Alan Karcher

Frank "Pat" Dodd (D-West Orange), above, wanted to serve as second two-year term as Senate President, but dropped out when Majority Leader Matthew Feldman (D-Teaneck) had the votes.

Post-Election Day politics in New Jersey might feature as many as five contested races for Legislative leadership positions: Senate President, Assembly Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, Assembly Majority Leader, and Assembly Minority Leader. 

Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) faces a challenge from Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford).  Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts (D-Camden) is retiring; Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman is running for Speaker against John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville), and possibly against Democratic State Chairman Joseph Cryan (D-Union) and Sheila Oliver (D-Adubato).  Those races create openings for Majority Leader; perhaps more importantly, the contests create campaigns for Senate Judiciary Chairman and for Budget and Appropriations committee chairmanships in both houses.

Some of New Jersey's best leadership fights:

Until the 1970's, Assembly Speakers served a single one-year term under a system where party leadership positions were rotated annually in both houses of the Legislature.  Legislators worked their way up in the rotation, usually from Assistant Whip to Whip to Assistant Leader to Leader to Speaker. 

Thomas Kean (R-Livingston) became the first two-term Assembly Speaker.  He was elected in advance of the 1972 session after the 39-member Assembly Republican caucus cut a deal with four Democrats from Hudson and Union counties to organize the Assembly.  He spent two years as Speaker, and four years as Minority Leader after Democrats won 66 seats in the 1973 election.

Christopher Jackman (D-West New York) became person to serve four years as Speaker (he served from 1978-82), followed by similar stints by Alan Karcher (D-Sayreville) and Chuck Hardwick (R-Westfield).  Jack Collins (R-Elmer) became the first person to spend six years as Speaker - the longest stint in state history.

The Princeton Community Democratic Organization voted Sunday night to endorse Jenny Crumiller for Borough Council over incumbents Kevin Wilkes and Peggy Karcher.  Crumiller, a former PCDO President, will run on the Mercer County Democratic organization line with the endorsement of the local party organization.  Wilkes got enough votes to run on the line, but without a formal party endorsement.  Karcher, who was married to the late Assembly Speaker Alan Karcher and is the mother of former State Sen. Ellen Karcher, did not receive enough votes to win either an endorsement or a position in the Democratic column.

George Otlowski, whose career in Middlesex County politics included service as an Assemblyman, Freeholder and Mayor of Perth Amboy, died on Monday at age 97.  His passing comes less than a week after the man who pushed him out as Mayor, Joseph Vas, was indicted on state corruption charges.

Otlowski was elected to the Middlesex County Board of Freeholders in 1954, part of David Wilentz's Perth Amboy-based political machine that dominated Middlesex County politics for four decades.  He broke from the machine, briefly, in 1962, to run for Congress when New Jersey picked up a fifteenth congressional seat after the 1960 census - a new district that included nearly all of Middlesex County.   He lost to Edward Patten, a former Perth Amboy Mayor and N.J. Secretary of State, by a 56%-44% margin.

In 1973, Otlowski returned to public office as an Assemblyman, representing the 19th district.  His running mate was Alan Karcher, who would later become Assembly Speaker and one of the most dominant legislators of his time.  Perth Amboy voters elected him Mayor in 1976, and he served there until 1990, when he resigned rather than face a recall vote organized by Vas.  Vas won a special election to replace Otlowski as Mayor.

ELEC Photo

Former Assembly Majority Leader Albert Burstein

Two Democratic members of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, who may play a critical role in deciding the fate of Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan, are Trenton veterans who have spent six decades in New Jersey politics.  Both Albert Burstein and Jerry Fitzgerald English have enjoyed successful political careers, although each fell quite short of achieving their full public service ambitions.

Burstein (D-Tenafly), now 86-years-old, was widely viewed as one of the most intellectually superior and independent members of the New Jersey Legislature, where he served from 1972 to 1982, but he was also a late bloomer who fell short in several opportunities to move up.  Burstein started out in politics in 1959 as counsel to the Jersey City Charter Commission and became active in Tenafly politics in the 1960's.  He was elected to the State Assembly in 1971, when legislative redistricting created a new Englewood/Teaneck seat that leaned toward the Democrats.  Running with Byron Baer, Burstein beat Jim O'Dowd (who would later serve as Bergenfield Mayor and Bergen County Freeholder) by 2,335 votes.

When legislative districts were redrawn for the 1973 elections, the newly-created 37th became even more Democratic.  But neither Burstein nor Baer got the chance to challenge the incumbent Republican Senator, Joseph Woodcock.  That opportunity went to Bergen County Democratic Chairman Matthew Feldman, a former Teaneck Mayor who had served in the Senate from 1966 to 1968.  Feldman easily beat Woodcock and Burstein and Baer coasted to win second terms.

The New Jersey Legislature is often the breeding ground for gubernatorial candidates, but by 2009 it will have been 81 years since a sitting state legislator has been elected Governor -- the last time was in 1928, when Morgan Larson, a Republican State Senator from Middlesex County, won.

Over the last fifty years, only four incumbent legislators -- State Senators Malcom Forbes (1957), Wayne Dumont (1965), Raymond Bateman (1977) and James E. McGreevey (1997) -- have won gubernatorial primaries, and all four have lost their general elections.

PRINCETON - Shirley Kauffman, former president of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization, died Monday at 82 after a long battle with cancer.

"Shirley was an outstanding member of the community and will be greatly missed," PCDO President Jenny Crumiller said in an email to Democrats. "For many years she was the backbone of the PCDO."

Democrats in Princeton knew Kauffman as a hard-nosed veteran of political campaigns and activist for progressive causes.

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton) worked with Kauffman on the late Barbara Boggs Sigmund’s Democratic Primary race for governor in 1989, when Sigmund ran against Alan Karcher and eventual winner Jim Florio.

The New Jersey Legislature is often the breeding ground for gubernatorial candidates, but by 2009 it will have been 81 years since a sitting state legislator has been elected Governor -- the last time was in 1928, when Morgan Larson, a Republican State Senator from Middlesex County, won.

Over the last fifty years, only four incumbent legislators -- State Senators Malcom Forbes (1957), Wayne Dumont (1965), Raymond Bateman (1977) and James E. McGreevey (1997) -- have won gubernatorial primaries, and all four have lost their general elections.

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.  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. 

KARCHER - 'CONSOLIDATION COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS A MAP TO REFORM'

TRENTON - Senator Ellen Karcher, a member of the Joint Legislative Committee on Government Consolidation and Shared Services, issued the following statement regarding the Committee's unanimous approval of their final report at a meeting in the Statehouse Annex today:

"After months of deliberations, today the Consolidation Committee approved our final work product.