Spadea: Crowley's right hand man

When biotech executive John Crowley was thinking about running for Senate, it was Bill Spadea who notified party leaders and started laying the groundwork for a campaign.

And when Crowley decided that he couldn’t run for Senate, it was again Spadea who notified party leaders and started disassembling the groundwork for a campaign.

Now, Crowley is starting up the Building a New Majority PAC in a joint brain-trust with Spadea, who’s the group’s president.

“We’re lacking as a party a couple things. One, we’re lacking an organized process of identifying candidates and supporting those candidates. It’s got to be ground up instead of top down. The Republican Party has taken the approach for years that if we just have somebody strong at the top, you can pull all these local seats up,” said Spadea. “So we almost have to take a page out of the Democratic book, which is start at the school board, city council, mayor’s office, and build it up. That’s what we do.”

There is, of course, intense focus on the future of Crowley, who’s considered a potential gubernatorial candidate next year or a senate candidate in 2012. But Spadea, who made an unsuccessful run for Congress in 2004, hasn’t ruled out a future in elected office either.

And if Crowley paves the way, Spadea is well poised for a run himself.

“Political organizers or operatives and candidates are not mutually exclusive paths. I think Bob Franks really showed that. I made a decision that I was going to raise my family and make a living in NJ. And there are two choices – you either move to a place where it’s more affordable to live, or you plant your feet, dig in and fight,” he said. “I think that it’s not out of the question that, if we do our work properly, there are any number of things that might open up.”