine beat Republican Douglas Forrester in this part of the state by 49,825 votes, a 56%-44% margin, and lost only in Cape May County.

In South Jersey, Corzine has a favorable/unfavorable rating of 43%-43%, and an upside-down approval rating of 42%-44%.  Nearly half the voters (47%) say he does not deserve to be re-elected, and 70% say they are dissatisfied with the direction New Jersey is headed. 

Against conservative Steven Lonegan, the former Mayor of Bogota, Corzine is ahead by nine points, 42%-33%, among South Jersey voters - not a great showing against a Republican whose name is not recognized by 88% of the region's voters.

Some Democrats suggest that Corzine could boost his chances in the region by picking a South Jerseyan for Lieutenant Governor.  And some Republicans think Christie could enhance his lead by doing the same thing.

Read More >

When New Jersey picked up a fifteenth congressional seat after the 1960 census, the new district included nearly all of Middlesex County.  That was at the insistence of David Wilentz, a former state Attorney General who dominated Middlesex County politics as the Democratic boss from the 1930's into the 1970's.  At the time, congressional districts were drawn by the Legislature and approved by the Governor.  The Senate was under Republican control, 11-10, but Democrats controlled the Assembly and the Governor was a Democrat, Richard Hughes.

One rare rebel who dared to challenge Wilentz's wishes was George Otlowski, a Middlesex County Freeholder from Perth Amboy - the center of the Wilentz power base. 

Otlowski, who had been a Middlesex County Freeholder for eight years, wanted to go to Congress - but Wilentz had another candidate: Edward Patten, a former Perth Amboy Mayor and Middlesex County Clerk who had managed Robert Meyner's campaign for Governor and served as New Jersey Secretary of State from 1954 to 1962.  Patten won the primary by a 56%-44% margin and beat Republican Bernard Rodgers, the Mayor of Dunellen, after pledging to support President John F. Kennedy "100%."

Read More >

The newest Democrat in the New Jersey State Senate is James Beach, who won a special election convention earlier this month to replace John Adler, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.  A former Camden County Clerk and the Co-Chairman of the Camden County Democratic Party, Beach was given a seat on the Senate Environment Committee; Senate President Richard Codey is expected to give Beach an additional committee assignment shortly.

Read More >

The full text of Governor Jon Corzine's State of the State address:

Read More >

In September 2007, the Assembly Democratic Office celebrated its 35th anniversary. Former Assembly Minority Leader Willie B. Brown, who died on Monday at age 68, was invited to attend as a former Minority Leader, however illness prevented him from attending.

The following is a letter he wrote to be read that evening:

Read More >

It's hardly a surprise that former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie announced today that he will enter the race for the Republican nomination for Governor.

Here's the text of his e-mail announcement:

Read More >

Another member of the Star-Ledger buyout group has moved over to the partisan side: Diane Walsh, a veteran reporter who covered Middlesex County, is the new press secretary to Assembly Minority Whip Jon Bramnick.  Walsh, who started as a Hudson Dispatch reporter, was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for their coverage of Gov. James E. McGreevey.

Read More >

Matt Reilly, the former deputy chief of the Star-Ledger statehouse bureau, will be the new communications director for the Senate Democrats. An award-winning journalist, Reilly replaces Jim Manion, a former Associated Press statehouse reporter who is retiring after a long career in the Senate Democratic office.

Read More >