Leonard Lance

U.S. Rep.-elect Leonard Lance won't take sides in a race to fill his State Senate seat in January

Asked whether he’ll endorse anyone to replace him in the state Senate, Congressman-elect Leonard Lance (R-Flemington) said that he would follow advice from his late father, former Senate President Wesley Lance. 

“He said, ‘You cannot choose your successor in political life,’” said Lance.  “I think I will remain neutral.”

At least one of Lance’s running mates, Assemblyman Michael Doherty, is running for the seat.  If his other running mate, Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow, jumps in, it could be an intense battle (Multiple Republican sources say, however, that Karrow is having second thoughts about running). 

“I think very highly of both of my running mates.  I think we have worked well together. Both of my running mates have experience on freeholder boards – experience I did not have, and I want to speak highly of both of them,” he said.

It’s a week after the election, and the dust has yet to settle on the race to take over the state Senate seat of Leonard Lance (R-Flemington).  But one thing has been constant since Wednesday: Assemblyman Mike Doherty (R-Washington) is gunning hard for the seat, and has already started his door knocking campaign across pastoral Hunterdon and Warren Counties.

“I have my list and I have my Garmin, which certainly helps navigate some of our rural roads in the dark,” said Doherty.

There are roughly 400 county committee members from the two counties that comprise the 23rd Legislative District, and Doherty plans to visit every one of them (many are husband and wife teams, which helps cut down on the number of doors to knock on). Last night, he began his campaign, visiting committee members in Glen Gardner, Bethlehem and Hampton.

After Lance resigns his seat to move up to Congress in January, those committee members will decide who gets to fill in for Lance in Trenton until the June primary and special election in November.

Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow (R-Flemington), who has also expressed interest in the seat, has a slight geographical edge.  Hunterdon County has a larger population than Doherty’s native Warren County, and has about 40 more county committee members.

That’s why Doherty has begun by focusing on Hunterdon County Committee members.

“I initially focused on some Hunterdon county folks, but I’ll hit folks in the two counties,” he said.

Karrow could not be reached for comment.  Several Republican sources said today that she’s having second thoughts about running, given Doherty’s strong support by conservative groups.

Warren County Republican Chairman Doug Steinhardt said that Doherty can count on nearly unanimous support from the Warren County committee members.  Even if Hunterdon County does field a candidate, he said, Doherty will be able to sap enough votes from their members to win.

Assemblyman Michael Doherty is seeking the State Senate seat of U.S. Rep.-elect Leonard Lance

The Conservatives with Attitude(CWA)Executive Committee today announced its unanimous endorsement of Assemblyman Michael Doherty to fill the New Jersey State Senate seat vacated by Congressman-elect/state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon).

“Assemblyman Doherty is a pro-taxpayer, pro-family conservative who
believes in smaller government, lower taxes, and personal responsibility,” said Michael Illions, co-executive director of Conservatives with Attitude. “He is a true, Back to Basics Republican with the voting record to prove it.”

John Adler won a seat in Congress eighteen years after his first House race.

Now it seems trendy to run for Congress, lose, then spend a lot of years in state government before finally making it to Washington.  In 2006, Albio Sires won an open House seat twenty years after his first attempt.  Sires had challenged U.S. Rep. Frank Guarini as a Republican in 1986; he later won local office in West New York, and after switching parties in 1999, he beat an incumbent Assemblyman in the Democratic primary.  He became Assembly Speaker after the 2001 election, and went to Congress after Bob Menendez joined the United States Senate.

Both of New Jersey's freshmen Congressman had previously lost House races.  John Adler ran against Jim Saxton in 1990 and lost 60%-40%.  A year later, despite one of the two biggest Republican landslides in state political history, he ousted four-term GOP State Sen. Lee Laskin.  Leonard Lance first ran for Congress in 1996, when Richard Zimmer gave up his seat to run for U.S. Senate; he finished third in the GOP primary, behind Michael Pappas and John Bennett. Lance moved from the Assembly to the Satate Senate in 2001, and became Minority Leader in 2004.

U.S. Rep.-elect Leonard Lance will be tough to beat in 2010 after besting Democrat Linda Stender by nine percentage points

Democrats don't think it will be easy to  unseat soon-to-be freshman Leonard Lance from the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.  Lance scored a 51%-42% victory over Linda Stender, who had been running for three years and had huge financial support from national Democrats.  The district has been Republican since Florence Dwyer ousted Harrison Williams in 1956. 

In an election year driven by a hemorrhaging economy and an electorate hungry for an end to divisive politics, 7th Congressional District candidate Linda Stender positioned herself on the wrong side of the Democratic wave.

The election marked a desire for change in both policy and politics. The Southern Strategy is dead. Barack Obama fought for votes in all corners of the country and won in places the pundits said he had no business even competing. Talk of the "Real America" and accusations of anti-Americanism looked petty in the context of our nation's challenges, particularly while most Americans worried about their jobs and lost retirement savings. The divisive issues that characterized the Bush era were but an asterisk in the presidential race, and when they did surface, the Karl Rove strategy of divide, distract and conquer failed to deliver. Despite Californians narrowly voting for the bigoted Proposition 8, they still delivered Obama a crushing margin over McCain. The grip of fear over the electorate has weakened.

Exhausted from years of excessive political divisiveness, voters of all stripes turned to Barack Obama because he embodied a spirit of respect, cooperation, and bipartisanship (not to be confused with centrism).

If there are parallels between the presidential and 7th Congressional District races, they buck the national trends that swept Obama and other Democrats into office. In this case, it was Leonard Lance -- a self-described Eisenhower Republican with a long record of reaching across the aisle, whose temperament offered voters a change of pace from the politics of the past.

Of the two New Jersey congressional districts where Republican incumbents did not seek re-election this year, the third district in parts of Ocean, Burlington and Camden counties is arguably more Republican than the seventh district, which includes parts of Hunterdon, Somerset, Union and Middlesex counties.  In District 3, Jim Saxton won 58% of the vote in 2006 and 63% in 2004; George W. Bush won with 51% in 2004.  In the 7th, Mike Ferguson nearly lost his 2006 re-election bid to Democrat Linda Stender, 49%-48%, after winning 57% in 2004; Bush won 53% four years ago.  Republicans have held the Saxton seat since 1884 and the Ferguson seat since 1956.

Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow (R-Flemington) said today that she is thinking about running for state Sen. Leonard Lance's (R-Flemington) seat, but she doesn’t want to make any announcements just yet.

“I am seriously thinking about it. However, I have to say that my friend Leonard Lance just spent a year of his life running for this seat in Congress, and he really deserves a week to revel in the victory, and I don’t want to diminish any of the press. This is his week,” she said. “I think he just wants to enjoy the limelight and steal his thunder, and I will not be part of stealing his thunder.”

Asked whether that comment was a jab at her district-mate, Assemblyman Mike Doherty (R-Washington), who earlier today told PolitickerNJ.com that he planned to run for the seat, Karrow said “I didn’t say that.”

Now that State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Flemington) is headed to Congress, his district-mate, Assemblyman Mike Doherty (R-Washington Township) plans to seek his seat.

Doherty is filing his paperwork with the Election Law Enforcement Commission today.

“I am announcing today that I am running for the state Senate seat, and I’m going to be spending today getting out my announcements and contacting the chairmen of the two counties, other elected officials and others involved in political circles,” Doherty told PolitickerNJ.com this morning.

Doherty’s heavily Republican district spans mostly rural Hunterdon and Warren Counties. The two Republican county committees must meet within 35 days of Lance's resignation to choose a replacement. Since there are more than two years remaining in Lance’s term, whoever the committees select to fill the seat will have to win a primary contest in June of next year and a special general election in November.

State Sen.Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) with supporters Robin Visconti, left, and Nicole Davidman

SOMERVILLE - Claiming victory here tonight in his 7th Congressional District contest, state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) gave this crowd of Republicans reason to celebrate on an otherwse mostly difficult landscape.

"I think the editorial board support was important," said Lance, standing among his supporters in the Elks Club. "The papers unanimously endorsed me, and it mattered."

The final ad the Lance campaign ran in the cycle trailed those endorsements across the screen for emphasis.

The Stender campaign attempted to depict Lance as a Bush drone, and he ran much of the race without the necessary cash to punch back.