Bob Franks

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Do lines matter in Bergen County? Paul DiGaetano won the 2005 GOP convention, but Douglas Forrester, above, finished 24 percentage points ahead of him in the primary.

Next up on the Republican gubernatorial campaign schedule: Essex County Republicans will hold a Screening Committee on Tuesday evening to award their organization line.  The favorite to win there is former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, who has the support - though not yet officially - of State Sen. Kevin O'Toole (R-Cedar Grove), the Essex County Republican Chairman.  Look for a list of Essex endorsements for Christie to be released before the screening committee. 

O'Toole and Christie some history together - O'Toole was one of the legislators who attempted to convince Christie to run in 2005.  The political alliance between the former Chief of Staff to Essex County Executive James Treffinger and the man who sent Treffinger to prison as a federal prosecutor is indeed an interesting one. 

And in the land of Republican gubernatorial politics, as goes Essex, so goes Passaic.  So the winner of the Essex screening committee will likely replicate his success in Passaic, where Assemblyman Scott Rumana (R-Wayne), the Passaic County Republican Chairman, is an O'Toole ally. 

A player in the Essex, Bergen and Passaic contests will be former Assembly Majority Leader Paul DiGaetano (R-Nutley), who is the biggest Republican name to have endorsed former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan so far.  DiGaetano moved to Essex County after spending sixteen years as a Passaic City Councilman, and in 2005, he won the Bergen County Republican Convention when he ran for Governor.

Three candidates are seeking Marcia Karrow's 23rd district Assembly seat: left to right, Erik Peterson, John DiMaio and Matthew Holt.

There are three votes worth watching on Saturday:

1.  In District 23, Republican County Committee members from Hunterdon and Warren counties will meet to elect a new Assemblyman.  Hunterdon Freeholders Matthew Holt and Erik Peterson, and Warren Freeholder John DiMaio face off for the Assembly seat left vacant earlier this month when Marcia Karrow (R-Raritan) took her seat in the State Senate.  Hunterdon GOP Chairman Henry Kuhl has promised at least one Assembly seat to Warren County, so if DiMaio loses tomorrow, he'll still be on the organization line in the June primary for the seat Michael Doherty (R-Washington) is giving up to challenge Karrow for the State Senate.  If DiMaio wins the special election convention, Holt and Peterson can fight it out in April for the other Assembly seat.

2. The first-in-the-state Republican gubernatorial convention is in Union County, where former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie has a substantial lead among endorsements from party leaders and elected officials.  With former Bogota Mayor Steven Lonegan seemingly a lock for second place, the real race is the one for third place between five-term Assemblyman Rick Merkt (R-Mendham) and Brian D. Levine, the Mayor of Franklin Township.  There is not a lot of room for another candidate in a field that looks to be as many as seven, and if someone were to break out of the pack, it can be either one or the other.  Merkt may have the edge: his campaign manager, former Hillsborough Councilman Christopher Venis, is a longtime political operative with roots in Union County as an aide to U.S. Rep. Bob Franks and as a member of a Union County-based local political consulting firm.  The other three candidates, Morris County Freeholder Jim Murray, and businessmen David Brown and Dennis Knight, are not participating in the Union County vote.

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U.S. Rep. Bob Franks, shown campaigning for the U.S. Senate in 2000, made a campaign issue of Democrat Larry Lerner's law firm having no women partners when he ran for re-election in 1996.

Congratulations to Orville Cockings, who became the lone African American partner at the Westfield law firm of Lerner, David, Littenberg, Krumholz & Mentlik last month.  The firm's demographics became an issue during the 1996 campaign, when U.S. Rep. Bob Franks was facing a challenge from the firm's founder, Larry Lerner.  Franks criticized Lerner for running a law firm that employed no women attorneys.  A dozen years later, the firm has doubled in size but continues to be dominated by one sex.  All 25 partners are men, as are eighteen of the 26 associates and all nine Of Counsel.

Left to right: U.S. Sen. Clifford Case and his 1978 GOP primary opponent, Jeff Bell; 2001 Republican gubernatorial candidates Acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco and Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler.

There is a temptation by the media, including this site, to designate former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie as the front runner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.  A Quinnipiac poll released yesterday with a 27-point lead, 44%-17%, over former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. 

A February 2001 Quinnipiac poll had Acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco leading Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler 45%-16% among Republican primary voters.  A Quinnipiac poll taken in May showed former U.S. Rep. Bob Franks with a 46%-24% lead over Schundler.  Schundler won the primary by fourteen points, 57%-43%. 

In 2000, former Gov. Jim Florio had a 57%-22% lead over first-time candidate Jon Corzine in a February Quinnipiac poll.  Corzine won the primary 58%-42%.

Conservative Jeff Bell, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, beat four-term U.S. Senator Clifford Case in the 1978 GOP Primary by a 51%-49% margin.  But just a month earlier, an Eagleton-Rutgers poll had Case leading Bell 35%-7%.

Take a look at PolitickerNJ.com's first Winners & Losers of the Year, published in December 2000.  CLICK HERE

From our first year, the Best & Worst Campaigns of 2000:

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Helen Meyner campaigns for Congress in 1974. The former First Lady's bid to unseat freshman U.S. Rep. Joseph Maraziti was the first campaign for Don Herche, a pollster and consultant who passed away last night

Democratic pollster Don Herche, who passed away last night, began his political career in 1974 as a young staffer on the campaign of Democrat Helen Stevenson Meyner, the former First Lady of New Jersey who was a candidate for Congress in a heavily Republican district.

The story of Meyner's congressional campaign actually begins four years earlier when Republicans cut a deal to clear the field for GOP State Chairman Nelson Gross in the race for U.S. Senate.  One potential primary rival, Morris County State Sen. Joseph Maraziti, dropped his statewide bid with the promise that he would chair the committee that drew new congressional districts after the 1970 census.

Maraziti drew what became known as the Maraziti district: a Democratic House seat in Hudson County was eliminated (forcing two incumbents to face off in a primary), and replaced with a new seat in northwestern New Jersey that included Hunterdon, Sussex and Warren counties, part of Morris, and a small part of western Mercer.  The district was so Republican that Richard Nixon carried it with 70% of the vote against George McGovern.  (In 2008, Republican House candidates won 64% of the vote in the towns that make up the old thirteenth district.)

As a candidate for Congress, the 60-year-old Maraziti won 50% in the GOP primary, defeating Sussex Assemblyman Walter Keough-Dwyer (25%) and Mercer Assemblyman Karl Weidel (17%). 

In the general election, Maraziti faced Meyner, 43, a cousin of Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and the wife of Robert Meyner, who served as Governor from 1954 to 1962.  Maraziti won 56%-43%.

As a freshman Congressman, Maraziti won a seat on the House Judiciary Committee, which put him in the national spotlight as a staunch defender of Nixon.  He voted against all three articles of impeachment.   Meyner decided to run again in 1974.

Her campaign, the one Herche worked on, was helped by the disclosure that Maraziti put his girlfriend, 35-year-old Linda Collinson, on his congressional payroll in a no-show job  -- one of the highest salaries on his staff -- while she worked at a Whippany law firm.  Collinson was outed when she applied for a loan with the House credit union and a staffer who answered the phone in Maraziti's office said she had never heard of her.  Real estate records also listed the house where Collinson lived as owned by Maraziti.

Late in the campaign, the Hackettstown Star-Gazette fired their managing editor, Donald Thatcher, after the Meyner campaign pointed out that Maraziti put Thatcher on his congressional payroll to write press releases.  Nicholas DeRienzo, who was the general manager of two northwestern New Jersey radio stations, WCRV and WFMV-FM, was also put on Maraziti's payroll.

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Bob Franks had a 53%-3% favorble rating among Republicans after his 2000 U.S. Senate bid, and lost a primary for Governor six months later by fourteen percentage points

Outgoing U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie has a 42%-1% favorable rating among Republican voters, who by a 67%-4% margin want him to run for Governor in 2009.  In a head to head poll with Democrat Jon Corzine, Republicans back Christie 76%-10%.  Christie also leads Corzine among Independents, 38%-32%.

Frank Lautenberg becomes the first U.S. Senator from New Jersey to win a fifth term, but didn't set any records for winning percentages.  His 56% against former U.S. Rep. Richard Zimmer was his career best, but he didn't approach the 60% mark that Bill Bradley, Clifford Case and Harrison Williams had achieved back in a time when the state was more politically competitive.  Still, the 84-year-old Democrat is secure for the next six years, and did not have to sweat much after pushing back a primary challenge from U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews.

Matthew John Rinaldo (1931-2008)
Friends and rivals remember Matthew J. Rinaldo, a former Republican Congressman who died yesterday after a long bout with Parkinson's disease at age 77, for his bipartisan style and top notch constituent services.

For Rinaldo, a Republican, that bipartisanship was partly out of necessity. For the entirety of his 20 years in the House, he was a member of the minority party.

"There is no Republican now serving in the House of Representatives who has ever chaired a committee, gaveled a hearing to order, or scheduled a bill for debate on the House floor," he said in a statement announcing his retirement. "Unfortunately, I do not foresee any prospect of that changing in the near term."

Rinaldo served on the House Energy and Commerce Committee as well as the House Select Committee on Aging, and those who knew him say he was frustrated that he never got a chairmanship.

Two years later, the Republicans swept into power. But many of the newcomers of the "Republican Revolution," led by the new House Speaker Newt Gingrich, were not Rinaldo's ilk. They were rock-ribbed conservatives, while he was a moderate with strong labor ties and strong alliances with key Democrats.

He developed a political alliance with Elizabeth Mayor Thomas Dunn - a Democrat who endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 - and carried that heavily Democratic city during most, if not all, of his campaigns.

"They both worked across the aisle. That's why both of them were so successful. The key in new jersey has been, and still is, people who can appeal to both parties," said former Gov. Tom Kean. "I did the same thing."