The power of the nine

The Republican Party on Thursday united behind state Sen. Thomas Kean, Jr., as its new Senate Minority Leader, while state Sen. Leonard Lance stepped aside in the face of a torrent of young blood.

Descendent of the state's first governor, son of a former two-term governor, and with a failed U.S. Senate run behind him and still only in his late 30s, Kean sees last Tuesday's election results as a rejection of Democratic leadership over the course of the last six years.

"Today there are more Republicans in the State Legislature, more Republican freeholders than before, more mayors than there were and more council seats," says Kean.

Still, for all that, the senate Republicans slid from 18 to 17 seats, and in the Assembly the Democrats maintained control by a margin of 16 seats.

"I can guarantee you one thing," Sen. President Richard Codey had said on the eve of the election, "the Democrats will still control both houses of government."

It's true. But if the Republicans didn't exactly impose their will on the state legislature at the polls last week, two significant Democratic Party ballot questions failed, and the GOP scored upper house victories in two would-be competitive districts - the 14th, and especially in the 12th, where Codey was deeply invested.

While they don't have the majority, the GOP has a shot of energy.

Kean acknowledges that his party lost a seat in the Senate, but is fortified by his belief that Republicans picked up nine new and invigorated senators - seven of them with experience in the Assembly (only senators-elect Steve Oroho and Phil Haines are coming from the outside, and not moving up from the lower house).

"This was a strong victory for reform-minded candidates, and the Democrats who won espoused Republican ideas," says the new minority leader. "What the people of New Jersey told us in the election is they want the state to be affordable, they want economic opportunities and real reforms in state government. We have 17 reform-minded senators, and we need four votes from the other side make a majority."

Kean faced down his own opponent in the general election by a 60% to 40% margin, passable numbers considering he'd spent a good part of his recent years preparing for a run and then running for U.S. Senate. Now he's back firmly in the Statehouse saddle where he has long made ethics reform a priority.

"We have 17 members ready to engage on reform," says Kean. "We have 17 members ready to get rid of dual-office holding, ban wheeling and implement across the board pay-to-play reform."

Having served as minority leader since 2004, Lance will remain as the ranking minority member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

"Those critical issues impacting the state of New Jersey that we will fight the Democrats on include rejecting the sale of the turnpike or parkway, devising a new schools funding formula, and addressing the $3 billion shortfall in the state budget," says Kean. "There is no one in our party better equipped to be the point person on these issues than Leonard Lance."

Flanking Kean as members of the senate older guard eager to kick-start the new era are state Sen. Joseph Kyrillos, who at 47 is a twenty-year veteran of the Legislature and a former GOP State Chairman, state Sen. Andrew Cisela, a Senator from Ocean County since 1991. Both easily won re-election in their Republican districts.

Then there are the new players, the batting lineup that Kean will coach when they take the field in the new year, who will serve on all of the committees and as a bloc of nine not only can take the attack to the opposition - but can threaten Kean if he doesn't aggressively embody their energy.

1. State Sen.-elect Sean Kean

Sean KeanNo, the district 11 senator-elect didn't have the toughest terrain in the general election, but he was expected to fend off the opposition and pull his running mates to victory. He accomplished both tasks, flattening John Villapiano in the process. The popular Kean is a good lead-off hitter because while he may not have the long ball in his arsenal at this early stage of his career, he can use good across-the-aisle relations to almost assuredly get on base. A pro-labor Republican who's moderate on social issues, Kean is the son of a late AFL-CIO leader. The youthful JFK-lookalike and dirt-under-his-fingernails native of Essex County inevitably awakens the race recognition in old Irish chieftains Codey and Joe Cryan, which essentialy makes Kean a good decoy for the Republicans.

2. State Sen.-elect Steve Oroho

Steve OrohoPeople forget about the rugged campaign that banker and financial planner Oroho engineered against tough veteran Assemblyman Guy Gregg in the northern land of the mountain men. The latter ran athwart the legacy of Sen. Bob Littell, depicting the retiring dist. 24 elder statesman as a less-than vigorous champion of conservative principles. Then Gregg ran into Oroho, who stood at the top of a ticket that included Littell's daughter, Alison McHose. In what at the time looked like a foolhardy move, Oroho pulled hard, hard to starboard of his opponent, excoriating the Assemblyman for standing with "liberal" U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, and showering the district with negative mailpieces that chastised Gregg for voting in favor of a cigarette tax. In their showdown at Newton High School a few days before Election Day, the polished debater Gregg found himself up against a scrappy fact-machine and fierce proponent of fiscal and social conservatism in Oroho, who never played nice and left a shocked Gregg face-to-face with a loss on Election night, and staked his claim as a new mountain man in Trenton.

3. State Sen.-elect Jennifer Beck

Jennifer BeckShe was such a tough competitor during the general election, finally wearing down and blowing out district 12 state Sen. Ellen Karcher by eight points, it's tempting to put her in the four-spot. A red-blooded fiscal conservative and social moderate, Beck thrives on battle. She dogged her fellow Assemblyman Michael Panter for presenting a lukewarm dual-office holding bill, then turned into a human buzzsaw against Karcher, going after the estate-dwelling senator at every turn of what for Beck was a bitter, blue collar campaign. Having defeated Codey's charge outside the walls of Troy, now she's inside, and face to face with the Man himself, gives no indication that she'll be intimidated.

4. State Sen.-elect Bill Baroni

Bill BaroniYes, he confuses the hard-line members of the GOP as a pro-life, pro-labor moderate. But the 14th district Hamiltonian can operate as few in his party can in the WW I trenches of New Jersey politics, while simultaneously creating a circus tent atmosphere around himself. Genteel on the surface, certainly, but hardly a member of the tea-sipping political elite, Baroni as much as Chris Christie is the party's brain - as well as its rising star. Early in the general election, he applied an anaconda-like grip to the Seema Singh campaign and drained it of life even before it was able to get to the cantering stage. Part of Baroni's political skill is derived from the fact that he comes from a tough political district where constituents don't just pay attention to local and state politics, but live for them, and where politicians live or die based on their capacity to operate - and deliver results.

5. State Sen.-elect Kevin O'Toole

Kevin O'TooleLike Baroni, the Essex County gut fighter from dist. 40 is a political animal who ever since his primary victory has been restlessly pawing the turf to get in there and make things happen. Quick on his feet, a fiery orator and a behind-the-scenes operator, O'Toole also possesses another uncomfortable trait for the Democrats: a desire to compete in their urban strongholds. A common Democratic Party strategy is to Glad-wrap the GOP in a paint-by-numbers portrait of golf cart riding big business toadies, but with the fire-breathing O'Toole on the other side of the aisle at least, it will be hard to make that stereotype stick.

6. State Sen.-elect Phil Haines

Phil HainesPost election, the district 8 senator-elect is arguably in the toughest position on this list as he faces a splintered Burlington County Republican Party back home and a Hamlet-like struggle internally. In a debate showdown on the campaign trail with fast-sinking Assemblyman Francis Bodine, Haines exercised stately forbearance, preferring to let his Republican-turned Democratic opponent tie himself into rhetorical knots rather than personally apply the saber in this GOP gentleman's district. But Haines was also uncomfortably silent as his campaign trotted out what most believed was a pure fear-card playing mail piece prepared and floated by the Traz Group. Now Haines is again squirming in limbo land amid a Burlington County taffy pull that features boss Glen Paulsen and his minions on the one side, and reformers like Sen. Diane Allen on the other.

7. State Sen.-elect Kip Bateman

Kip BatemanA lawyer like others in this lineup - Baroni, Sean Kean, O'Toole and Haines - Bateman is a 13-year veteran of the Assembly who's had a cakewalk political career in his 2-1 Republican 16th district. His one-sided trouncing of businessman Wayne Fox on Tuesday was a snoozefest alongside the more compelling storyline of a closer-than-usual Somerset County Freeholder race. Son of Senate President and gubernatorial candidate Raymond Bateman, and a partner in the law firm of former Gov. Donald DiFrancesco, the senator-elect has "sponsored laws reducing auto insurance premium costs for policy holders, allowing tax filers to contribute a portion of their income tax refund to support the Drug Abuse Education Fund (DARE) program and creating a grant program thermal imaging cameras to fire departments and companies throughout the state," according to the Assembly Republicans.

8. State Sen.-elect Chris Connors

Chris ConnorsThe fact that he comes from the non-competitive 9th district means that Connors - like Oroho, Bateman and Pennacchio - can stake out a position on the party's far right and become an uncompromising voice in the upper house. During the campaign season, Connors pounded out his points with sledgehammer clarity. He wants the state to reduce 3,600 employees per year for four years. He wants to rein in Abbot School district spending and eliminate, and shred the state budget. He bad-mouthed the Fair and Clean Elections program as a waste of taxpayers' money. "You're talking about more taxes to fund legislative campaigns," he told PoliticsNJ.com earlier this year. "At some point, we have to say the state cannot afford to do all of this stuff."

9. State Sen.-elect Joe Pennacchio

Joe PennacchioAll you needed to know that Pennacchio was running in a safe district (26) was to listen to his general election radio commercial. "He's Jersey Joe, Jersey Joe, Jersey Joe... Pennacchio." Trilled to a Burl Ives songbook piano accompaniment, the jingle was hardly "Eye of the Tiger" material. A self-described Reagan-Republican, Pennacchio took a strong stand in the Assembly against asset monetization and vocally voted against the global warming act with the argument that the open-ended measures might be harmful to business. More focused now on his U.S. Senate bid than on the state senate, he remains - at least for now - an affable Trenton fixture.