Anne Thompson

As Gov. Jon Corzine continues his search for a Democratic Lt. Governor candidate, it seems that he is ruling out more potential running mates than he considers.  Part of the problem is that every legitimate contender comes with a group of Democrats opposed to his or her candidacy.  That appears especially true for State Senators Barbara Buono (D-Metuchen) and Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck), who for a time looked like the front runners.  Corzine also faces considerable pressure to pick an African American for the post, although Assembly Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), Newark Mayor Cory Booker, State Senators Shirley Turner (D-Lawrence), Nia Gill (D-Montclair), Ronald Rice (D-Newark) and Sandra Cunningham (D-Jersey City), Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells, Trenton Mayor Douglas Palmer, Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange), and Assemblyman Herbert Conaway (D-Delanco) are, for a variety of reasons, not under serious consideration.

Corzine might be missing one LG candidate with enormous gravitas and few political enemies: U.S. District Court Judge Anne Thompson, who was the first woman and the first African American to serve as a federal judge in New Jersey.  She became the first Black to serve as a county prosecutor when Gov. Brendan Byrne appointed her in 1975 (after a stint as a public defender and as the Trenton Municipal Court Judge), and has spent the last thirty years as a federal judge.   Thompson is 75, slightly older than Weinberg and a decade younger than U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg.  Attorney General Anne Milgram was Thompson's law clerk.

ELEC Photo

Former State Sen. Jerry Fitzgerald English

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.

 The Texas-born English (D-Summit) moved to New Jersey after law school at Boston College and Harvard when her husband took a job as Bell Labs researcher.  She founded a local conservation group in 1969, and in 1971, at the age of 36, she became the second woman to serve in the New Jersey State Senate.  English won a November 1971 special election to fill the remaining two months of a vacant Union County Senate seat.  She was not a candidate for a full term, and served until January 1972.

In 1972, English decided to run for Congress after eight-term U.S. Rep. Florence Dwyer (R-Elizabeth) announced her retirement.  She beat Richard Samuel, who had played a role in the New Jersey presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, in the Democratic primary.  In the general election, State Sen. Matthew Rinaldo (R-Union) beat English by a wide margin, 64%-36% in a district that went 2-1 for Richard Nixon.  English never ran for office again.

If Jon Corzine decides to appoint a caretaker United States Senator to fill the remaining year of his term, central casting has someone to fill the role: trailblazer Anne E. Thompson, the first African American and first woman to serve as a U.S. District Court Judge and county Prosecutor in New Jersey. Thompson has spent 26 years as a Federal Judge, including several years as Chief Judge; she has served as the Mercer County Prosecutor, as Trenton Municipal Court Judge, as a leader of George McGovern's 1972 campaign in New Jersey, as a lawyer for the Great Society (she worked for the U.S. Department of Labor in the Johnson administration) and as a Howard University Professor. Thompson, now 71 and on senior status, has unimpeachable ethics and strong liberal credentials -- perhaps exactly the person Corzine might want if he chooses to make history by appointing an African American woman to the Senate.

Editor's note: If Thompson were to be a U.S. Senator, one of her first votes would be on the confirmation of one of her colleagues, Samuel Alito, to the U.S. Supreme Court. A vote for or against Alito by another Federal Judge would surely make national news.