Brendan Byrne

Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski lost his bid for a second term when he finished third in the Republican primary with just 19% of the vote. Until yesterday, New Jersey's Brendan Byrne held the record for the lowest vote percentage of an incumbent Governor seeking re-election in a primary.

Byrne would have lost the primary had Democratic leaders united behind a single challenger; instead, ten Democrats joined the race and Byrne was able to win the June primary with 30% of the vote. He defeated Congressman Robert Roe (23%), former State Senator Ralph DeRose (17%), Congressman James Florio (15%), former state Commissioner of Labor (in Byrne's cabinet) Joseph Hoffman (10%), State Senator Raymond Garramone (3%) and five others.

Alaska also joins New Jersey as one of a few states that have defeated both a Governor and a United States Senator in primaries. New Jersey did it in 1978 when Clifford Case lost the GOP primary for U.S. Senate, nine years after Wiliam Cahill lost the Republican gubernatorial primary. Murkowski's loss comes 26 years after U.S. Senator Mike Gravel was defeated in the Democratic primary. Ironically, Murkowski won Gravel's Senate seat in the general election that year.

Former State Treasurer John McCormac was unopposed in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Woodbridge, and becomes the strong favorite to win a November Special Election to fill the remaining thirteen months of the late Frank Pelzman's term. If he is successful, he will become the eighth person (under the current State Constitution) to win an election after leaving the cabinet: Brendan Byrne and Christine Todd Whitman both served as President of the Board of Public Utilities before becoming Governor; former Public Advocate Wilfredo Caraballo was later elected to the State Assembly; Elizabeth Randall served as Commissioner of Banking and Insurance before her election to the Bergen County Board of Freeholders; Robert Roe, the Commissioner of Conservation and Economic Development in the 1960's who went on to spend 23 years in Congress; former Secretary of State Edward Patten, who served in the House from 1963 to 1981; and former State Treasurer Feather O'Connor went on to win a seat on the Cranbury Township Committee.

Before Republicans become too optimistic over Governor Jon Corzine's upside-down approval numbers, they should recall that James Florio -- arguably the most unpopular Governor in state history -- came within 26,000 votes of winning re-election to a second term in 1993. And Brendan Byrne, maybe the second most unpopular Governor, was re-elected in 1977 after getting just slightly more than 20% of the vote in the Democratic primary.

None of the seven members of the New Jersey State Supreme Court have ever been elected to public office. That provides a sharp contrast to the first Supreme Court appointed after the adoption of the current State Constitution in 1947. Of the first seven Justices, five had been former elected officials: Clarence Case spent eleven years as the State Senator from Somerset County and was a former Senate President; Dayton Oliphant served three terms in the State Assembly, one as the Majority Leader; Harry Heher was the Mercer County Democratic Chairman for seven years and was finishing his tenth year as the Democratic State Chairman when he was appointed to the top court; Albert Burling was a former Pennsauken Councilman and served one term as the State Senator from Burlington County; and Henry Ackerman was elected twice to represent Monmouth County in the State Senate. Of the remaining two original Justices, Arthur Vanderbilt was a top Republican insider who spent 25 years as the Essex County Counsel, and William Wachenfeld was the Essex County Prosecutor. The last time a former elected official to be nominated for the state Supreme Court was Daniel O'Hern, who was named by Governor Brendan Byrne. O'Hern was the Mayor of Red Bank from 1962 to 1978, when Byrne appointed him Commissioner of Environmental Protection. He was serving as Counsel to the Governor when he was nominated for the top court.

For extreme political junkies: Justice Case was the uncle of future four-term U.S. Senator Clifford Case, and Oliphant was the nephew of William Dayton, who served as New Jersey's U.S. Senator from 1842 to 1851. Clarence Case was originally appointed to the Supreme Court in 1929 and elevated to Chief Justice in 1946. After the passage of the new State Constitution, the Supreme Court was dissolved and Governor Alfred Driscoll named Vanderbilt as Chief Justice and Case as an Associate Justice -- the only Chief Justice to ever move down to an Associate Justice spot. Dayton spent three years as a state Supreme Court Justice before going to the Senate. He lost re-election in 1852 and in 1856 became the first Republican nominee for Vice President, running with California Senator John Fremont; they lost to Democrats James Buchanan and John Breckenridge. He was state Attorney General from 1857 to 1861 (the only major party candidate for Vice President to return to public office as a state Attorney General) and U.S. Minister to France under President Abraham Lincoln from 1861 until his death in 1864.

The winner of the Joe Bubba Award for refusing to go away: former Rhode Island Governor Bruce Sundlun. The 85-year-old Sundlun, who served as Governor from 1991 to 1995, is the leading candidate for Town Manager in Coventry, Rhode Island, a town of 33,668 people. That would be the same as Brendan Byrne becoming the Manalapan Township Administrator. (For readers who don't get the reference: Joe Bubba, a New Jersey State Senator from 1982 to 1998, won just 7% of the vote in his 2004 bid for City Commissioner in Pompano Beach, Florida.)