Assemblyman John Rooney says he may retireAfter serving in the Legislature since 1983, Republican Assemblyman John Rooney calls himself the Dean of the Assembly, having been there longer than any other current member.

But a combination of health issues and weariness of the way he says business is done in Trenton today has led Rooney to consider retirement, even after he won a solid victory in last month’s hotly contested election. Rooney, who at 68 is the youngest of the three 39th district legislators, will evaluate his political future after undergoing hip replacement surgery later this month. Depending on how his recovery goes, he may decide to retire early or not to seek another term in 2009.

Reflecting on his legislative record over the last 25 years, Rooney admitted that the current state of Trenton politics had him dispirited. And he had already been dealt a painful blow in 2006, after a well-funded Democrat tossed him out of the Northvale’s mayor’s office – a seat that he had held from 1979-1986, and again from 1991 until his defeat.

Retiring Rep. Jim Saxton won’t make a formal endorsement for the Republican nomination for his successor, but he spent yesterday in Washington with Medford Deputy Mayor Christopher Meyers, a Lockheed Martin executive and the presumptive favorite to be the Burlington County candidate in the race to succeed him.

Saxton met with Myers and took him to offices of the Republican National Congressional Committee yesterday to introduce him around, said Jeff Sagnip, who served as Saxton’s campaign manager in 2006. Saxton, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and Myers, a defense contractor who works for the largest employer in South Jersey, have been close friends for years.

Right now, it’s looking like a two-candidate race for Mike Ferguson’s seventh district House seat between Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance and Kate Whitman, the 30-year-old daughter of the former Governor. Somerset Republican insiders say that Assemblyman Peter Biondi and Freeholder Jack Ciattarelli will be the next to announce that they won’t run for Congress.

Union County has two candidates who are, at this point, second tier: Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks and former Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield. Both will need to show considerable fundraising success by the end of this month – there won’t be another report due until April – and then one of them will have to dominate the local endorsement game, where Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean, Jr. is the biggest catch. Kean could stay out of the race – a message to Union County Republicans that Lance and Whitman are stronger candidates – or endorse Lance outright.

George: And I got a date with the sales woman. She's got a little Marisa Tomei thing going on.

Jerry: Ah, too bad you got a little George Costanza thing going on.

George: I'm going out with her tomorrow, she said she had some errands to run.

Jerry: That's a date?

George: What's the difference? You know they way I work, I'm like a commercial jingle. First it's a little irritating, then you hear it a few times, you hum it in the shower, by the third date it's "By Mennen!".

New Jerseyan Joe Colletti, the field director for Tom Kean, Jr. Senate race, is now working for John McCain in NewHampshire
Hillsborough Co., NH - Joe Colletti first shook the hand of Arizona Sen. John McCain in the Short Hills Hilton back in 2006, not knowing then that he would soon work for the old war hero nursing longtime presidential aspirations with a last chance at the prize.

Colletti was toiling for state Sen. Tom Kean, Jr., at the time and McCain had landed in Jersey to support Kean's challenge of Sen. Robert Menendez.

"Youth," McCain said when asked why he thought Kean would be a good addition to the U.S. Senate, and a little later, on his way into the banquet hall where he would mount a stage in front of a mostly Somerset and Morris County crowd, he met the then 24-year old Colletti.

One of the first of a core of Kean staffers, Colletti had joined the campaign early - 15 months before Election Day. As the contest intensified, the U.S. Senate candidate dispatched Colletti to serve as field director for the campaign's central Jersey headquarters. That meant Colletti, who grew up in Linden and Warren, would be in charge of building political operations in Middlesex, Mercer, and Monmouth counties.

Michelle Obama speaks to voters in New Hampshire
MANCHESTER, NH - Compared to Jersey, it’s edge of the world country.

Snow-capped Monadnock in the distance between Manchester and Keene sends a wordless message that the human hurly burly is but a small piece of the action. A headline in the Union-Leader tells of a hunter who’s still lost after several days and the sense is this is commonplace in New Hampshire. Human star power that blows through on the way to the presidency has nothing on the constancy of the hills, and the mountain.

Today the student center crawls with Secret Service personnel at Keene College, where kids bundled into backpacks and ballcaps trudge from edifice to noble edifice in the dreadful cold.

The students prepare to hear from Michelle Obama, the 43-year old wife of the presidential candidate, who’s leading in Iowa over Sen. Hillary Clinton by a four-point margin, and trailing her by six points in New Hampshire, according to Washington Post/ABC News polls. When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1991, he wore out his voice calling for change. Now he’s the institutional old sage and his wife is the political insider, while Obama the upstart calls for change, and his wife amplifies the message.

John McCain fans in New Jersey may not get a chance to see their favorite hell-raiser in February. If he fails to impress in New Hampshire, he's done.

Will Mennen, the heir to an over-the-counter pharmaceuticals fortune, has decided against running for the 7th District Congressional seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson, and will back fellow Hunterdon County Republican state Sen. Leonard Lance.

"I am very flattered to have been asked by a number of respected officials from across our state to run for Congress next year," Mennen said in a statement. "The 7th Congressional District presents a real opportunity for a true conservative candidate to prevail. I am, however, concerned that a divisive primary will lessen the prospects of keeping this seat in Republican hands."

The controversy surrounding U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie's selection of John Ashcroft for a lucrative federal monitor position may have roiled Democrats, but it hasn't changed Republicans' feelings about their would-be gubernatorial nominee.

That's not to say that Christie has come out and announced he's running for governor. In fact, he consistently blows off speculation about a potential run, saying that members of the media obsess about it more than he does.

That may be true. But members of the Republican Party obsess about it too, and the revelation about him giving his former boss a hefty paycheck hasn't dampened the establishment's enthusiasm for Christie as their nominee in 2009 - should he choose to run, of course. The election may be two years away, but all signs point to vast Republican support for a Christie candidacy.

Gov. Jon Corzine will launch a private fundraising effort to help fun the expansion of Rutgers Stadium in New Brunswick.  Corzine intends to make a personal contribution, but his office says he hasn't set an amount yet.