Clifford Case

Here’s what New York Times reporter Ronald Sullivan wrote on the search to find a candidate to challenge U.S. Senator Clifford Case in 1966 after several other prospective Democratic candidates dropped out of the race: “(The U.S. Senate candidate) will bear the onus of running as the party’s obvious second choice and a candidate who is given little chance of winning.” (New York Times, 06/15/66)

Republicans have not won a United States Senate seat in New Jersey since 1972, when Clifford Case was re-elected to a fourth term over Paul Krebs, a former Congressman from Essex County.  Only West Virginia and Hawaii have gone longer than New Jersey without sending a Republican to the U.S. Senate; Massachusetts has also gone 36 years without a GOP Senate victory.

Frank Lautenberg’s 35-point lead over Rob Andrews in the race for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination is substantial, but that doesn’t mean the 84-year-old incumbent will coast to victory in the June 3 primary.  Back in 1978, the last time an incumbent Senator faced a serious primary challenge, an Eagleton/Rutgers poll conducted just two weeks before the Republican primary was good news for four-term Senator Clifford Case.  Only 3% of voters were able to identify his rival, Jeff Bell, and by a 43%-8% margin, felt that Case would make the better Senator.  Bell won by 3,473 votes – a 51%-49% margin.

The New York Times used their editorial page to call on New Jersey Republican to find a moderate to run against Frank Lautenberg for the United States Senate.

New Jersey Democrats have not lost a race for the United States Senate since 1972, when Clifford Case defeated Paul Krebs. Massachusetts also voted for their last GOP Senator that year.  Only two states have a better Democratic streak: Hawaii, which has not sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate since Hiram Fong won re-election in 1970, and West Virginia, where William Chapman Revercomb won in 1952.

In 1958, Democrat Alexander Feinberg and former GOP Assemblyman William Cahill faced off in the old first district for the seat of Republican Charles Wolverton, who was retiring after 32 years in Congress. A Democratic year nationally, Cahill held on for a 1,829 vote victory, 50%-49%. Had Cahill lost his congressional race, he probably would not have won election as Governor in 1969.  (Feinberg, a Cherry Hill Democrat, became friends with the Senate candidate that year, Harrison Williams.  More than two decades later, when Williams was indicted in the Abscam scandal, Feinberg was a co-defendant.)

The other race was a 1953 Special Election for the seat of Republican Clifford Case, who had resigned during his ninth year in office to become the president of The Fund for the Republic. (Case returned to politics one year later to win the U.S. Senate seat of retiring freshman GOP Senator Robert Hendrickson). Most observers at the time expected the Republican, Plainfield Mayor George Hetfield, to easily win Case's congressional seat. His Democratic opponent was a 33-year-old lawyer and World War II veteran who had already lost races for State Assembly in 1951 and Plainfield City Councilman in 1952, Harrison Williams.

Left to right: Clifford Case, Harrison Williams and Frank Lautenberg
Frank Lautenberg, 84, never ran for office until he was 58-years-old and has never won more than 55% of the vote in a statewide election, but if he wins a fifth term later this year, he would become the longest serving United States Senator in New Jersey history.

Joseph Minish, who passed away on Saturday at age 91, may be one of the top vote-getters in Essex County history.  He won eleven races for Congress without ever falling below 58% in a district that was potentially competitive for Republicans. 

When Minish first won in 1962, the eleventh district included the Central and West Wards of Newark and suburban (sometimes Republican-leaning) Essex town.  By 1972, Newark was entirely out of his district, and his district included working class (and politically competitive) towns like Belleville, Bloomfield, West Orange, Montclair Hillside, North Arlington and Little Falls, Republican strongholds like the Maplewood and the Caldwells.

Republican presidential candidates carried the eleventh district in four successive elections: Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter by a 50%-40% margin in 1980, Gerald Ford carried it 54%-46% in 1976, Richard Nixon won it 60%-40% over George McGovern in 1972 and by 166 votes over Hubert Humphrey in 1968.  But Reagan, Ford and Nixon had no coattails for Minish’s GOP opponents.

The national political environment favored the GOP in 1966.  It was the mid-term election of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the war in Vietnam had just begun to divide the nation.  

In New Jersey, Republican Clifford Case was seeking re-election to a third term in the United States Senate, and even though Democrats scored huge wins a year earlier (Governor Richard Hughes was re-elected in a landslide and Democrats captured both houses of the Legislative), few believed the popular Case, with strong support from traditional Democratic base voters like organized labor, was going to lose.