Carmen Orechio

A town of 27,362 people in northeastern Essex County, Nutley has a long tradition of clout and influence in state and county politics -- largely through power of a bi-partisan local political machine run for more than thirty years by Frank Orechio, who leveraged a chain of weekly newspapers in Nutley, Belleville, Bloomfield and Glen Ridge to help deliver votes to the candidates of his choice. Critics had long complained that the Orechio media empire -- for a time in the 1970's and 1980's it included a cable television station -- was a blatant conflict of interest because of the positions the Orechio family held at different levels of government.

When Eldridge Hawkins, a 31-year-old African American lawyer from East Orange, won the District 11E State Assembly seat in a politically competitive district in 1971, he was widely viewed as a rising star in Essex County Democratic politics.  Hawkins is no seeking a political comeback of sorts: his son, Eldridge Hawkins, Jr., 28, announced this week that he was a candidate for Mayor of Orange.

Legislative redistricting was in constant turmoil in those days, as New Jersey sought to follow the U.S. Supreme Court's one man, one vote decision.  Districts were redrawn in 1965, 1967, 1969, 1971 and 1973.

The story of District 11E starts in 1967, when Kenneth Wilson, a 31-year-old Social Studies teacher from West Orange and John Dennis, 34, a businessman from Verona whose family owned the Annin Flag Company, were among a group of seven young Republicans elected to the State Assembly.  (That group included future Governor Thomas Kean, 32, and Ralph Caputo, 27, who returns to the State Assembly tomorrow after a 35 year absence.)

Republican strategists view Nutley Mayor Joanne Cocchiola as a potentially strong candidate for State Senate next year against Democrat Paul Sarlo in the 36th district, but sources close to Cocchiola say that the GOP Mayor has not yet heard from Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance about plans for the 2007.

The first choice for the GOP, insiders say, is former Assembly Majority Leader Paul DiGaetano. But Republicans close to DiGaetano, who gave up his seat two years ago to run for Governor, are not optimistic about DiGaetano's willingness to run.

The 2001 Senate race pitted two former Nutley Mayors, incumbent Democratic Senator Garry Furnari and incumbent GOP Assemblyman John Kelly. Furnari won that race with 51% of the vote, while Kelly carried Nutley with 63%. Two years later, Sarlo won the seat with 55% against Kelly -- with the Republican carrying Nutley again with 63%. In the 2005 Assembly race, Democratic Assembly candidates carried Nutley by a wide margin.

Cocchiola was elected Nutley Town Commissioner in 2000 (following the retirement of her father, who had held the post for 28 years) and became Mayor in 2004 when she was the top-votegetter in the local election -- running far ahead of Carmen Orechio, a former State Senate President who has served as a Commissioner and Mayor since 1968. Kelly ran in that same election and finished a distant sixth.

For Republicans to be at all serious about winning control of the Senate, they will need to play heavily against Sarlo, Frederick Madden in the fourth district and Ellen Karcher in the twelfth.