Brendan Byrne

Former Governors Brendan Byrne and Jim Florio, both supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, were named tonight as Unpledged Delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Tom Byrne might challenge Frank Lautenberg in the Democratic primaryFormer Democratic State Chairman Tom Byrne confirmed today that he’s seriously mulling a primary bid against incumbent U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

Byrne, who works as a financial consultant and is the son of former Gov. Brendan Byrne (his full name is actually Brendan Thomas Byrne, Jr.), has already commissioned a poll on his prospects and expects to learn its results by Friday. He’ll make a decision on whether or not to run over the weekend.

“The big factor will be whether people think it’s time for a change,” said Byrne, who headed up the state Democratic party between 1994 and 1997.

In September, PolitickerNJ.com reported that Byrne wouldn’t rule out a primary challenge against Lautenberg.

Tom ByrneFormer Democratic State Chairman Tom Byrne has a poll in the field to see if he can beat 84-year-old incumbent Frank Lautenberg in the Democratic primary, according to two Democratic Party insiders. Byrne, 53, is the son of former Gov. Brendan Byrne.

New Jersey, a blue state that has gone longer without electing a Republican to statewide office than any other state in the nation, has not re-elected a Democrat to statewide office in fourteen years.  The last Democrat to win re-election was Frank Lautenberg in 1994.  So technically, Republicans have re-elected an incumbent statewide official (Governor Christine Todd Whitman in 1997) more recently than the Democrats have.  The last Democratic Governor to win re-election was Brendan Byrne in 1977. 

The last sitting U.S. Attorney to win election as Governor of New Jersey was Garret Wall in 1828. He declined to serve.: U.S. Senate PhotoChris Christie is not the only federal prosecutor with an eye on higher office. But if he decides to run for governor, he'll need to figure out the optimum timing of his formal announcement.

One man who can understand Christie's position is 88-year-old Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. Back in 1962, just one year after John F. Kennedy named him U.S. Attorney for New York's southern district, Morgenthau resigned to make a gubernatorial bid against incumbent Nelson D. Rockefeller at the urging of the New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr.

Morgenthau lost, 53%-44%. Partly, he said, because he entered the race too late. As U.S. Attorney, it would have been inappropriate for him to meet with officials or campaign donors to shore up support for a run, he said.

After spending six years working as a private sector lawyer, former Acting Governor and Senate Co-President Donald DiFrancesco wants to get back into public service – perhaps as a board member of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.

“Would I be interested? Yeah, sure. Will I get it? I’m not sure,” said DiFrancesco. “It’s the other party. He probably has a lot of people who he wants to put on there.”

Former Governor Brendan Byrne has an explanation as to why his autograph was currently selling on E-Bay for $3.00, while autographs of U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg and former Governors Jim Florio and Tom Kean are priced at between $24.75 and $29.99.

“It’s the market,” Byrne told PolitickerNJ.com’s Matt Friedman.  “There are

More than 1,000 people were in Atlantic City last night to pay tribute to Bill Gormley, the powerful former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman who spent nearly thirty years in the Legislature before his retirement last February. The event, which raised money for the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, featured remarks from Governor Jon Corzine, former Governor Brendan Byrne, Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance, and U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie.

The former Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, James Zazzali, is joining two law firms: Zazzali, Fagella, Nowak, Kleinbaum & Friedman, the firm his father founded in 1925; and Gibbons P.C., where his daughter is a partner.  Zazzali, the Attorney General of New Jersey under Governor Brendan Byrne, was named Associate Justice by Governor Christine Todd Whitman in 2000.  Governor Jon Corzine elevated him to Chief Justice in 2006, a position he held for just under a year before reaching the mandatory retirement age of seventy.

HOLD ME ACCOUNTABLE: "I don’t think he’s in any real trouble...they’re just pesky things," says former Gov. Brendan Byrne on Jon Corzine's emailsIn his 1974 inaugural speech, Brendan T. Byrne borrowed a line from New Jersey’s most famous former governor: Woodrow Wilson. “If you think too much about being reelected, it is very difficult to be worth reelecting,” it read.

The next year, Byrne took that wisdom to heart, pushing through a wildly unpopular new state income tax. So unpopular, in fact, that it cost Democrats seventeen Assembly seats in the mid-term elections, made Byrne consider not running for reelection, and led to eight other Democrats challenging him in the gubernatorial primary in 1977.

Thirty-two years later, Gov. Jon S. Corzine used that same Woodrow Wilson line in his inaugural address. But for all the criticism Corzine has faced lately, it’s nothing compared to the backlash Byrne saw in the 70’s, said the former Governor.